Backgrounder_commercialisation

"McDonaldization of education" is the term used by some observers to describe the slow but relentless process of integration of higher education into the market. And it is precisely that association -crystal clear and "fitting" when it comes to illustrating a process of change involving both globalization and huge technological developments that enable the dissemination of knowledge- which gives rise to great controversies.

Using this comparison, UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Education, John Daniel, underlines three aspects that can help us ponder education's current evolution: firstly, according to Daniel, in spite of its ubiquity, this food chain offers only a small portion of what people eat; secondly, it sells because people like what it serves; and lastly, the key to its success is its limited menu which is replicated with exactly the same flavour, aspect and quality and sold in identical stores throughout the world.

This evidences the homogenization that befalls any activity thus commercialized, but the controversy around education also hinges on whether this evolution -or incorporation into the market- is good for education and society or not.

What is not debatable is the fact that education is turning into a commodity.

Not by chance has higher education become a subject of study for corporations specialized in banking investments, such as Merrill Lynch. Nor is it fortuitous that the two leading companies promoting the commercialization of higher education in the United States (Apollo and Sylvan Learning) are listed on the stock market, and that the General Agreement on Trade in Services has included education among the services to be liberalized. Education on the Market. http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1263.html

Cheap Poison - American Infiltration in India's Educational Life, Prof. Bagchi Nirmalya, 01/07/1974, Chalti Duniya, B.N00.B7

“Globalisation: Its influence on Education” Dr T. K. John ( Ch 3 pg. 35-56). in Education for the Millenium, Edited.by Varghese Alengaden, Satprachar Press, 2000. [ B. N00.A61]

“A Response to Dr T. K John’s Presentation” Jayesh Shah Ch 4 pg. 57-62, in Education for the Millenium, Ibid

The Supreme Court ( In Mohini Jain) rightly did not go into the question as to how one should run one's educational institution - its economic viability, its budgeting and expenses, etc The Court was concerned with the State action or inaction and whether it would defeat the constitutional mandate. The Court came to the conclusion that the "State action in permitting capitation fee to be charged by State - recognized educational institutions, is wholly arbitrary and as such violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India (Para 18). However, as against this perfectly valid judgement, a vilification campaign both by the legal fraternity and the vested interest group was carried on to say that the Supreme Court ruling was against private commercial initiatives and the State has no resources and manpower to provide universal and all round education to all at all stage. Teaching Shops , in Education: Trade, Profession, Occupation or Business, By Justice Suresh H. India Centre for Human Rights,Mumbai, 01/01/2004, [R.N00.29]. (Talk by Mihir Desai at the launch of the book is available in audiotape [A.N00.A6]

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SINCE the time the BJP government has come to power at the centre, the attacks on higher education have increased manifold. Having surrendered to the World Bank, the BJP government is now implementing its prescriptions in the field of higher education as well. Treating higher education as a non-merit good, as dictated by the World Bank, this government has already taken steps to gradually withdraw funding of institutions of higher education, restrict the access to higher education, recover a big part of expenditure from the students as fees, and privatise and commercialise higher education. It has also decided to impose autonomous status on colleges, and the assessment and accreditation of universities and colleges have been made mandatory.

While the Ministry of HRD and the UGC were implementing these decisions by executive orders and circulars without discussing the issues involved with the democratic movement of teachers and students, the Prime Minister’s Office was busy in consolidating these decisions and expediting the process of privatisation and commercialisation of higher education. The prime minister’s Council on Trade and Industry (PMCTI) constituted a ‘special subject group on policy framework for private investment in education, health and rural development’. The prime minister found no experts in the concerned areas but the noted industrialists, Mukesh Ambani (Convenor) and Kumarmangalam Birla (Member) to constitute this special subject group. Obviously, they were among the best-interested people to suggest the implementation of the World Bank prescriptions and privatisation and commercialisation of higher education in the country.

Ambani and Birla submitted their report ‘A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education’ to the PMCTI on April 24, 2000. The Report remained confidential till it was downloaded from the Internet (Website: http://www.nic.in) recently.

For Ambani and Birla, education is a very profitable market over which they must have full control and for their industrial requirements "education must shape adaptable, competitive workers who can readily acquire new skills and innovate." Hence, they want us to "fundamentally change our mindset" of "seeing education as a component of social development."

By not being market-oriented, the Indian education system fails to realize the potential of the information technology requirements. Consequently, private institutions enjoying brand equity and large market capitalization have come up forming a large non-formal education system of creating quality software professionals

Knowledge has become the new asset. According to the Report, "More than half of the GDP in the major OECD countries is now knowledge based. About two-thirds of the growth of world GDP is expected to come from technology-led businesses. This necessitates that education and knowledge are at the centre stage of any development process."

The Report says: "Weightless goods – with high knowledge content rather than material content – now account for some of the most dynamic sectors in several economies. The single largest export industry for the United States is neither aircraft nor automobiles, but entertainment. Education offers a fast track to knowledge-based growth."

Therefore, a call has been given for a "knowledge revolution", a revolution in education that "induces a market oriented competitive environment."

Thus the two industrialists want the country to move towards a "knowledge-based economy" in which education will offer a "fast track" to produce "weightless goods" like "entertainment". Knowledge-based economy and revolution are envisaged using cyber-age education and internet and "putting latest technology to innovative use" establishing "classroom of the future" and "virtual universities" for "the dot com generations."

