How Rich Donors And NGOs Jeopardise India's Public Education: Report (image: unsplash/ Vigneshwar Rajkumar)
Donations for the education of poor children in India are doing worse than their aim for a noble cause. Aparna Kalra”s recent article in The Wire titled “How Rich Donors Have Caused More Harm Than Good To India”s Education” sheds light on how rich donors” influence on India”s education system results in bad policies that adversely affect students. Since 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated Rs 300 crore to India for the education of poor children through various NGOs, the report states.
Pratham And ASER survey
Pratham Education Foundation, one of the largest education NGOs in the country, routinely releases the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), showing an alarming data signaling the collapse of India”s schools and the pathetic state of learning of Indian students. As per their reports, children are in school but are not learning. Following the assessments, in order to bridge the learning gap, Pratham framed an education policy and is assisting in its implementation. “It has injected ideas, reading material, and people in the public school system. ASER’s tools for assessing literacy, used extensively in government schools, are seen as learning goals in themselves. Teachers do regular paperwork to say they are using these tools; teachers’ own assessment of students’ ability, a key tool for classroom interaction, doesn’t count, ” Aparna Kalra wrote.
ASER Leading To FLN
The ASER”s report favouring an end to no-detention is cited by all education surveys, and supported by CCE, or comprehensive and continuous evaluation, one of the most significant changes in India’s exam-driven school education. Thus, along with the latest policy intervention, and receiving funds from the Gates Foundation and other rich donors, the NGOs – Pratham and Central Square Foundation, introduced the concept, FLN (Foundational Literacy & Numeracy) into Indian education system. FLN views reading as a mechanical skill, at times complicating it with fluency but mostly separating it from comprehension. As part of the New Education Policy, or NEP 2020, FLN has begun implementing it in schools this academic year through workbooks devised by State Councils of Educational Research and Training, or SCERTs.
Journalist Tim Schwab in his book The Bill Gates Problem, Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire details the influence and impact of the Gates Foundation in education in the USA. As per the independent evaluation, his policy intervention called The Common Core, didn’t actually improved education, which Gates claimed it would be.
FLN And Its Failings
Research scholars Martin Haus and Ghosh observed in their blog that though FLN is pushed as for everyone, it is primarily directed at children from rural and marginalised communities who have “historically received substandard education.”
“In India, Pratham has pushed programmes and ideas for government-run schools that the world has found unacceptable. The alarm bells about Pratham, and the ASER survey’s impact, when rung by a few journalists, have not been heard,” Aparna Kalra observes. FLN”s ability-based physical segregation of students in schools and its impact on students have not been addressed, and Pratham’s spokesperson has also told the journalist that the organisation hasn’t done any studies on the policy per se.
Teachers are also cautious of Pratham”s interventions. The government school teachers Aparna Kalra have met said that by constantly highlighting failure, the organisation has diminished the professional credibility of teachers. NGO”s involvement has altered teaching as a non-profession and as “service’ or “volunteering”, which has adversely affected teacher recruitment.
Even though young students do not “fail” in class as per the no-detention directive, what is the purpose of education if a student could fluently read but be unable to comprehend anything? The student”s failure also stresses the educational inequity due to the result of deep wealth inequities. India”s school education through the involvement of rich donors and NGOs pushing common people, that is, students coming from low-income homes and communities subjected to low-quality education, jeopardising their future.
