Page 37 - EducationWorld September 2020

India’s diverse private schools: carefully curated & widely disseminated myths

private enterprise bashing by freeloading academics and vesting in India, makes a compelling case for the defence
leftist media, India’s expanding middle class is suffering a of private education. Although it debuted too late to in-
massive Stockholm syndrome, becoming enamoured with fluence NEP 2020, this 153-page well-researched study
post-independence India’s neta-babu brotherhood which demolishes the carefully curated and widely disseminated
has bound it in irons and chains for over seven decades myths of Left-liberal academics and shallow media that In-
since the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by an RSS dia’s private schools are ‘elite’ institutions driven entirely by
acolyte in 1948. The outcome of this perverse romance is the profit motive and engaged in rampant “commercialisa-
mass schizophrenia. Although the entire middle class over- tion of education”, a pejorative coined by the late Justice
whelmingly enrols its children in fees-levying private K-12 V.R. Krishna Iyer (1915-2014), a self-confessed communist
schools despite the option of sending them to free-of-charge judge of the Supreme Court.
government schools, it endorses debilitating government PSIR 2020 provides startling facts about private school
control and command over private schools to prevent “com- education which contradicts Left propaganda and ingrained
mercialisation of education”. presumptions of the academy and neta-babu brotherhood
Against this backdrop of pervasive confusion about the which has shaped education policy in post-independence
character and role of private schools in the national de- India. Conducted over four months by researchers drawn
velopment effort, the online release on July 22 of State of from CSF and ONI, and based on the insights of a gal-
the Sector Report — Private Schools in India (hereafter axy of eminent educationists (“stakeholders”), the report
PSIR 2020) — an unprecedented study commissioned and comprises six chapters that detail the growth and quality
published by the Delhi-based C e n tra l S q u a re F ou n da - of learning in private schools; affordability and inclusion;
a
tion (CSF, estb.2012) and O m idy a r N e tw ork I n di regulation of private schools; global experiments in private
(ONI, estb.2004), an affiliate of the US-based Omidyar schools governance; policy implications for learning in pri-
Group (“a diverse collection of companies, organisations vate schools, and scope for further research into private
and initiatives supported by philanthropists Pam and Pierre K-12 institutions. Moreover, two appendices detailing in-
Omidyar, founder of eBay”) engaged in social impact in- formation sources and data-rich ‘state facts sheets’ provid-

SEPTEMBER 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 37