A number of economic reforms, undertaken on the dictates of the World Bank and multinational corporations, are "hampered by their impact on labour and employment." These reforms are, among others, "privatization of public enterprises, reduction of tariffs, moving to a quantitative regime or restraining wasteful government expenditure."

Several rigid labour laws protect the interests of 300 lakh employees in the government, public sector and organized private sector. The large numbers of workers in the unorganized sector and agriculture have no such protection. Therefore, Ambani and Birla do not like to invest in the organized sector because they cannot make huge profits by hiring as cheap a labour as is available in the unorganized sector. They have realized the enormous power of the people in India and "the potential for growth and development if over a billion people, one sixth of humanity, are educated, creative and enterprising."

Therefore, they want India to "create an environment that does not produce industrial workers and labourers but fosters ‘knowledge workers.’ Since "education has a major role to play in shaping knowledge workers", they want to first capture higher education and make huge profits, and then use the ‘knowledge workers’ in their unorganized sector to make further profits.

Ambani and Birla are unhappy to note that the education sector in India is probably the most controlled sector in India, with several bodies managing education. Rules and regulations govern virtually everything from location, student intake, course content, fees and fee structure, appointments, compensation for faculty and so on. Consequently institutions of "learning have become rigid." They do not want "excessive regulations" in education because this will "discourage private spending" on it. They want "operational freedom and the flexibility to innovate."

"Governments must encourage private financing by taking on some of the risks that makes financial institutions reluctant to lend for higher education."

Thus, the private sector wants full freedom, including the power to hire and fire, and no law protecting the interests of students, teachers, employees, and the people at large.

The role of the government in higher education has been redefined as playing the role of a facilitator, maximum at the primary stage, and minimum at the higher education stage. Accordingly enactment of a Private University Act for the establishment of "new private universities in the fields of science and technology, management, economics, financial management and other critical areas with commercial applications" has been recommended. The Report advises the government that leading business houses (read Ambani and Birla) must be encouraged to establish such institutes and universities.

This recommendation goes much beyond the aims and objectives of the Private Universities Bill still pending before the Rajya Sabha. The DUTA had appeared before the Select Committee of Parliament in 1996 and opposed the Bill because, apart from other reasons, the Bill proposed to take away frontier areas of science and technology from the university system. Ambani and Birla on the other hand, want this Bill to cover every area having commercial application other than the liberal arts and performing arts. Advocating foreign direct investment in education, they have built a case, in their own interest, to start private universities, turning education into a business for profit- making and marketing India as a "destination for affordable and high quality education."

In this pursuit for profit making, universal primary education is counter-posed to higher education. Once universal primary and secondary education has been achieved then only can higher education be considred as a priority. There must be a concerted effort to free up resources for primary education. (Incidentally, differentration is also proposed among teachers according to the ‘level’ at which they teach – including their education.) To achieve this there must be a gradual move to full cost recovery in higher education, encouraging the emergence of a largely self-financing private sector.

The "user pays principle" will be enforced strictly for higher education supported by loan schemes, as well as financial grants for economically and socially backward sections of society. They have suggested a credit market for education. Those who cannot pay should take loans or credit from the market if they want to enroll themselves in the institutions of higher education.

For primary and literacy education an education development fund has been proposed to be based on donations fully exempt from income tax, alongwith a gradual withdrawal of subsidies for higher education through higher fees and changes in the fee structure. Funds withdrawn from higher education, have never been transferred to primary education. Nevertheless school education is pitted against the higher education. It is proposed that progressive redution in the funding for universities can pay fo the Infrastructure for schools – buildings, telecom networks, and computers. Universities should take the path of self-sufficiency through higher students’ fees, donations and endowments, alumni contributions, linkages with corporate establishments for research, royalties on book and research output etc. The role of the UGC as a funding entity will no longer exist, except in those areas of education involving liberal arts and performing arts.

. Schools of learning must be encouraged to constantly upgrade content and facilities in order to make them more market oriented. Because the formal education system, is not awake to the needs of society, therefore a non-formal system of self-financing institutions has filled the need.

Ambani and Birla prefer to overlook the fact that it is the government policy of gradual withdrawal of state funding of institutions of higher education that has thwarted many attempts of institutions of higher education, universities and colleges, to upgrade their courses in view of present day technology requirements. For example, the government and the UGC have paid nothing in the past several years to Delhi University to start new courses and upgrade the existing ones by integrating computer and information technology. The case for the privatization and commercialization of higher education is being made out by blaming universities and colleges, and not government policies.

Only areas of higher education which are profitable are of interest to there Non-profitable areas such as oriental languages, archaeology, palaeontology, religion and philosophy, should be left to the state to pursue.

The Report further requires annual rating of all educational institutions in India – schools, colleges, institutions and universities – by independent agencies analogous to a Standard and Poor’s or CRISIL in the financial sector, mandatory to cover issues such as emphasis on girls’ education, value education, social service, physical education and games. This rating should be mentioned in the prospectus as well as all important communications. "Funding to educational institutions will then be linked to rating. Institutions with a lower than the minimum specified rating should not be allowed to operate. Based on ratings which will follow a strengent system, a differential fee structure could emerge.

The value education and social service is likely to be as defined by the BJP. With funding linked to rating, many institutions, which may not come up to the minimum level for want of adequate state funding, will have to closed down.

