No child left behind

“In the beginning there was light. Then Delhi schools ganged up and made us all pay ‘illumination charges’” — Book of Genesis,

Barakhamba edition, 2016

Towards the beginning of every year, parents in Delhi put on their game face and military gear, prepping for nursery admissions, an exchange so woefully lopsided that ‘seller’s market’ does not even begin to describe it. The criteria for admissions could involve class discrimination, blatant money-grabbing, or manic pixie unicorn farts: private schools could choose their own parameters, no matter how outlandish. Over the last decade or so, however, dents have been made in the citadel.

In 2006, the Delhi High Court appointed a committee, chaired by Ashok Ganguly, to suggest ways of regulating preschool and nursery admissions. The schools were allowed a rebuttal, after which, plausibly, both sides could arrive at a middle ground. This was the court’s normal course of action. Of course, like Duryodhana, the schools of Delhi refused to cede an inch of ground and were promptly slapped with a binding order: neither children nor their parents could be interviewed.

And yet, complaints kept piling up, about massive sums shelled out to jump the queue, about social and economic screening, about the schools’ blatant disregard for DoE (Directorate of Education) rules.

Finally, in January this year, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced the scrapping of 62 criteria that were deemed ‘arbitrary’, most notably the much-reviled ‘management quota’. The only quota that remained after the DoE circular of January 6 was the reserved 25 per cent seats for EWS (economically weaker segments) and DG (disadvantaged groups) students. In February, however, the Delhi High Court reinstated 11 of the scrapped 62 criteria (including the management quota), ruling that the government had acted without authority and the autonomy of private schools had been breached.

The court clarified that the rules of land allocation hadn’t changed: the government was free to allot land only to schools that had no management quota.

The Right to Education (RTE) Act, which took effect on April 1, 2010 (everywhere in India except Jammu & Kashmir), has proved woefully inadequate in getting schools to toe the line and admit a certain minimum number of EWS students. Many of its black-and-white rules, including those pertaining to the segregation of EWS students, are blithely violated. BLink spoke to people at different stages of this process: an educator, a parent and an activist. Their stories were troubling, to say the least.

The a,b,c… of EWS

Sreelekha, the wisest of six-year-olds, is a little disappointed that despite the presence of a journalist, a newspaperwallah in her house, there are no cameras in sight. At first she refuses to change out of her school uniform: ideally, she would have liked being clicked in her school’s colours. And when she does eventually change, it is into a special something that’s equally worthy of the occasion.

Sreelekha’s mother works as a domestic help for Sushmita Kundu, a retired teacher in her 60s who lives in Kalkaji, a neighbourhood in south Delhi. Kundu’s daughter, the writer and columnist Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, is fiercely proud of little ‘Geru’ (Sreelekha’s pet name) and posts about her frequently on social media. Both Sushmita and Sreemoyee keep a close eye on the child’s progress.

Sushmita says: “When I was seeking school admission for Geru, I ultimately didn’t use the EWS certificate we were able to get for her, as it was a very tough affair. I chose Amity International School. The only way we could send her there was under the EWS provision; the fees were too high otherwise. They said: ‘Oh, we can’t say whether that is possible, there will be a lottery, it’s a long and complicated process.’ They were very reluctant even to divulge the process. I’ve been a teacher all my life and so they couldn’t insult me directly. But they told me at the office: ‘Why do you want to go through all this just to admit her?’

Sreemoyee remembers her own childhood in Kolkata and studying in Loreto House, where her mother taught: “We had a lot of poor students with us. But we never knew, we were never told. My best friend told me years later that she grew up in a one-room house… it just never came up.” Both Sushmita and Sreemoyee feel that with Delhi, social screening is a way of life. “I have stood in line to obtain EWS certificates for so many families,” says Sushmita. “In Delhi, poor people are harassed the most. And the authorities change their behaviour so suddenly. Because of my appearance, they could tell that I was not from an EWS family, so they wouldn’t shout or be rude to me. But they would make things impossible for the others. There were people who would wait for the queues to build up and then charge money to write out the forms for the parents!”

Geru is today a quietly confident girl who stands up to schoolyard bullies. Her story is doubly remarkable when you consider that she witnessed her mother being thrashed black-and-blue by her father when she was just three. After Sreemoyee took her under her wing, Geru came back from a nearby park one day and asked what naukrani (Hindi for a female servant) meant. Apparently, her Kalkaji playmates had been instructed by their parents not to play with a servant’s daughter.

