The concept of the common school system or neighborhood school was first defined in the 19^th century. Since then it has been operationalised successfully, in one form or the other, by various countries, including Cuba, the United States of America, China, Russia, Sweden, Japan and Switzerland.

Contrary to popular perception, CSS does not mean a regimented, imposed, uniform school system across the country. Rather, it guarantees equity in educational opportunities, not merely equitable quality, to every child irrespective of her/his caste, creed, class, social status, gender, disability, religion or any other discriminatory factor. The word common in CSS refers to a common quality of education, leaving space for expressing the wide diversity of our people through locally developed context-specific curriculum.

National Education Policy 1968, the fructification of the Kothari commission’s long and thoughtful deliberations gave a significant boost to the scientific and technological education of the country at the higher end, but the dream of a national school system or common school system as, as called by the Kothari Commission, simply did not take off. The ‘sublime and clear stream of reason’ was lost in the ‘dreamy deserts of dead habit’, the poetic euphemism that Tagore used to describe the dark social segregation of our ancient civilization.

If the ‘modern’, ‘socialist’ chacha Nehru couldn’t push the agenda of land reforms, so passionately albiet rhetorically, expressed by him in the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in 1936, who eventually struck a compromise with the powerful landed interests of the country by relegating the subject to the state list and thus leaving it open to their manipulations and machinations, the agenda of National school system was scuttled in no small measure by the eventful results of the 1962 Sino-Indian Conflict. The defence sector, fresh from the slogans of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’, was catapulted to the prime position of pre-eminent concern and indeed raised to the levels of war jingoism carefully built by the subsequent governments, ate into the limited resources of the fledgling economy, having the social sectors of education and health dry of vital funds.

Unfortunately, for the national school system and the constitutional promise of Universal Elementary Education it proved to be a dislocation of permanent and perennial kind. The educational infrastructure building which took off with a big bang exhibiting an all round robust growth in the initial decades of independent India, gradually pedering down in the eighties and in the ‘end of history’ decade of the neo-liberal globalisation, the growth ultimately turned negative. It is witnessing an unraveling of the structure with a prescient deficit of more than four and a half lakh schools and more than seven lakh teachers.

National policy on education, 1986, started it all. Conjuring up the magic of modern media, it started the so called informalisation of school initiatives with much fanfare which proved to be the concerted efforts for demeaning the existing educational structure under the well worn garb of ushering in its universalisation.

Times were still different and the national educational policy 1986 had to declare itself conceptually committed to the responsibility of a national school system.

The decade of nineties came as a watershed in the history of not only our country but also the world as a whole. Throwing all caution to the wind, discarding all populist garbes, the neo-liberal regime, the votary of globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation has indeed redefined and re-contoured the socio- political realms of the country. With the emergence of ‘market’ as the demi-God of the era, the already ailing social sector of the country was suddenly orphaned and left to lie dead.

The media- blitz of literacy campaigns and the fancifully named educational schemes like SSA or EGS, just like the equally publicised immunisation drives of the Health sector amidst a dying public health infrastructure have proved to be only ‘masks’ floated to hide the massive onslaught on the public educational structure of the country. ‘Make no mistakes’, these changes are unprecedented and coupled with the unconstitutional, undemocratic naked intervention of the neo- liberal Globalisers of World Bank and its Cohorts, are fraught with consequences of dangerous proportions to the progress development and even the basic unity of our dear motherland.

“Literacy for the masses and Education for the classes” is the essence of all educational initiatives of our governments operating under the globalised international regimes, Vulnerable sections of the society Tribals, Dalits, Minorities and women ironically in the Mandalised and Bahujanised political climate, stand betrayed, as the upwardly mobile middle classes seceding from public institutions of education and indeed all social realims, nestle in the cosy corporate groves of ‘educational excellence’, while the masses trying to flee the decimated public educational structure are being further throttled by the endless ratings of ‘market ideologues’ for the reforms catering to the user charges regimen and letting loose the processes of privatisation, commercialisation and communalisation on them.