Where increased spending on education arises this is to be met "by restructuring of inter-sectoral allocations and divestment of loss- making public sector companies. For example, the average annual plan expenditure on education (1992-97 plan) was Rs 3,920 crore and the annual losses of all state electricity boards (1997-98) was Rs 10,684 crore which is 2.72 times the average annual plan expenditure on education." Secondly, Panchayats must seek funding from the local community to supplement state funding. Central and state assistance should not be seen as largesse but linked to those who can help themselves."

To achieve full control over education, legislation should be enacted "banning any form of political activity on campuses of universities and educational institution including any union activities."

Ambani and Birla have assumed that by the year 2015, primary and upper primary education (age group 5 – 14 years) will be universalized, a 75 per cent enrolment rate will be achieved for higher secondary, 20 per cent enrolment in colleges and professional education. The percentages of public spending are projected as 90 per cent in the primary sector, 50 per cent in the secondary sector and 40 per cent in the tertiary sector. This translates to a total public spending of Rs 1,17,000 crore and a private spending of Rs 68,900 crore (i.e. Rs 1,85,900 crore, calculated at 1998-99 levels of costs and prices).

In effect this means that the government would spend 63 per cent of the total expenditure, which they assume would amount to 1.98 per cent of the projected GNP, ie, a reduction from the present 3.7 per cent to 1.98 per cent by the year 2015. The number of students projected to be enrolled in the institutions of higher education in the year 2015 is 220 lakh. This number is about three times the current figure.

The ignorance of Ambani and Birla regarding the current state of affairs in higher education while abysmal is not surprising. Only six per cent of the young people in the age group of 17-23 are currently enrolled in higher education. These students, about 75 lakh in number, are able to join higher education because of the currently prevailing fee structure. The percentage rise in the enrolment of students per year has been decreasing in last ten years. These industrialists want us to believe that not only these students, but others totally 220 lakhs students, will be able to pay more than Rs thirty thousand per year, at 1998-99 prices, in 2015, for a B.A. degree. Given the experience in relation to rise in prices in past, this fee might be about Rs 1.5 lakh per year in 2015. This is the fee alone, actual expenditure may be much more.

With such a high fee the enrolment of students will never be 20 per cent as proposed by Ambani and Birla, but it will fall steeply to far below even six per cent.

Loans to students have been proposed so that they are able to meet the enhanced fees. It is being advocated that the poor students who cannot pay the fees, instead of dropping out from higher education, should take loans, get jobs and then pay back loans. The BJP government has already started implementing these proposals. There are several serious problems associated with this proposal.

Firstly, while proposing loans it has been assumed that after education, students would get jobs with ‘good’ earnings and be able to pay back loans. But education does not guarantee employment. With no employment or no ability to repay, people from relatively poorer sections will be worst affected.

Secondly, the recovery of loans would become the most important consideration for the banking institutions. Therefore, they would not be willing to give loans to economically weaker and educationally deserving students. They would prefer to cater to economically better-off students. The conditions of guarantee based on the mortgage of immovable property would further exclude a large section of students.

Thirdly, since dowry is an important social phenomenon in several countries including India, loans to students would work as a ‘negative dowry’ resulting in decline in the enrolment of girls in higher education.

On the whole, the proposed loans to students would prove to be detrimental to the growth of higher education and adversely affect equity in and access to higher education.

Thus the Ambani-Birla Report, would convert the entire system of higher education in the country into a market where only profit- making will be the only consideration. Only those who will be able to pay exorbitant amounts of fee will enroll in higher education. Not only anti-higher education but also anti-people, this report must be rejected in its totality.

Drawing from such recommendations from the industry, in 2001 the Government of Karnataka mooted the idea of withdrawing GIA, which are essentially the salaries of the teaching staff. The State-wide protests against this recommendation by the teachers deferred the implementation. The Medium Term Fiscal Plan for Karnataka 2003-04 to 2006-07 of the Finance department, clearly states that there is no justification for carrying on with the current GIA, for, it claims, in many cases grants are adding profit to institutions and therefore require phasing out. there are a number of courses that have been newly introduced at the graduate and post-graduate levels, including BBM, Women’s Studies, Bio-Technology and Computer applications, which are funded by the respective managements. That the managements are adding profits to their coffers, which often does not trickle down to the pockets of the teaching staff, indicates that this system may not be ideal for the general courses. The obvious fall-out of this has been an ever-soaring fee structure that is affordable only by the wealthy. The task force that was set up to look into the reordering of the system of education, feared that the fees would have to be increased some 21 times more than what they are at present.
Further, courses in the pure sciences, such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Zoology or social sciences and humanities like Sociology, History, English or Kannada may be dumped for being non-market friendly. It would become no longer appropriate to read Shakespeare, while courses like Communicative English, Professional writing or Business English would become the order of the day. The economic non-viability of certain courses cannot become a justification for their withdrawal.

Both colonial education and education for globalistion are exploitative in nature. If colonial education was meant to prepare "babus" for East India company, the education for markets is to prepare Indians for the global corporates. Both in terms of goals and objectives there is no much difference between the colonial and global educational processes.

Both kinds of education are not rooted in the native soil. In fact, their primary aim is to draw out the rich and the dominant away from the local moorings and use them as tools for markets. Students passing out of such systems will have a loyalty to capitalists processes of produc-tion, culture and living. Education is indoctrination. It defines what is good and desirable and what is to be rejected and discarded. The values, beliefs and attitudes inculcated by both colonial and market education exalts consumerism, competition, individualism, western mode of life and living, technology, science, and capital while at the same time rejecting indigenous ways of life, folklore and communitarian ways of living.Development essential-ly is all about people; their right over resources. Education for markets is all about capital, technology, computers, electronics and profits. An education for globalisation is bound to further marginalise the poor not only in terms of access but also in terms of the products.

