NFE

The assumptions at the beginning of India's struggle for achieving Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) were that universal elementary education wasn't possible because there weren't enough schools. These as-sumptions, however, were soon questioned by educationists, The system of Non-formal Education (NFE) was conceived in 1978 to meet the requirements of those children who were unable to attend formal schools. The process was meant to be part of a mi-cro- planning strategy, to reach out to every family and every child, and involve them in the process of education. The ground realities, however, have proved that without absolute commitment and large-scale human resource input, the very characteristics which should have made NFE attrac-tive have worked against it — flexibility, localisation and need-specific strategies have often been used as loopholes to offer sub-standard education. Today it is becoming increasingly clear that the Indian edu-cational system requires more than just an expansion of the school system and an inclusion of the NFE system if it is to be set right. It is also being accepted that without a parallel growth in economic activity and rise of other social develop-ment indicators, the true benefits of education will not reach the masses. Gradual disillusionment with the existing edu-cational conditions has given rise to a concern that the very educational paradigm accepted by India may be unsuited to a large majority of its people. In an attempt to tailor the de-livery system and content to the specific needs of various sections, there have been some small-scale experiments with educational structures, curricula, teaching strategies, teacher training, evaluation and certification, the teaching calendar and management. The NCERT concept paper on NFE and Alternative Schools (AS) defines AS as a system which has a delivery mechanism distinct from formal schools and NFE. It has been conceived as transacting the same curricu-lum and textual material as in the formal system but outside the structure. But the concept paper seems to further indi-cate that it is essentially the degree of flexibility in curricu-lum design and teaching-learning approach that makes the difference between the formal and the AS. The paper goes on to identify the Open School and Shiksha Karmi schools as examples of AS.

It appears that the EFA document emphasises providing universal facilities of education for the age-group 6-14 and upgradation of facilities. The problems of non-participation in the existing system of education which are considered to be crucial by many scholars, however, have not re-ceived due attention. It states: "Given the large number of children who do not partici-pate in schools, non-formal education (NFE) assumes significance". It is doubtful if non-formal education as has been devised for the age group 9-14 is of much use. There is strong suspicion among many that the NFE has been devised to get away with the failure of ensuring universal elementary schooling for all the children in the age-group 644. There may be no doubt that NFE is less accountable than formal system on the one hand, and on the other, it makes the system further segregative. It is quite some time NFE is in operation but the outcome is surely not up to the expectation. It is interesting to note that the National Policy on Education 1986, in a way, ac-knowledged the failure of universal elemen-tary schooling for all children up to the age of 14 and legitimised non-formal education for out-of-school children so as to fulfil the constitutional directives. The NPE states: "It shall be ensured that all children who attain the age of about 11 years by 1990 will have had 5 years of schooling or its equiva-lent in the non-formal stream.

It may be that for the convenience of the working children the non-formal education has been devised. It is likely to reduce the opportunity cost for education. Yet it may not attract a large majority of out-of-school children unless they find the sort of education offered beneficial for them. It is obvious that much will depend on the relevance and quality of the type of education likely to be offered through the non-formal stream. EFA document does not say how it will be different from the existing formal system in terms of content and how the quality would be ensured when even the quality of formal elementary education is not beyond question.

- Universal Elementary Education Receding Goal, Poromesh Acharya, Economic & Political Weekly, 14/01/1994, [C.ELDOC.N00.14jan94EPW.pdf ]

Considerable effort from the helpful villagers did unearth a teacher though. A harried Bhagwat Singh whose excuse for playing hookey was "but I am not a full teacher, I am only a shiksha bandhu". It is the task of this "tenth-pass-from-open school" to corral Uba Paan's variously aged children into a single class in a school with no building, and teach "all subjects", from Class I to V Singh orders his wards to drag in two rickety chairs and a greying scrap of wood, his blackboard. And Uba Paan's Rajiv Gandhi Swam Jayanti Pathshala is on. Only a few of the 33 children enrolled in Bhagwat Singh's roster were actually present, though. Fewer still could write their names. And though he is sup-posed to teach English to Class V their teacher confessed he couldn't write all his students' names in English...

And here's the most pathetic part in the paradox played out through our lopsided education policy. While so keen to give equal chance to less affluent students to get a crack manage - routine of government schools. And now, yet more inequity for the poorest among the poor-a second track system of government schooling under the euphemistically titled Alternative and Innovative Education (AIE) and Education Guarantee Schemes (EGS)...

