Page 136 - EducationWorld December 2022

Cover Story EW INDIA BUDGET PRIVATE SCHOOLS RANKINGS 2022-23

EW INDIA BUDGET

PRIVATE SCHOOLS

RANKINGS 2022-23

Left academics and intellectuals excoriate them as profiteering
enterprises exploiting the poor and gullible. Yet India’s unique
budget private schools which provide low-priced education
to children of aspirational lower middle and working class
households have played a very important role in the half-hearted
national development effort

Dilip Thakore

N THE LEXICON OF LEFT million children, a number equivalent “Poor parents send their children
academics and intellectuals to the entire population of imperial to private schools because they are
whose inorganic ideology has Great Britain. better. They are better than public
ruined post-independence Therefore, disregarding media schools with regard to higher teacher
IIndia’s high-potential econ- fashion, your editors have always commitment and smaller class sizes.
omy, they are vilified as profiteering accorded high respect to budget pri- They are better on the vast majority
enterprises, exploiting the poor and vate schools eulogised by Dr. James of school inputs. They are better in
gullible. Yet India’s unique budget Tooley, vice chancellor, University of academic achievement even after con-
private schools (BPS) which provide Buckingham (UK), in his best-seller trolling for background variables. And
low-priced education to children of The Beautiful Tree (2009). In this not only are they better in all these re-
aspirational lower middle and work- deeply researched book which has spects, they are cheaper to run at least
ing class households have played — been ignored, if not suppressed, by in terms of teachers’ salaries,” writes
and continue to discharge — a very the Indian establishment, Prof. Tool- Tooley in The Beautiful Tree.
important role in India’s half-hearted ey highlighted that BPS, promoted by This seminal book’s title is derived
national development effort. enlightened education entrepreneurs, from a lament by Mahatma Gandhi to
BPS receive negligible media cov- are a common phenomenon in third the effect that India’s ancient gurukul
erage — mostly negative because the world countries, particularly India. system of education based on the
media is dominated by Left liberals For modest tuition fees they provide peer-to-peer learning model under
who think with their hearts instead aspirational underclass households an supervision of a guru — “a beautiful
of heads. But they are a significant alternative to free-of-charge govern- tree” — was uprooted and replaced by
force in K-10 education. The Centre ment schools notorious for crumbling the Macaulay factory-style cramming
for Civil Society (estb.1997), a Delhi- infrastructure, under-qualified staff, for exams model in 1835.
based think tank, estimates their na- chronic teacher truancy, multigrade According to State of the Sector
tionwide number at 400,000 with a classrooms and rock-bottom learning Report: Private Schools in India
massive aggregate enrolment of 60 outcomes. (2020) of the Delhi-based Central

134 EDUCATIONWORLD DECEMBER 2022