Various studies across India have shown that private schools are outperforming government schools in both enrolment growth and learning outcomes. This explains why, of the 6,000 model schools that are envisaged to benchmark excellence across India in the Twelfth Plan, 2,500 are to be set up under public-private partnerships, as Pranab Mukherjee stated in his last Budget speech. The government has already invited expressions of interest for 500 of these, with India?s larger private, education solutions providers like Core Education & Technologies and Educomp Solutions are now signalling interest in the same. But nobody expects this to be a smooth ride. For example, the private entity will have to procure land on its own. Although the state governments have been ?requested? to assist in the same, the minimum requirement of 3 acres may yet be hard to meet. The teacher-pupil and classroom-student ratios have been set much above the national average at 1:25 and 1:40, respectively. The government will contribute to recurring cost on per capita basis for the students its sponsors (50:50, ?ideally?) and the private entity will be free to charge ?appropriate? fee only from the students not under the government quota. No wonder experts are saying it will take 7-8 years for these model schools to break even; indeed, the notice inviting expressions of interest lays out such eligibility criteria as would screen out entities without proven success or deep pockets. For example, ?A corporate entity would be eligible for one school for every R25 crore net worth subject to interest-bearing deposit of R50 lakh each for up to 3 schools and R25 lakh per school thereafter.?
The puzzle is that while initiating the above scheme to take advantage of the ?functional efficiency of private entities enabling early delivery of quality education?, the government is ignoring the danger that Pratham warns us about: implementation of the RTE Act will make it impossible for many ?low cost? or ?affordable? schools to operate, affecting 40 million rural students who are currently enrolled in private schools that do not meet RTE norms. And this is just one aspect of a discouraging regulatory environment because of which only an insignificant proportion of India?s private schools (estimated at 2-6-2.9 lakh) have been able to scale high and wide.
