It's tricky to stay on the right path

Updated on: Thursday, June 23, 2011

An unlikely fallout of the Right to Education Act (RTE) is the shrinking space for the efficient community schools run by small NGOs. Most NGOs, say experts , are now focusing on sending children to government schools as per the RTE. Even they find it difficult to run their small home-grown schools by the stringent RTE guidelines . But the transition is tricky.

Recalling a case in Jhabua, educationist Meena Shrinivasan points to the problems faced by a village NGO doing remarkable work in moving their students to a government school. "The NGO teacher, himself a tribal, offered to take some sessions with tribal kids in Class 1 of the government school to help them learn Hindi. He was totally discouraged," says Shrinivasan , who evaluates projects for funding agencies and is also a consultant for tribal education.

While NGOs that cheat parents and children will be tackled by the RTE, the "ones doing good work, especially in tribal areas, will also be elbowed out," she argues. The teacher at Jhabua started a parallel school to help kids cope with the transition into the government school system. Most NGO-run community schools use the local language to make learning easier.

Though there's scope within the National Curriculum Framework to localize content, the provision remains on paper. "No government school allows communities to localize content as they operate on rigid structures," says Shrinivasan. It is this crucial role of a bridge between an informal educational programme and mainstream schooling — generally played by smaller NGOs — that is getting limited.

NGOs penetrate remote or difficult areas where there are cultural barriers, such as Mewat bordering Rajasthan, observes Vinod Raina of Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti. "NGOs can create viable models to make education effective. Theirs is not a function of scale, they should not be the ones to fulfill straight delivery targets." NGOs help 'reach' remote areas and groups such as those in Mewat, where cultural barriers keep a child from going to school.

Mass-scale delivery of education is the state's responsibility, says Raina, adding that scale can never be an educational NGO's primary concern. "You have to understand that all NGOs put together barely reach about 1% of the child population in India," he says. He suggests that NGOs develop models of skill education. "The state provides industrial vocational skills, though 93% of labour is in the unorganized sector — textiles, crafts and so on."

Times of India

It's tricky to stay on the right path

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