In Delhi, reason, decency and compassion fly in the face of top-down class rhetoric, irrevocably codified in the classic line Tu jaanta hai mera baap kaun hai? (You have no idea who my dad is, do you?)

The fine print

Of course, no one is saying that the RTE Act itself was particularly well thought out. The first — and, to an extent, the most valid — criticism was that it forced unaided schools to cover the educational costs of disadvantaged students, while still collecting a cess of 2 per cent on the total tax payable on primary education. This amounts to double taxation. Moreover, there is no clarity over how schools are to select the 25 per cent for the EWS and DG quotas. This, in turn, ensures that parents of students like Geru are harassed or, worse, ignored by uppity private schools.

There is also the argument that the RTE discriminates against low-cost schools. All private schools must fulfil certain infrastructural requirements within three years, failing which they face immediate de-recognition. One of the requirements is a playground, which is near-impossible for small schools running out of slums, conflict zones and other sensitive areas — the very places where schools are especially needed, one might add.

Finally, with its focus on ages 6-14, the law overlooks the prospect of an EWS child dropping out after Class X, after he or she stops getting a free education.

Great expectations

Gaurav (name changed), a dapper man in his 30s, owns an electrical goods and services establishment in Kalkaji. He has an affable smile and a brisk, humorous way of putting his point across. He’s just emerged from two gruelling months of running pillar-to-post, all to get his firstborn — a son — enrolled in a good nursery school. “My wife and I, we are not very well-educated. So for our child, meeting the criteria, the required number of points to gain access to the lottery, is an almost impossible challenge.”

The ‘points’ system he mentions is the one usually employed by management colleges, including the IIMs (Indian Institute of Management), during admissions. For instance, if you’re looking to get into an IIM, a perfect undergrad score, a good internship stint, proven leadership skills and so on will get you points. Schools, on the other hand, have no way of judging children who’re yet to begin their education. So they judge the parents instead.

“The schools set conditions that we cannot even hope to meet,” Gaurav says. “If you or your spouse or the child’s older sibling has studied in the school, you get points. If your firstborn is followed by a girl child, you get points. My wife and I did not attend fancy international schools and we do not want a second child. Should my boy suffer just because he does not have a sister?”

Gaurav tells me about some of his friends and acquaintances who qualified for EWS certificates to get their children enrolled in private schools. “They go through much more pain than I did. In some schools, like Frank Anthony, they refuse to speak in any language other than English. I couldn’t follow a lot of what they said. They hold EWS admissions on a separate day, so that parents who are well-off don’t have to mix with poor people.” This despite the Right to Education Act’s guidelines against segregation. Moreover, the Ganguly Committee report had clearly disapproved both criteria mentioned by Gaurav.

A self-made man, Gaurav is proud of the fact that he can cough up a lot of money for his child’s education, if need be (“I was ready to give donation”). Perhaps fittingly, his T-shirt has a blood-red Godzilla chewing up skyscrapers: the grim caption says, “Size does matter.”

The mammon-worshipping private school oligarchs would agree.

Time for imposition

Educational activist Sumit Vohra is the founder of admissionsnursery.com, a popular one-stop portal for parents struggling to negotiate the slippery entrance to kindergarten. Asked about the lottery system typically employed by schools after shortlisting candidates, some of the stories he shares are the stuff of Hollywood heist movies.

“The DoE has clearly mentioned in its circulars that an observer (approved by the DoE) should be present at these lotteries. But this is often ignored. One school decided beforehand the candidates it wanted and put those chits in a refrigerator. During the lottery, the person drawing the chits from the jar only picked the cold ones. Another school used two kinds of white paper: the favoured chits had a sandpaper-like texture on one side to distinguish them.”

Vohra has spent years educating parents about the vagaries of admission procedures. The key, he feels, is accountability and a quick response system for grievances. Under the Right to Education Act, the deputy director of education has the power to act against offenders. “There should be an efficient helpline in place, so that parents can report any wrongdoing immediately. Schools right now are not really afraid of punitive measures. This needs to change,” Vohra says.

The RTE Act was drafted with the best of intentions, with the awareness that in India, the playing ground is anything but level for most adults. The inequality begins in school, when children of the elite are made to feel they are shinier, smarter, better. And in a city like Delhi, elitist prejudice is not just systemic, it is even aspirational — the ability to cordon off the less well-off from our little cliques.

Now who will march the private school bosses to the principal’s room, for a timely rap on their errant knuckles?

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