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Private schools in India: not preserve of elite households

population of 250 million — are studying in private schools, ality that India offers the lowest-priced private education
making it the third largest private schooling system world- worldwide. Post-independence India’s socialist ideology
wide. And contrary to popular belief, private schools aren’t has provided rents-extracting bureaucrats opportunity to
the preserve of well-off households. introduce thousands of rules and regulations to control and
According to the Private Schools in India Report 2020 command private K-12 education.
of the Delhi-based Central Square Foundation, 45 percent A case in point is the Right of Children to Free and Com-
of children attending private schools are from lower middle pulsory Education (aka RTE), 2009. While the Act’s primary
class homes, paying fees less than Rs.500 per month. Most mandate is for the State to provide free and compulsory
children from these homes are enroled in the country’s education to every child aged six-14 years, it details several
unique budget private schools (BPS) -- whose number is input-centric, stringent norms related to school recognition
estimated at a staggering 400,000 by the Centre for Civil procedures, infrastructure and qualifications/salaries for
Society, a Delhi-based think tank. They have sprung up as private school teachers. Failure to comply invites heavy pen-
a market response to crumbling, dysfunctional government alties under s.19 (2) of the RTE Act including forcible closure
schools. Increasingly, BPS with superior infrastructure, of private schools by the “competent authority” (local and/
regular teacher attendance, better learning outcomes and or state governments). Conveniently, government schools
English medium instruction, are becoming the default op- are exempted from penal provisions of s.19 of the Act.
tion of working and aspirational middle class households Yet the provision of the RTE Act which has hit private
countrywide. schools hardest is s.12 (1) (c) which requires all private
A suppressed reality of post-independence India is that schools to reserve 25 percent capacity in class I for poor
its middle class has almost entirely been educated in the children (certified by local education officials) and retain
country’s 450,000 private schools which provide varying them until completion of class VIII. On their behalf, the
quality of K-12 education at all price points. Yet even as the State is obliged to reimburse tuition fees, but only to the
expanding elite, middle and lower middle classes are flock- extent of the average expenditure per student incurred by
ing in droves to private schools, they are widely perceived state governments in their own schools (Rs.8,000-16,000
as hyper-commercial institutions, notwithstanding the re- per year). This “partial backdoor nationalisation” of pri-

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