National projects of Muslim education witnessed in the last century during our freedom struggle, having the Aligarhs and Jamias, the Zakir Hussains are only reduced to the archival dreams of a bygone era. Minorities, particularly crores of Muslims are reeling under massive illiteracy and unemployment. Modern, public institutions of education, which were never adequate to their needs, were never expanded and whatever remains has already been rendered largely useless. They have been virtually pushed to the Madrasas, which ironically, are the only mode of public education, left to the Indian Muslims. It is really tragic that the mushrooming of small, cash starved Madrasas is often read as a sure sign of growing Minority Communalism by our national media. It is indeed, a vicious circle to escape and ofcourse immensely dangerous to the social fabric of our great nation.

Common School System is therefore, not a demand dug from the archeological sites of the Kothari Commission. It is also not a pious wish of an eccentric utopian educationist languishing in academic philistinism.

Rather, it is a desperate call to retrieve the public educational structure and make firm strides towards the goal of National School System and Universalisation of elementary education, to which we are primarily concerned.

It is an attempt to ward off the onslaught on the present and future aspirations of our masses to arm themselves with education and transform themselves and also their country into a truly strong and democratic nation.

“Literacy for the masses and education for the classes” is a policy that can’t be sustained in a country of mammoth proportions. Therefore, from being a utopian dream, CSS is a serious battle cry for education and also for securing a secular and democratic India.

CSS is definitely achievable, if only we do not shy away from the impending challenges and also if we can rededicate ourselves to these noble goals.

Defining Common School System

Recognizing the inherent segregative nature of the Macaulian education system introduced in the country during the colonial period, and the potential of educational experiments such as Nai Taleem and Shanti Niketan, the 1967 education commission envisioned a common school system or neighborhood school system as one that:

§ Will be open to all children irrespective of caste, creed, community, religion, economic conditions or social ‘status’;

§ Where access to good education will depend not on wealth or class, but on talent;

§ Which will maintain adequate standards in all schools and provide at least a reasonable proportion of quality institutions;

§ In which no tuition fee will be charged;

§ Which would meet the needs of the average parent so that he would not ordinarily feel the need to send his children to expensive schools outside the system.

Describing the existing education scenario in the country in 1967, the education commission wrote the following:

“…. education itself is tending to increase social segregation and to perpetuate and widen class distinctions. At the primary stage, the free schools to which the masses send their children are maintained by government and local authorities and are generally of poor quality. Some of the private schools are, on the whole, definitely better; but since many of them charge high fees, they are availed of only by the middle and the higher classes. At the secondary stage, a large proportion of the good schools are private but many of them also charge high fees which are normally beyond the means of any but the top ten percent of the people, though some of the middle class parents make great sacrifices to send their children to them. There is thus segregation in education itself- the minority of private, fee-charging, better schools meeting the needs of the upper classes and the vast bulk of free, publicly maintained, but poor schools being utilised by the rest. What is worse, this segregation is increasing and tending to widen the gulf between the classes and the masses.”

To those of us working in the field of education today, these sentences seem like an appropriate description of current day education in India – in fact, the isolation of the classes from the masses is much worse today than it was 4 decades earlier. Apart from inherent problems in the existing educational system, we today have external global market and internal communal forces controlling the kind of education that majority of our children receive. These forces today pose a serious threat to the social harmony and national integrity of the country.

Promoting Segregation through Non-Formalisation of the Education System

As mentioned in the previous section the last 60 years have witnessed a significant weakening in the realisation of a common school system of education. CSS received a deathening blow after the 1990 ‘Education for All’ Conference organised by UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP and the World Bank, held in Jomtien, Thailand. While the 1986 education policy felt the need to at least pay lip service to CSS, the revised policy of 1992 (revised after the Jomtien conference) was a clean slate in this regard.

On the one hand, the government introduced non-formal systems of education, or ‘alternative education’ that not only replaced formal schools but also introduced the bug of mass literacy as a suitable/acceptable alternative for quality education. On the other hand, a new layer of schooling was introduced for select sections of society under the name of pace setting schools (Navodaya Vidyalayas, Kendriya Vidyalayas, Sainik Schools), which required enormous expenditure from the government for a select few.