A globalized educational system in terms of access will not be available to all. It will be expensive and sophisticated. If only 6% make it to higher education now, it will be further reduced. A matter of greater concern is the attitudes beliefs and value systems internalized by the products of the system. These will carry on the mission of the globalises plundering and looting our natural resources, imposing a developmental model that benefits the global capitalists and thus act as agents of global economic lords.

The Alternative to globalisation is localisation. Designs of a global empire contemplated by MNCs, TNCs and Business groups can only be done away with local struggles for assertion, identity and development. The important question is how do we strengthen local control over educational system and knowledge and gear education for national de-velopment. Unless and until a movement for change begins from below, the task is not easy. Though the independence movement freed us from the British, the educational system was kept intact. What the system inculcates still is western value systems of individualism, competition and prepares students to western kind of living. With globalization such values are intensified. The alternative is a massive campaign for change. Education must become more and more sensitive to local aspirations, hopes and desires and gear itself for control of local resources by local communities.

Globalization of education undermines state sovereignty, the principles of socialism and egalitarianism. It is anti-constitutional. Education as a device is meant to usher equality and justice. It is a pity that it is used by the State to create inequality. At the present juncture it is further utilized for accen-tuating inequalities. Since the state has abdicated its responsibility to its citizens, concerned citizens have to pressurize the state to be faithful to the Constitutional mandate of "education for all" and transformation of the social order by revamping the system. It is more important to prepare citizens for the community than workers for the markets.

- Globalization and the Changing Ideology of Indian Higher Education, Ambrose Pinto, Social Action, 01/10/2000, /eldoc/n00_/01oct00SOA.pdf

The Human Capital theory of the World Bank treats, schooling as a ‘black box’, a technical relationship between inputs and outputs. This completely ignores the fact that the whole structure of education – from pre-school, elementary and secondary school, vocational and then schools of higher education – is a system; it is a system of power and ideology, which is itself deeply rooted in society’s cultural norms [Fine et al 2001]. Anyone who doubts this should only look at the deep segmentation of say, on the one hand, the Indian school system...

Or contrast that to another system: elementary schools in Thailand, where a more egalitarian system, largely lacking a language barrier, ensures schooling for all, and where the private elementary school is resorted to only by children unable to survive the government school system. There could not be a better example of schooling being a system of power and ideology than that of Francophone Africa. For over three decades after independence, French has remained the language of instruction in the earliest grades of primary school (and for higher grades) even in the remotest parts of rural Sahel – despite the overwhelming evidence from pedagogical theory that children learn best in the earliest years in their mother tongue. The alien school system was one factor underlying French west Africa’s very low primary enrolment rates, which remain till date the lowest for any region of the world.

Third, not only is production of schooling treated like a technical relationship to produce human capital, the use of human capital as an input into production is also unsatisfactory in HC theory. In the theory, human capital is said to affect economic outcomes, in particular wage outcomes. However, other factors affect wage outcomes too: gender, race, capital intensity, degree of monopoly, all of which mutually condition one another.

The degree to which the state should subsidise education has, nevertheless, been subject to contending opinions. This resulted in conflicting messages throughout the 1980s from IFIs about the state and education. On the one hand, education was a priority for development. On the other, structural adjustment loans required cuts in government spending and greater market reliance, including privatisation. It is not that these loans required education and health expenditure reductions, but these sectors suffered a cut regardless.⁴ Thus in India, in seven out of eight states examined, education expenditures showed a decline in the 1990s (after the onset of structural adjustment in 1991)

WB economists developed an economic model illustrating that, where there is excess demand for education, charging user fees at all levels of education would be advantageous from both an efficiency and equity perspective [Thobani 1983, Tan et al 1984; World Bank 1986; Jimenez 1986, 1987; Psacharapolous 1986]. In fact, World Bank (1986) strongly advocated user charges in Malawi at the secondary level, arguing that with user charges education can expand with no loss of equity. Remarkably, in 1994, when Malawi eliminated fees and uniforms, enrolments increased dramatically throughout the school system [Unicef 1998].

The World Bank’s policy note (1986) argued strongly that governments ‘do not tap the willingness of households to contribute resources directly to education’. This policy was most convincing (and actually persuasive in Sub-Saharan Africa through the instrument of IMF stabilisation and WB adjustment loans) for higher education. However, after sharp criticism of the consequences for elementary schooling, by the early to mid-1990s, the WB distanced itself from user charges at the primary level [Tilak 1997], but not before doing some damage.

Similarly, in order to ensure better learning outcomes, the WB’s knowledge dictated a predominant role for textbooks in the policy package from the mid-1970s on. Not that the emphasis on textbooks per se was wrong, but the emphasis was misplaced relative to the neglect of the role of the teacher. For much of the 1960s – when WB lending to education began – to the early 1970s, lending to education was a brick-and-mortar affair, with most lending going to building school infrastructure.