Those huge ads from the HRD ministry proclaiming that "Quality elementary education is the Fundamental Right of every child" tell you little about this sys-tem. Yet, the truth is it's one qual-ity for the rich who can afford pri-vate schooling, and another for the poor whose wards have little option than the dull pedagogic teaching in "small and access less habi-tations" as in Uba Paan and the stated target of the government is to enrol 1.22 crore children in such 'alternative' schools.

These inferior schools can now be found in the poorest pockets of semi-rural and urban India. Needless to say, they will help scale up the country's education statistics. But to what intent? In some states, all it takes to qualify as a teacher is a pass in Class VII. Once hired on short-term contracts, and variously called para-teachers, shiksha karmis, shiksha bandhus, shiksha mitrs, lok shikshak or guruji, they are paid much lower wages than their counterparts in mainstream government schools, and barely trained in teaching, if at all. They then take Classes I-V, typically with all the students huddled in a single classroom. If there is any room. Since infrastructural sup-port from the government is min-imal, there are few or no buildings or toilet facilities, and meagre teaching devices. "Our education policy is legit-imizing social discrimination," fulminates Anil Sadgopal ..."The EGS and ATE are designed to promote inequity.

On examination of the provisions of this Bill (Draft Free and Compulsory Education for Children Bill, 2003) the following drawback(s) have been noted:
It provides for two types of school, one is formal school and another is non-formal school...The non-formal school is totally a sub-standard school where unqualified teacher with no physical infrastructure may teach the children for few hours. The children of the marginalized sections of society can conveniently be asked to receive education in non-formal schools which is bereft of quality education. Why should there be two sets of schools?

- Ashok Agarwal, Free and Compulsory Education for Children Bill, 2003: Needs to be redrafted on the basis of good quality Common School System, Legal News and Views December 2003

The legitimation of a two-tier schooling system is perhaps the most glaring provision in the draft bill. The bill recognises two different grades of schools, namely, ‘approved schools’ and ‘transitional schools’. The schedule of the bill clearly delineates the hierarchy within which these two types of schools are being set up. The norms for the approved schools include at least two teachers in primary school, one room per teacher, 200 working days in the academic year, and four hours of teaching per working day in primary schools. In comparison to this the transitional schools get ‘instructors’ who have passed the 10th grade and have been trained for 30 days. There is no discussion within the transitional schools of the minimum hours of instruction per day, nor minimum number of days per year and nothing at all of the space within which this instruction will take place. To compound this farce of ‘norms’ is another listing of what is ‘desirable’ for each type of school. The common sense understanding of desirable, highlights its wishful elasticity and its constitutive ability to accommodate what ‘norms’ cannot. But even here the legislation reveals its underlying sense of panic in making available, even with this hyper-real ‘desirable’, equal amenities for both types of schools. As a result even toilet and water facilities while desirable for approved schools do not find any mention in the equivalent list for transitional schools!

- Sarada Balagopalan, Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2004, Economic and Political Weekly August 7, 2004

The Bill in fact makes a regressive reference to the issue of equity and quality. The new Article 21A promises the right to free and compulsory education for the 6-14 age group 'in such manner as the State may, by law, determine'. Instead of articulating a policy focus on ways of improving both the access and quality of the government school system, the policy declared that a non formal stream, parallel to the school mainstream, will be established for the out-of-school children. More than three lakh non-formal centres were started during the next four years. However, as the non-formal stream was rejected by the poor children and their parents alike...The policy of promoting the non-formal stream...is part of the globalisation agenda of gradual withdrawal of the state from from its constitutional obligation of providing education of equitable quality to all children. It is also an evidence of the State's willingness to co-exist with child labour. A Non formal centre, an adult literacy class, the so called 'alternative' school, a multigrade class...replacing the regular teacher with a para-teacher and now the NCERT's 'innovation' of replacing even the para teacher with a post man- all have been accepted as 'adequate' substitutes as long as the substitute concerns the education of the poor.
The CSS was a policy imperative in the first NPE 1968. Ironically however this commitment was violated twice by the 1986 policy itself... It may be contended that the basic guiding principle for building up a Common School System is the commitment to promote and savour education of equitable (not uniform) quality in the entire school system.... Yet, the successive Union Governments, despite the Constitution's commitment to equality of all citizens continued to violate the Constitution and ignore the policy commitment to the Common School System.