Tuition shops, coaching institutions and fancifully named private convent schools have inundated every mohalla of our cities, towns and remote villages seriously undermining the public education system of the country. With the increasing commercialization of still existing public educational institutions particularly at the higher end, the segregation of the classes from the masses has been rendered complete where education has been reserved for the classes while literacy is being served to the masses

The government’s actions over the past 50 years, defying the constitutional deadline set forth in Article 45 of the constitution, have certainly made clear it’s intentions - while a microscopic minority receives government-funded good quality education, the majority receives poor-quality non-formal education. It is time we speak up against such inhuman policies.

Non-Formalisation of Education for the Masses

In complete violation of constitutional commitment [Article 45] to provide at least eight years of elementary education to children, the world bank funded District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) which was announced as a programme to strengthen formal education, actually ended up undermining it by shifting it’s focus to five years of primary education and introducing the concepts of para teachers and multi-grade teaching under the garb of high sounding pedagogical terminology.

The recently introduced Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which seems to be the government’s answer to providing quality elementary education for all children has not shown any achievements in the past years. The financial allocation towards the program in 2001-2001 was passed unanimously in the parliament. A total of Rs.9, 800 crores was allocated to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for the year 2001-2002. Of this, 96 percent was to be spent on strengthening the formal school system – starting new primary and upper primary schools, hiring trained teachers through attractive salaries (Rs.5000 to Rs.7000), providing teaching materials in schools etc. Ironically, only 10 percent (Rs.1000 crores) of these allocations were actually disbursed during the year. A significant majority of the disbursed money being spent not on strengthening the formal school system but rather on promoting cheap parallel education systems under high sounding names such as Education Guarantee Scheme and Alternative Education (which permit the use of para teachers and shacks as adequate substitutes for qualified teachers and classrooms respectively).

In comparison to the actual requirement of 20,000 crores per annum towards education (recommended by the Tapas Majumdar Committee), the actual disbursements in the government’s main education scheme, to achieve Universal Elementary Education, have been a mere 5 percent during 2001-2002. With such high allocations and low disbursals, there seems to be more fanfare than real work. If the first year is any indication of the efficacy of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, there is little the formal school system can expect from this government scheme.

Children in the 9-14 age group are now permitted to enroll in the adult literacy classes of the National Literacy Mission [NLM], an age group that was so far considered school-going will now have to attend adult literacy classes to become literate.

An adult literacy class, a non-formal center, the so-called ‘alternative school, a multi-grade class and now the Education Guarantee Scheme (wherein a para-teacher will be appointed), all have been accepted as adequate substitutes for school education, as long as it concerns the education of the poor. In this scenario, one can envisage, a girl child engaged in child labour as having been constitutionally educated if she can be enrolled in a non-formal school stream for three years and then in the National Literacy Misson’s adult literacy programme for the next two years, without even having stepped into the formal school [Sadgopal, 2002].

Quality Education for a Select Few

Navodaya Vidyalayas, introduced in the 1986 education policy under the title of pace-setting schools, requires the government to spend an enormous Rs.9000 per student per year, an expense incomparable to the Rs.846 spent on a child in a government-run village school. Though initiated with the idea of providing an avenue for talented children, not only the admission tests are not conducive to the selection of talent but are both anti-rural and anti-child. Due to this, a high percentage of children attending these schools belong to middle income groups and children from low-income populations constitute a minority of the school population. The Acharya Ramamurthi committee, in it’s review of the 1986 education policy clearly stated the following:

“It is particularly in the context of the need for establishing the common school system that …the committee as a whole has advocated against establishment of any more Navodaya Vidyalayas, not to speak of the inequity in nurturing talent in only a few. The scheme itself is very costly- with high expenditure and high per student expenditure; government support for this high cost education for a select few, while lakhs of children are denied their legitimate claims for provision of moderately good education is discriminatory and inconsistent with the principles for which a democratic republic committed to equity and social justice stands.”