Once construction activities in borrowers declined, and WB developed a greater interest in schoolwide quality, it was a challenge to find new areas within education to loan monies to. One aspect of pedagogy – textbooks – helped serve the need for new, tangible areas of lending from the mid-1970s. Such bankable avenues of loaning money and the WB’s emphasis on them can mask dangers to borrowers who may mistakenly look to the WB for a comprehensive and balanced view of educational development. In fact, one result was that in many countries the issue of teacher remuneration, development and incentives was ignored – with serious adverse consequences for school effectiveness. Teacher salaries had been systematically declining in many Sub-Saharan and Latin American countries through the 1980s and the much of the 1990s, adversely affecting teacher motivation.⁶ In the late 1990s, this imbalance in emphasis in WB sectoral analysis was corrected but too late in the day.

On the role of the private sector in education, the research question regarding the relative advantages and disadvantages of private versus public schooling was often framed in terms of: do children in private schools have a current learning or future wage advantage than those in public schools? However, the overwhelming historical evidence is that neither in industrialised countries nor in contemporary high-achieving developing ones did the private sector play a predominant role in universalising schooling. In fact World Bank (1986) had argued strongly for encouraging the expansion of non-government schools, suggesting, “in (government) schools resources are not being used as efficiently as they might be, (a) problem reinforced by the lack of competition between schools” [cited in Jones 1992]. The WB’s Education Sector Strategy 1999 noted that one of the drivers of change in the education sector was that public/private roles were changing, the state was no longer the only provider, and that increasingly there were in education a spectrum of providers – private for-profit, private not-for-profit, and community-level organisations.

- Human Capital or Human Development? Search for a Knowledge Paradigm for Education and Development, Santosh Mehrotra, Economic & Political Weekly, 22/01/2005 N00, /eldoc/n00_/22jan05EPW300.html

Significantly, Tomasevski (2001) noted the following regarding the Jomtien Declaration:

"The language of the final document adopted by the Jomtien Conference merged human needs and market forces, moved education from governmental to social responsibility, made no reference to the international legal requirement that primary education be free-of-charge, introduced the term basic education' which confused conceptual and statistical categories.

The language elaborated at Jomtien was different from the language of international human rights law."

the market agenda and the Structural Adjustment Programme inherent in the Jomtien Declaration had a significant impact on the State's policies, resulting in further attrition of its commitment during the Nineties to fulfill its Constitutional obligation in the following concrete ways:

· Dilution of elementary education of 8 years to primary education of 5 or even less years;
· Diverting attention from the central issue of transforming the mainstream school system with respect to issues such as the lack of social relevance of education, inequity inbuilt in school structure, inflexibility and non-contextuality of curriculum
teaching-learning process and evaluation parameters founded on erroneous pedagogic principles, ill-planned professional content of teacher education etc:
· Imposing Minimum Levels of Learning (MLLs) as a tool for organizing learning material and evaluation despite the fact that the concept of MLLs is rooted in only a limited and incomplete view of education and is aimed at conditioning the child's mind with social biases and market ideology (see Dhankar, 2002 for a detailed commentary);
Ignoring the policy commitment to the Common School System (Sadgopal, 2002, p. 123; 2004);

· Institutionalization of low-quality low-budget parallel streams of education for the deprived sections of society viz. Alternative Schools, Education Guarantee Scheme etc. (Sadgopal 2002, 2004);

· Reducing the issue of women empowerment and gender discrimination to the so-called gender parity measured in terms of enrollment ratios (Gol, 2001; UNESCO, 2002, pp. 68-79);
Marginalising the issue of social and cultural discrimination of dalits, tribals and the minorities both within and outside the school and its impact on their capacity to participate in and complete elementary education; reducing the entire issue to their enrollment ratios;

· Isolating education from its socio-economic context by ignoring issues such as child labour, wage structure, common property resources (e.g. fodder, fuel and water), patriarchy, caste structure, cultural alienation and discrimination, communalisation of polity, feudal and patriarchal control of Panchayati Raj institutions etc.;

Reducing the aim of girl child's education to the narrow view wherein women are envisaged as merely 'useful products', ready receptors or transmitters of demographic and nutritional messages or proficient wage earners or producers, thereby violating girls child's right to education as a human (see World Bank, 1997, pp. 1 & 39);

· Violating the Operation Blackboard's norms prescribed by the National Policy with respect to the number of teachers and classrooms per primary school and then legitimising multi-grade teaching for the poor;

· Overlooking the cumulative gap in resource allocation to education building up for the past three decades due to non-investment of the recommended level of 6% of GDP in education; and
. Refusing to re-prioritise the national economy for the purpose of allocating adequate resources for education of the poor and thereby redistributing social justice; using this reluctance as a rationale for seeking external aid for primary education, promoting privatisation and commercialisation of education at all levels and substituting national concerns with the conditionalities of international aid giving agencies.

Policy formulation and any realistic planning of education calls for reviewing the role of education in social change and re-designing the entire education system to deal with these issues. Curriculum must also begin to take note of the rapidly emerging linkage between globalisation and religious fundamentalism (see Abroad, 2002; BJVJ Document of January 2002 reproduced in Sadgopal, 2003; Sadgopal, 2004). There is no space whatsoever either in the Jomtien Declaration or in the framework of the externally aided programmes for such meaningful policy changes.

