In private interest

In the narrow lanes of East Delhi’s Chilla Gaon, Naina Lal piles her two children and their heavy backpacks on her bicycle and ferries them to the neighbouring Roses Public School, where they have been studying for the past two years. While Naina’s 11-year-old daughter has been called “overconfident” by her teacher, her nine-year-old son struggles to pass exams. But Naina, a housewife, who is married to Rajkumar, a security guard, is proud that her kids go to school, that too a gated private school.

Naina, who has never been to school like her husband, spends over ₹16,000 each year in school-related expenses for her two kids. This includes the annual tuition fees and the recurring costs for books, uniforms and school outings. It has been a stretch to manage with Rajkumar’s meagre ₹11,000 monthly salary. Each month, once they pay off their house rent for their crammed single room and set aside for groceries and school fees, there is nothing for a rainy day.

“My daughter wants to become a police officer. I can’t see that happening if she studied in a government school,” she says. Although the previous private school the kids attended worked out cheaper, Naina had reached her tipping point when her son returned home with a broken arm, beaten black and blue while the teachers stood watching, refusing to intervene in the skirmish. “I pay more now, but at least there is discipline and they learn something,” she says.

Across India, parents like Naina and Rajkumar almost invariably opt for expensive private schools for their children in the hope of a brighter future. The last National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey revealed that the average annual private expenditure for general education (primary to post graduation) has shot up by a staggering 175 per cent, from ₹2,461 to ₹6,788 per student, between 2008 and 2014. Among the States, Delhi witnessed the highest rise, as the average annual expenditure for both government and private schools shot up from ₹6,149 to ₹19,941. The capital also features among the five costliest States for education, the others being Haryana, Punjab, Mizoram and Nagaland. Tuition fees in Delhi, Goa, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh tripled in the seven years between the two NSSO surveys.

The willingness to invest in private schooling exists even as reports like NGO Pratham’s ASER shows that children across government and private schools are a few grades behind their game. In Maharashtra, for instance, the latest ASER survey found that less than 75 per cent of Std 8 children can read a Std 2 textbook. “Enrolment in private schooling peaked between the years 2006 to 2013 and stabilised after. It isn’t because of a renewed faith in government schools, but because people’s incomes simply haven’t risen in tandem with the successive fee hikes. Also, due to the limited private school options for secondary schooling and higher education,” says Madhav Chavan, CEO, Pratham.

Even parents who opt for government schools, secure their choices by investing in private tuitions. When Lovely Bibi, a domestic help in Noida, and her husband, a tailor, left Cooch Behar in West Bengal, they decided to leave their two children, studying in Std 1 and Std 5 behind to be looked after by the extended family. “My kids go to a government school, but I pay ₹750 a month for private tuitions for my elder one. I will start tuitions for my younger child next year.” Bibi explains that tuitions bring in stability to their education, given the high teacher absenteeism in school. The NSSO survey also shows that private coaching accounted for 15 per cent of the average total expenditure on general education. As many as one in four students were being coached by private tutors across the country.

In 2016, the TSR Subramanian Committee report on New Education Policy, admitted that uncontrolled privatisation of higher education has resulted in the proliferation of private institutions. Successive governments have argued that allowing the private sector higher stakes in higher education would result in higher enrolment. While this is true, it has shifted the purpose of education from schooling-for-all to building a profit-making enterprise.

India is witnessing the emergence of a new range of elite schools where exclusivity is the name of the game. The schools offer international curriculum, alternative schooling methods, exposure visits abroad and top notch infrastructure and boarding facilities, among other luxuries. Schools such as Dehradun’s Doon School, Mumbai’s Ecole Mondiale World School or Gwalior’s Scindia School or Pune’s Mercedes Benz International School could set you back anywhere from ₹nine to 16 lakh per annum. In the film Hindi Medium, when Irfan Khan looks up in awe at the European architecture and landscaping in a school campus and asks, “ Ye School hai ya hotel ? (Is this a school or a hotel?)” he points to the trajectory private schooling has taken — going beyond just offering education to selling it as a lifestyle destination meant for a select few.

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