In addition to the dual phenomenon of non-formalisation of education because of pressure from global market forces and quality education for a select few, communal forces from within the country are playing havoc in tainting the education that children receive in government schools. Curriculum and textbooks designed by the NCERT are no longer reflective of social realities. They seem more and more like a mouthpiece for the ideas of the ruling party in the country. The following table gives a more detailed description of how the forces of liberalization, privatization, globalization and communal fascism are the biggest blockades in the achievement of common school system.

It is our goal to raise our voices against anti-quality, anti-equity forces that have penetrated the education system and are bent on annihilating the common school system and widening the gap between the classes and the masses.

Implementing CSS

The 1967 education commission suggested some essential reforms in the order to implement a common school system effectively. The report calls for a

§ Significantly increased outlay for elementary education (particularly primary) education. This would help in the building up of required levels of infrastructure and quality of education, thereby transforming government, local-body and aided schools into genuine neighborhood schools.

§ Provision of special allocations for improvement of school system in backward areas, urban slums, tribal areas, hilly tracts, desert and marshy areas, drought and flood-prone zones, coastal belts and islands.

§ Ensuring instruction for all in the medium of mother tongue at the primary level, particularly for linguistic minorities; active encouragement of teaching of teaching in the regional languages at the secondary level and discontinuance of state aid to schools imparting education otherwise than in the medium of mother tongue/regional language.

§ Phased implementation of the common school system within the next ten year time frame; and essential minimum legislation, particularly to dispense with early selection process, tuition fee, capitation fee etc.

§ Exploring ways of including the expensive private schools into the common school system through combination of incentives, disincentives, and legislation.

Though all of these measures were suggested three decades prior, not a single government since then has been committed enough to implement programs towards the realisation of CSS. The need of the hour is to analyze the reasons for this failure and work towards addressing these blockades in the path of CSS.

The Acharya Ramamurthi Committee, constituted in 1986, in its analysis, outlined the following reasons for the common school system not gaining ground so far:

§ Economic and social disparities; the well-to-do communities send their children to schools with better infrastructure, teachers and teaching standards; ordinary schools are not sought after and in turn results in low investments in them.

§ The constitutional protection given to the minorities to establish and administer their own educational institutions etc. does not go with the concept of the Common School System.

§ In Government schools, the quality of education has remained poor.

§ Lack of political will.

§ Public schools, privately managed English medium schools, schools charging capitation fees and those having expensive coaching classes have proliferated.

§ Growth of institutions in the government sector like the Sainik Schools and Kendriya/Navodaya Vidyalayas, which are meant for separate categories of students.

An oft-sited reason for the non-achievement of the Common School System is the financial investment required to meet the needs of CSS. The Tapas Majumdar Committee, constituted in 1999, recommended that if an average addition 0.7 percent of GDP is allocated to education every year, the government will be able to achieve educate all children in the 6-14 age group within a 10-year period. The commission also explicitly stated that ‘there is no trade-off between quantitative expansion and quality improvement’ since universal enrolment and retention cannot be ensured unless conditions are provided for imparting education of satisfactory quality. For the 0-6 age group, the 2001 planning commission report recommended a commitment of Rs.10,000 per ECCE center per annum would be required over a period of 7 years to cover all children in this age group.

There is a consensus among all education commissions constituted since independence that the first step in securing equity and social justice in education is the building a common school system. However, implementation efforts focused on translating recommendations into reality still remains a long cherished dream.

The next section of the paper is an analysis of six important aspects of the Common School System:

Private Schools

Private schools in India are today a business in themselves, which might be referred to more appropriately as private teaching shops. The reason for their large presence is evidence in itself of the failure of the government to provide satisfactory educational opportunities for the children in this country. However, contrary to popular belief, the majority of private schools do not provide high quality education. Children are commonly forced to enter these schools because of the complete non-functioning / non-existence of government schools in their localities.

In current day scenario, the Kothari Commission’s vision of integrating private schools into the common school system has become a far-flung dream. Private Schools have emerged over the past 15 years as an instrument for social segregation rather than integration; an impediment in achieving equity in educational opportunity.