- RESISTING APPROPRIATION AND DISTORTION OF KNOWLEDGE, ANIL SADGOPAL, THE PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT, 01/05/2004 N00, /eldoc/n00_/01may04tpm4.html

... There is also, in many instanc-es, the opportunity cost of earnings that those who go in for education forgo, though this is not taken into account in the figures that follow. It may not be widely known that even where schooling is 'free', households incur expenses. A sur- vey by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, conducted in the early 1990s... shows that household expendi-ture per student on free elementary educa-tion in rural India was Rs.378, with a high of Rs.842 in Himachal Pradesh and a low of Rs.253 in Orissa. But Sailabala Devi, on the basis of a study of Orissa for the same period, arrives at a high figure of Rs.982 of which Rs.335 went for private tuition. Another set of figures shows that per student direct expenditure on elemen-tary education by households in rural In-dia was substantially different as between government schools and private schools and between aided and unaided private schools. More important, even at Rs.378 per pupil, the amount spent by house-holds as a whole on the schooling of chil-dren aged six to 14 is a substantial ... Does this contribution of households indicate their willingness and ability to pay, or should it be thought of as "forced commercialisation"of a sort? There are two ways of looking at this question. The first is to note that while for households as a whole the expenditure on schooling con-stituted 2.6 per cent of income, for the poorest section it is as high as 7.3 per cent. To put it mildly, educating children is a burden for poor households.

On the other hand, well-to-do households may be pre-pared to pay even more than what they are paying now. A sample survey of house-holds in Tamil Nadu showed that for col-legiate education, including professional education, households were willing to pay 20 to 40 per cent more than what they were paying if the quality of education would improve. Perhaps this willingness to pay or the demand factor, has resulted in the recent proliferation of self-financing educational institutions at all levels. .. What is the financial motivation of these institutions that are providers of educa-tion? Are they net contributors of funds or is their main objective to make profits in a situation of excess demand? What is and what should be the structure of fees that they levy?

- The costs of education, C. T. KURIEN, Frontline, 09/04/2005, N20 /eldoc/n20_/09apr05frn1.pdf

MHADAVRAO Scindia's first major statement since he took charge of his new portfolio as human resource development minister is a long overdue policy proclamation in an area that simply has not generated enough attention from successive governments. His emphasis on the need to encourage greater private, and voluntary-sector, involvement in the country's educational system is not only a high-profile recognition of a desperate resource crunch that's stifling and stunting the system, but also a statement of the importance of literacy in a modernising and globally connected economy.
Currently, the Government— both the Centre and the states— spends 3.5 per cent of the country's GDP on funding education. But by its own admission, that's low. The basic minimum should be about 6 per cent. That means a deficit of about Rs 20,000 crore per annum. This is clearly an argument for more private funds to flow in. Technically, even though 60 per cent of universities and institutions are already in private hands, most rely heavily on the Government for financial succour. Private colleges in Delhi, for example, receive 95 per cent of their funds from the Government. And therein lies the rub. In irrationally subsidising higher education, the Government has displayed a skewed sense of priorities. Building a sound human-resource base, as social-science jargon puts it, requires massive concentration on primary education— a mix of government spending and encouragement to private enterprise through a more liberal system of land allocation, red-tape cutting and solid tax breaks. Private investors may not immediately jump into the fray because the education business does not provide im mediate profits. It is essentially a long-term investment. But businessmen and corporate nouses, in their own interest, should realise that a literate and skilled workforce is good for business and, ultimately, good for profits. Modern teaching methods, a multiplicity of flexible course options, well-paid teachers and motivated students could make schools fertile recruiting grounds for the needs of business and industry instead of being just pathetic degree factories.

- The campus has to catch up with corporation, SH VENKATRAMANI, Pioneer, 25/03/1995, /eldoc/n00_/25mar95pio1.pdf

- Ficci recommends two models to reform education system, Business Standard, 13/06/1995, /eldoc/n00_/13jun95bs1.pdf

"A pre-school should be purely non-formal, with no element of competition, examination, and least of all admission pre-condi-tions," recommended the state-level Ram Joshi Committee on Early Childhood Education in 1995. The committee's recom-mendations formed the crux of the Pre-School Admission Act, which could however, not be passed due to severe opposition from educa-tional institutions. Six years have passed thereafter, and the pre-school sector, particularly the fancy unregistered nurseries, con-tinue to negate every concept evolved in the policy document advocating well-rounded non-competitive education for the vital early years.

- 'Pre-schools amount to child abuse', Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre, Asian Age, 26/06/2001, /eldoc/n21_/26jun01aa1.pdf

The present article is an attempt to suggest how this process of internationalizing our educational institutions could be brought about and what are the challenges and opportunities for the Indian university system if they wish to bring about this change.

- Internationalization of Educational Campuses The Need of the Globalization Process, P.J. Lavakare O.P. Bhardwaj, University News, 06/02/1995, /eldoc/n00_/06feb95uns1.pdf

- Basheer defends new education scheme, P.K.Surendran, Times of India, 31/12/1994,/eldoc/n00_/31dec94toi1.pdf

NCERT Communalisation of Edu Good Article
History
The influence of colonial rule and western ideas, which filtered through it, over the modern system of education in India, is well known. The reconstruction of the system of education in post-independent India was undertaken in the context of the legacy of colonialism, both in policy and infrastructure. Yet, the system that came into being, as a result of the deliberations in several education commissions, chaired by eminent educationists like Dr.S.Radhakrishnan and Dr.D.S. Kothari, was neither a continuation of the colonial nor a blind adoption of the western. The main concern was the formulation of a reformed system that would address the developmental needs of the nation and create a healthy social consciousness. The national policy on education laid down this perspective as follows: "a radical reconstruction of education" is essential for economic and cultural development of the country, for national integration and for realizing the ideal of a socialistic pattern of society. This will involve a transformation of a system to relate to more closely to the life of the people; a continuous effort to expand educational opportunity; a sustained and intensive effort to raise the quality of education at all stages; an emphasis on the development of science and technology; and the cultivation of moral and social values....

