Social inclusion through Public Private Partnership: Have we got it right?
Given the anectodal evidence from Delhi and some micro survey presenting the results of this mechanism of social inclusion, I am inclined to endorse these reservations.
The Right to Education Bill cleared by Union Cabinet recently has a provision that makes it mandatory for private unaided schools to set aside 25 per cent of their seats in Class I for disadvantaged children from the neighbourhood. The antecedent of this provision was a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the Social Jurist Forum way back in 2002. In this PIL the petitioner submitted a list of 361 schools in Delhi, who had received land at concessional rates from the Delhi Development Authority and other agencies, but had not complied with their land lease agreement clause which required them to reserve 20 percent of the seats in their schools for the children of the economically weaker sections of the society. These reservations unlike other reservations made in the name of social justice were to be on the basis of economic deprivation and caste was not the criteria.
In a High Court judgment of 2004 these schools were ordered to admit students from the economically weaker sections. Taking a cue from the court order, the draft Right to Education Bill included the quota in its provisions. When the Bill is passed, all private schools across the country will have to admit students from economically underprivileged sections. The government will reimburse expenditure incurred by such schools. Reservation of 25 percent seats at the entry level is aimed at ensuring social inclusion and bridging the socio-educational gap.
Given the anectodal evidence from Delhi and some micro survey presenting the results of this mechanism of social inclusion, I am inclined to endorse these reservations. The Delhi Government with its education minister A.S. Lovely has been moderately successful in implementing the court order. Though, thirty-two private schools , which were given land by the government at subsidized rates, have come under the scanner of the Delhi High Court for not reserving seats for poor students .
I do believe that with some good monitoring and ironing out of the associated problems, this is a scalable model of a PPP in education; an ideal candidate for the same.
These reservations unlike the recent caste based reservations in institutions of higher learning are more likely to achieve the objective of providing equal opportunities. Since, poor schooling and poor training disadvantages talented kids from poor household at higher levels of education, the point of intervention has to be primary school. This will also take care of the fact that many disadvantages are just due to poor English language skills and by the time they reach the university it is too late to fix that. The farce that reservations in higher education are, I will write about later.
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Tags: primary education, Reservations
November 17th, 2008 at 10:31 am
This model has been working in Jharkhand..check
http://www.centralchronicle.com/20080730/3007304.htm
though this has been with persuasion, and not complusion, the private schools lend their space and infrastructure for the poorer students in the afternoons. They worked with the govt and the Unicef and apparently the schools have voluntarily shifted some students into their regular batches with no fees and schols as well.