- Anil Sadgopal, Political Economy of the Ninetythird Amendment Bill, Mainstream December 22, 2001

Even children in the six to 14 age group have been granted the fundamental right to education with certain conditions. As per the new Article 21A, free and compulsory education shall be provided "in such manner as the state may, by law, determine". This conditionality was introduced to legitimise the system of low-quality, low-budget parallel streams of education. The discriminatory multiple-track education has become the backbone of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in the Tenth Five-Year Plan. (`Back-to-school' camp is the latest addition to the multiple-track system.)
Soon, even the para-teacher will be replaced by a postman, as the government has decided to push correspondence courses for children in the six to 14 age group. This implies that the girl child will be denied the relatively more liberating atmosphere of the school rather than her home, which is still bound by patriarchal traditions.

The Centre is prepared to organise a non-formal education centre, allow the child in adult lit-eracy classes or provide a facility under the so-called Education Guarantee Scheme wherein a para-teacher will be appointed. The para-teacher scheme, already operating in a number of states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka where the recruits appointed are under-qualified, untrained and under-paid youth as teachers on a contract basis. What is worse is the possibili-ty that the government might inform the court that it will do what the NCERT has recently pro-posed i.e., teach children in the six-14 age group through corre-spondence. "Not even a para-teacher will be appointed. Rather, a postman will do. Today, the court is likely to reject all of these government proposals for cheaper and low quality alternatives as these vio-late the principle of equality and justice enshrined in the Constitution," says Sadgopal. This would have also been the stand of the courts even if the 83rd amendment Bill, pending in the Rajya Sabha since July 1997, was passed by Parliament. But not after the 93rd amendment Bill. The dominant policy now is to provide various poor sections of society with cheaper and paral-lel streams of education under all sorts of euphemisms.

Consider another poor woman who petitions the court to order the state government to make a functioning primary school avail-able to her child with at least three teachers, three reasonably large rooms, essential learning materials and a school library. Such a prima-ry school was envisaged by the National Policy on Education (as modified in 1992) under its Opera-tion Blackboard. While agreeing to provide education to the child, the government has anything but a school in mind. It is prepared to organise a non-formal education centre, allow the child in adult liter-acy classes or provide a facility under the so-called education Guarantee Scheme wherein a para-teacher will be appointed. The para-teacher scheme, already operating in a number of states, ap-points under-qualified, untrained and under-paid youth as teachers on a contract basis. What is worse is the possibility that the government might inform the court that it will do what the NCERT has recently proposed (November 2000) i.e., teach chil-dren in the six-14 age group through correspondence. Not even a para-teacher will be appointed. Rather, a postman will do. Today, the court is likely to reject all of these government proposals for cheaper and low quality alterna-tives as these violate the principle of equality and justice enshrined in the Constitution...The 93rd amendment Bill proposes to give this right 'in such manner as the state may, by law, determine'. This addition of a qualifying phrase to the provision of fundamental right cannot be dismissed lightly, especially in view of the now established policy of instituting parallel streams of education for poor children.

The second most important issue that CMP is silent about is the government policy on para teachers and education guarantee scheme schools. In recent years there has been a significant growth of under-qualified and under-trained teachers, under different names, para teachers, shiksha karmis, gurujis, sahayaks, vidya volunteers, etc. Similarly there has also been a wide acceptance by union and state governments of the education guarantee scheme. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and even the proposed draft bill relating to free and compulsory education have accorded a status to these schools and teachers equivalent to normal formal schools, and fully qualified and trained teachers. Most state governments favoured the scheme of para teachers and the EGS schools, as they save huge resources on the one hand and avoid managerial problems of teachers on the other. At the same time, governments can claim to have marched a long way towards fulfilling the constitutional directive on universal elementary education. But the likely effects on quality of education can be too serious to bear in the long run, or even in the short run.

- Education in the UPA Government Common Minimum Programme, JANDHYALA B G TILAK, Economic & Political Weekly, 23/10/2004, [J.ELDOC.N00.231004EPW4717.pdf]

Yes, there are quality problems, especially in the parallel education stream through education guarantee and other schemes. Yes, there are questions about what those children do in school, whether schools have any physical infrastructure and whether teachers at all teach. Whether teachers in the parallel education system have any training whatsoever. Yes, there are drop-out problems, especially among girls. But the fact that disadvantaged sections, SCs/STs, girls and difficult-to-reach groups are all in school now is a slap in the face of those who unnecessarily whine.