The search for an alternate system had a long history, dating back to the early colonial times. The nostalgia about the indigenous, as evident from the writings of many, including Gandhi who described the pre-colonial system as a beautiful tree, is a natural response to conditions of subjection. Yet, there was no attempt to resurrect the pre-colonial or to adopt the traditional as the ideal. Instead the concern of all those involved with educational reform was to marry the traditional with the modern. A national system of education which the colonial intellectuals and nationalist leaders tried to evolve was based on a possible synthesis of all that is advanced in the West with all that was abiding in the traditional. In other words the national policy was not lodged in a dichotomy between the indigenous and the western. The impact of such a policy was the internalization of a universal outlook and the location of the indigenous in the wider matrix of human history. The educational policy adumbrated by independent India, even if it faltered on many a count, was informed by an open-ended view.

The change in the character of education from the secular to the communal is taking place at a historical juncture when transnational capital is tightening its stranglehold over the Indian economy and society. The impact of this new phase of imperialism, euphemistically called globalisation, thereby masking its real nature and intent, is well pronounced. That the privatization of education, particularly the withdrawal of the state from higher education, occurring at a brisk pace in recent times is at the instance of the World Bank is now well known. Not only steps are afoot to set up private universities, but also several foreign universities are vying with each other to set up their "extension counters" in India. Given that the best of Indian universities are starved of funds these institutions are likely to have a field day. As for Indian universities they function today without even the basic minimum facilities and with teachers who have no access to the latest advances in their disciplines. These institutions churn out students who complete their education as outcastes even in their own chosen area of knowledge. What these institutions offer is unacceptable to the fast growing affluent Indian middle class. The situation is likely to aggravate in coming days with the UGC reportedly being deprived of its funding functions and the introduction of an accreditation system which would stamp many an institution as academic slums without ever the possibility of a honourable redemption. Understandably education is a fertile land for investment, particularly if it comes with a foreign tag.The response of the ruling classes and the present government to this crisis is encoded in a report prepared by industrialists, Mukesh Ambani and Kumaramangalam Birla, entitled A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education, and submitted to the Prime Minister‚s council on trade and industry. The brief of this young team of industrialists is to formulate a policy framework for private investment in education, health and rural development, which they appear to have done with alacrity and enthusiasm. The proposals, which they claim would usher in a revolution in education, in fact, provide a blue print for the unconditional surrender to the interests of advanced capitalist countries and for the preservation of the existing privileges of the ruling classes. The revolution proposed is the creation of a "competitive, yet co-operative, knowledge based society". The prescription is as follows:

As the world moves on to forging an information society founded on education, India cannot remain behind as a non-competitive knowledge economy. India has to create an environment that does not produce industrial workers and labourers but fosters knowledge workers. Such people must be at the cutting edge of knowledge workers and, in turn, placing India in the vanguard in the information age.This grand design is to be implemented through direct foreign investment and privatization. It advocates "a full cost recovery in higher education and encouraging the emergence of a largely self-financing private sector". The rest, be it the primary and secondary education or the liberal and performing arts or "disciplines whose scholars do not command a market", may be left to the patronage of the state. The unstated implication of the scheme is that it would generate two streams: one for the poor and the other for the elite. The education of the former would be limited to literacy while the latter would be the receivers of knowledge. But then the nature of the information society of countries like India, as subordinate partners of advanced capitalist countries, would be nothing better than that of a service sector. Far from being competitive and innovative they are likely to be destined to perform innumerable labour saving works for the benefit of transnational capital. The most glaring example is the medical transcription in which a large number of Indians, some of them with high technical qualifications, are currently engaged in performing the clerical work for American hospitals. Several other labour saving "opportunities" are on the way. This is not to argue that the opportunities opened up by information technology are to be shunned, but to suggest its creative incorporation in the system of education. At the same time it is necessary to recognize the fact that the educational conditions created by information technology are pregnant with the possibilities of intellectual colonization. The breaking of the geographical barriers and communication restrictions are indeed healthy attributes of knowledge dissemination, but it cannot be divorced from the economic and political contexts of knowledge production. The Ambani report, trapped in platitudes and rhetoric, appears to be insensitive to these larger issues inherent in the new information regime.

Consider this: 80% of children who pass class V from State run schools in Delhi do not know to read or write their names. In our own State, MAYA an NGO found that in Government Lower Primary School in Gavipuram Guttahalli, for eg. 33.4% of children in the third standard were unable to read and write Kannada alphabets. In the Government Model Primary School in Gavipuram Guttahalli, 24% of children in the second standard were unable to read and write.

State-run government schools countrywide are known for their lackadaisical attitude and bad quality of education. The private schools in comparison seem to be doing well in terms of both the reputation they enjoy as centres of learning as well as satisfaction of parents of the children who attend these schools.

The notion that only the government can provide for the education of the poor children is erroneous. Even State governments seem to be realising this. In Delhi itself, the State Education Minister Rajkumar Chauhan privatised non-performing government schools (about 30 of the MCD’s worst run schools) (Delhi handbook, pg.39). The motive behind is to improve the quality of education through private-public partnership. Education vouchers can be given away to students, who may use them to choose which school to join.