The existence of private schools is ideologically opposed to the concept of the common school system. One small success that NAFRE can bank upon to include the large chunk of the middle class in the campaign against private schools [since middle class parents are the largest consumers of the private schooling system] is the recently [1997] fought legal battle in which the parents federation [representing over 64,000 students from middle class families] filed a PIL against a fee hike in 32 schools in Delhi. The parents won and the hike was suspended.

NAFRE’s strategy in the coming months will have to be planned in greater detail.

Minority Schools

The common school system is a step not to undermine but strengthen the democratic rights and freedom of various sections of society. This system of education is founded on the philosophy that all children, whether they belong to a religious majority or minority, a linguistic majority or minority, or any other section of society are given the space to learn through a healthy exchange of culture and ideas. The appalling educational status of a vast majority of economically disadvantaged children, particularly those belonging to socially disadvantaged sections such as Dalits, peasants, Muslim minorities to quote a few, are unacceptable in a free democratic, socialist, secular republic.

Democratic India cannot shrug away from it’s responsibility to provide modern, scientific, and quality educational opportunities to these vulnerable sections of society.

The Ramamurthi Committee clearly stated in its analysis that the existence of minority schools is not in consonance with the concept of the common school system. However, in the name of these ideals, raising the demand of abrogating Article 30 of our constitution instead of solving the problem of lack of availability of quality education will in deed strengthen the anti-democratic, fundamentalist forces in all hues within the country.

Our strategy at NAFRE in this respect should include:

§ To bring out informed studies about the status of education among minority groups;

§ Bank upon democratic discussions and dialogs to devise ways and means to democratise and mordernise the minority schooling system of the country.

Language of Instruction and the Role of English

Pedagogically, there is absolutely no debate on the issue that the medium of instruction for a child should be her/his mother tongue – and this means the language spoken at home, and not technically the ‘state’ language, as it is generally interpreted for convenience.

However, It is difficult to estimate accurately the number of languages spoken in India as “mother tongue” – the available data is inconsistent. The 1961 census listed 1652 mother tongues. No school system can cope with such a large number of languages as mediums of instruction at the primary stage. The Constitution of India recognises 19 regional languages. The census groups all ‘mother tongues’ as living Indian languages, which number 96 in all. Of these 96 languages, 50 are actually used as medium of instruction at the primary stage. Together with English there are 51 languages, which are used as medium of instruction in India. The remaining 46 languages have no written literature and 16 of them do not even have scripts.

Hence there are millions of children in our country who learn their basics in a primary school in a language, which is not her/his mother tongue.

Another practical problem is that of the teacher. The rural school teacher is usually an “outsider” who does not speak the child’s dialect – and in a tribal context, the teacher is invariably a non-tribal who has no sensitivity or knowledge about the child’s mother tongue – and when the child proceeds to express herself in her own dialect – it is rejected with scorn and ridicule, thus causing an irreparable damage to her/his psyche. To reject a child’s mother tongue is to reject her background, her culture, and everything she stands for.

Further, we will have to accept the fact that there is a degree of ambivalence and confusion in Indian society about the role of English. It is interesting to note the report of Yashpal Committee on this issue “…. the problem of medium of instruction at the primary stage cannot be resolved until the elite Indians stop favouring the English language as the medium of instruction”.

West Bengal presents an interesting case study – the state had introduced the policy of mother tongue at the primary level, and had abolished (very strictly) the teaching of English at the primary stage. Simultaneously, it had introduced a no-detention policy and a system of comprehensive-continuous evaluation: all very pedagogically correct steps. But still the state floundered miserably. We have to understand why. We have to learn our lessons from this experiment. Similar things happened in Bangladesh also.

Hence, our stand would be to adopt a practical approach – mother tongue for the primary level, then slowly transitioning into the state language from the upper primary level, and also keep the option of teaching English open, provided the community people want it. We have to be aware of all the contradictions/ confusion existing in our society/ and hence in our education system.