Once children are in school, these other aspects can be improved and the parallel system eventually mainstreamed. This whining lot also complains about the government abdicating its responsibility in elementary education and it is true that private expenditure on education has increased, while public expenditure on education has tended to decline. However, as long as children are in school, how does it matter whether the source of financing is public or private? And we know that the poor aren’t being deprived, courtesy the parallel education system, now formally sanctified in Section 27 of the Free and Compulsory Education for Children Bill, 2004. Had it not been for the parallel system, it would have been impossible to get all these children into school.
... If you have been followed the India Shining ads, you know we have already eliminated poverty and hunger. That leaves education and health. Elementary and secondary education problems have been licked.

About two mil-lion children in the state, who were deprived of formal education can now be assured of getting primary education as part of a new scheme devised by the Maharashtra gov-ernment, last week. The revised scheme was sanc-tioned and brought out on May 15 under the Mahatma Phule Educa-tion Guarantee Scheme by the state primary education department, under policy - guidelines of the National Elementary Educational Policy, 1994 which aims to bring education to the door step of a child. Welcoming the scheme, Mr Vivek Pandit, social worker, Samarthan said, "The uniqueness of this scheme is that any child can get the same education as in an ordinary formal school from a trained volunteer who should have atleast passed the higher sec- ondary This simplifies the whole process of primary education." According to the scheme, all those children not registered in for-mal schools can avail the benefit of door to door education, either at the place of work or residence and also at a time suitable for a group of children in a remote hilly region. This would help remove various hurdles like commuting to school etc. Under the scheme, an informal education centre, can be opened after seeking permission from the local advisory committee under the chairmanship of the dis-trict collector or municipal com-missioner, at any place without the need to have a school building.

Non-formal Education: the post 1986 scene It goes to the credit of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that as a part of his continual efforts to modernise India, he forced the bureaucracy to take a serious look at the failures of the educational infrastructure. This in itself was a great achievement of the New Education Policy of 1986, and the best strategy adopted was to open up the system to voluntary effort so as to provide room and scope for innovation in the hope that flexibility will lead also to new systems.

Non-formal education (NFE) is an accepted bureaucratic jargon in the ministry of human resources develop-ment. But the break with the past has yet to come. Greater importance needs to be given to the NGOS who are working in this field. Proper documentation is the need of the hour and a concise and comprehensive evaluation of their performance has yet to be undertaken.

Institutions undertaking non-formal education projects could absorb and benefit from a higher level of funding. The best project executed by the Rajasthan Government has been jointly funded by the Government of India and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).

The Rajasthan state government has taken a pragmatic and measured view of the special problems of state schools in poverty-stricken areas where teacher absenteeism is rampant and village responses to the schools apathetic. The blueprint drawn up for the Shiksha Karmi Scheme is almost identical to the Gondi experiment of 1946 in Adilabad. It also has a parallel in the extremely successful strategy devised by Bunker Roy for night schools run by the Tilonia School of Social Work in Rajasthan for school dropouts and children of grazers and peasant families. Girls have a higher dropout rate than men In Tilonia, school dropouts who have passed only the eight or 10th grade are employed as barefoot teachers. They are trained to generate social awareness towards the village environment and rural issues amongst the students by involving every possible resource in the village-policepersons, postmaster, nurse, patwari, bank manager, village head who explain how systems work (or do not work) for them. In the sphere of non-formal education the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) is the largest and most effica-cious example of world-wide fame operating 30,000 non-for-mal schools, manned by hand-picked teachers (most of them women) who have just passed the eight or 10th grade and are selected from the community and are intensively trained and supervised in their posts. While BRAC spends more than government on super-vision, the overall expenditure is the same since village resident teachers can be paid less and they also derive satisfaction from the status with which the post is invested. The achievements of the school dropouts in terms of minimum levels of learning are quite remarkable, particularly when these are compared with the standard of instruction and student achievement in the state primary schools often located in the same village.

Quite in contrast to the general feel-ing in government circles in India that schools need proper infrastructure for optimum functioning, the BRAC schools are run in thatch huts in one or two rooms rented or offered by locals.

The Shiksha Karmi scheme has now completed a decade since its incep-tion, covering about 2,000 village pri-mary schools in over 70 blocks spread over 29 districts of Rajasthan. Taken both in terms of economy of investment as well as the spread of beneficiaries, this scheme is far more effective than resi-dential schools would have been for the spread of primary education.

While the Navodaya Vidyalayas have an annual student population of over one lakh students in the whole country, the Shiksha Karmi project benefits about 1,20,000 children in a single state.

- Poorly-qualified teachers proposed for poor kids, Shivani Singh, Times of India, 11/11/2003, [C.ELDOC.Education.111103.pdf]

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