This ‘Education Voucher’ system is one of the means, which could bring in quality in the education process and help the government schools compete with the private schools for quality education.

The government may concentrate on the output rather than the inputs, which go into the education system. Schools may be privatised or teachers may be hired on a contract basis to work in government schools instead of employing full-time teachers, who are not present even half the time.

The decision making must be further decentralised for the school principals to decide on matters related to the running of the school. If a sense of ownership and accountability is built into the system, the government schools can also impart good quality education. It is the lack of any incentive and indifference that drives most government schools to run in an unprofessional manner.

- Coaching classes cash in on Std IV board exams, Deepa A, Times of India, 16/08/2002, /eldoc/Education/160802.pdf

Good Article Private Schools Infrastructure Govt Schools

- Buy your uniform anywhere, Indian Express, 12/04/2003, /eldoc/n22_/buy_your_uniform.html

CLASS DISTINCTION BETWEEN STUDENTS/inequality good article
COMMErcALISATION OF EDUCATION
COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM

Growing segmentation of society because of dual schooling system catering differently to the needs of the rich and the poor has become a cause of serious concern for education planners, educationists and social activists here. Experts feel that the system hardly allows equalisation of educa-tional opportunities and something needs to be done to provide the same quality of education to all students up to the age of 14 years. To seek expert opinion on equalisation of educa-tional opportunities, the UP State Council of Education Research and Training recently organised a seminar where participants expressed themselves strongly against the multiple system of schooling. Having different categories of schools for the rich and the poor could never bridge the psychological gap between the two and this would be the cause of social disunity, they warned. It was pointed out that the education policy, for-mulated after the Education Commission (1964-66) submitted its recommendations,had stressed the concept of equalisation of opportunities for all.
The Commission had recommended development of a common school system which should cover ev-ery part of the country, education at all levels and for all categories of children. In this context, it was rec-ommended that neighbourhood schooling was the only means to bridge the gap between education provided to the rich and the poor.

- Neighbourhood school system suggested to end rich-poor divide, Hindu, 04/04/2001, /eldoc/n22_/4apr01h1.pdf

- A coaching boom, Vijay Chawla, Business Std, 29/07/2003, /eldoc/n10_/29jul03bs2.html
Commercialisation of Education Regulation of Education

As the courts express concern about the huge jump in fees at professional colleges, educationists point out that attempts to frame regulations have been hampered by the fact that many politicians run educational institutions themselves.

“It took so long to come up with guidelines because 50 per cent of the cabinet has a stake in the lucrative education pie,’’ confessed an education department official.

In fact, one of the first challenges to the state’s attempts to regulate admissions this year came from Congressman D.Y. Patil, who runs a medical college in Mumbai and Pune under the umbrella of the D.Y. Patil Deemed University.

“The government’s diktat to conduct centralised admissions is a breach on the autonomy of the Deemed University,’’ will prove more effective in ensuring quality than government regulations.

“Those who seek professional education should pay for it,’’ said V. Shankar, the honorary secretary of the South Indian Education Society, which commissioned a cost auditor to come up with a fee structure for its engineering course. The auditor fixed the fee at Rs 66,000 per year.

- Education emperors hamper regulatory bids, ANSHIKA MISRA, Times of India, 06/07/2003, /eldoc/n10_/06jul03toi1.html

Commercialisation of Education

- ‘Medical seat Rs 27 lakh, soon 32 lakh’, Shailesh Gaikwad, Indian Express, 02/07/2003, /eldoc/n10_/02jul03ie1.html

What about the prevalence of private tuition on which Aiyar's account concentrates so heavily? This does emerge both (i) as one of the terrible consequences of the bad quality of school education (we used it as a principal indicator), and (ii) as a substantial side contributor to the continuation of the present dismal state of primary education. It is hard to miss the terrible record of a school system in which young children have to depend on paying for private coaching (only seven per cent of the children without private tuition could even sign their names in classes 3 and 4 in a sample that was tested).

The problem cannot, of course, be solved simply by banning private tuition, nor by proceeding on the mono-cause diagnosis that "teachers' unions are exploiters that must be quashed". What is needed is a combination of policy reforms. The main focus of the report is on "adding to the incentive system in schooling" by giving "more legal power to the parents-teachers committees, even per-haps making the renewal of school appropriations conditional on their approval".

Private Schools
- Bifurcating colleges: Towards privatisation?, Deccan Herald, 02/09/2001, /eldoc/n10_/colleges.htm

Observations of a scholar on the theoretical basis of the World Bank's education policy may be worth noting in this connection. The scholar observed: " A generation after the model ceased to say that was new, they have persisted with demon-strating its soundness, despite the general acceptance outside the Bank that human capital perspectives are indeed useful when prevailing conditions are right.. .Bank analy-sis now boldly asserts extremely strong correlations in favour of increased educa-tional expenditures, yet remains relatively silent on just what it is about education that makes people actually or potentially more productive, and which specific types of education are being referred to." He further observed: "More fundamentally, the Bank's continuing adherence to human capital theory reveals something of its stances about the meaning of development. In particular, it reveals a Bank that asserts an interest in fundamentals but which in reality avoids them. The Bank has very little to say about just what education does to make people more productive. It is dismissive of the cultural foundation of education".

- Universal Elementary Education Receding Goal, Poromesh Acharya, Economic & Political Weekly, 14/01/1994, /eldoc/n00_/14jan94EPW.pdf

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