Management of Schools

The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments provide for decentralisation of the activities and facilitate transfer of power and participation of the local self-government institutions or the Panchayati Raj Institutions. Hence, this policy initiative can easily be used as a framework to operationalize CSS.

As per CABE Committee on Decentralised management of Education (1993):

§ The Panchayat Samiti Standing Committee (PSSC) on education will exercise control over all educational institutions up to elementary level, under the overall supervision of the Zila Parishad.

§ PSSC will have the authority to visit all educational institutions and will check attendance and other registers. It would have the authority to enquire and report on educational deficiencies and requirements of the village. It will prepare the school calendar indicating working days, holidays and vacation under the guidance of Zila Parishad.

§ The committee will be responsible for preparation of plans for development of education up to elementary schools and for their implementation. It will also prepare educational budget of the Panchayat Samiti and approve expenditure to be incurred.

§ It will undertake academic supervision of all the educational institutions upto elementary level including the private schools in its jurisdiction.

§ It will endeavour to promote school complexes in its jurisdiction. It will periodically review progress of education and actively pursue universalisation of elementary education.

Though this structure of management is an advisable one, we also need to keep in mind the reality of politicization of Panchayats. There is little hope for reform as long as Panchayats remain mere puppets to the whims and fancies of dominant political and social classes. While we advocate for the adoption of the above-mentioned structure of school management, we also need to focus on a process of democratisation of Panchayats in order to achieve sustainable decentralisation of school management.

Finance

CSS clearly stipulates that education is the financial responsibility of the government. This is in accordance with the recommendations of all of the education commissions formed since independence. There is unanimous agreement that elementary education should be solely state-funded and private players should not be allowed to enter the arena of school education.

As stated earlier, the most recently formed Tapas Majumdar Committee [1999] clearly stated that quantitative expansive also meant qualitative improvement in school education- a financially achievable task. CSS specifically debars funding cheap, second track, parallel systems of education which have mushroomed in the country in the post-Jomtien period [after 1990]. Private benevolent funds should be routed through the State.

School Curriculum

CSS does not conform to the establishment of a common national curricular framework across all schools in the country. It, rather, believes in the necessity for a contextual and geo-culturally relevant school curriculum that is developed in a decentralized manner and adheres to national standards of equivalency.

The goal of elementary education provided in schools should be to go beyond functional literacy and achieve cultural and critical literacy.

Cultural Literacy: Cultural literacy acquaints a child to her/his cultural heritage, history, traditions and way of life. It instills in a child respect and pride towards one’s people and rich culture. An archeological and interactive approach to teaching learning is required for fruition of such a program.

Critical Literacy: Critical literacy makes one aware of her/his authentic position with respect to prevailing socio-cultural-economic dynamics. In a rural society, one would particularly become aware of the position of her/his community with regards to the agrarian politico-economic dynamics at the micro-macro level. A participatory approach with constant involvement in solidarity actions aimed at changing repressive societal relations is a necessary condition for the success of such of a program.

The management bodies at different levels in the district would be the sole arbitrators of curriculum. Such a curriculum decided at various levels of Panchayati Raj functioning would reasonably invite the issue of equivalency. Designated bodies would be responsible for ensuring equivalence of such curriculum at the village level, Panchayat Samiti level, district level, state level and finally the national level. This would be a process,mechanism - that is now in practice. rather than a

Conclusion

The spirit of the common school system goes well beyond the mere provision of a school building, textbooks, stationery and a teacher. It is based on the belief that every child is entitled to receive good quality education from the state. CSS envisions the education system where local communities and not global market forces, communal forces, or private entrepreneurs determine the quality of education children studying in government schools receive. It becomes imperative for us to say here that common school system is inconceivable without the special measures of advocacy, social mobilisation and empowerment of local bodies (Panchayat Raj institutions and urban bodies).

CSS envisions a system of education that will impart education not merely literacy. “An education that allows a child to interact openly and freely with people by providing an environment that fosters the development of critical analysis and not mere submission to the existing segregation in society” It is with these intensions that the Kothari Commission first recommended the implementation of a common school system of education in 1968. Four decades have passed since then, CSS still remains a cherished dream.