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ShareIn stark contrast to his predecessors Arjun Singh and Murli Manohar Joshi, new human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal wants private participation in education at all levels. He wants to throw open the tightly-controlled sector, rid it of rigid rules to allow a bigger role for private players, but at the same time, put in place a strong quality control mechanism. DNA spoke to the minister about his plans. Excerpts:
What are your priority areas?
My first priority is allowing more private participation in opening and running primary and secondary schools, including government schools, so that we can increase access and give better quality education to students. Second is restructuring higher education. Third is getting more investment in education, allowing foreign institutions' entry and permitting Indian institutes to go abroad.
What steps are you taking to implement your first priority?
I hope the Right to Education Bill is passed in the next session of parliament. This will give more access to a lot of students. But the government alone cannot meet the demand. There is enormous space for education providers which cannot be filled by public funding alone. You need private participation and we can have various modules for this, such as allowing public-private partnerships, encouraging charitable trusts to set up schools, permitting the private sector to manage municipal schools, or allowing private players to build infrastructure in municipal schools and provide free and paid education under one roof. For example, the private sector can take over a municipal school, add more classrooms and other infrastructure and hire teachers. This will improve the quality of education and they can charge fees from rich students and give free education to the poor ones at no additional cost. So, you make money, you use our infrastructure and you provide quality education. This way you can fulfil the objective of expansion, equity and excellence.
How will you bring in more private players?
We need to change the parameters for setting up schools. The present regulations are too restrictive. We need to amend them. For instance, why do you need to have five acres of land for a school? There is a shortage of land in urban areas. We can think of going vertical instead of horizontal and allowing schools to be built on two acres. I intend to remove stringent conditions for institutions of higher education too, so that more private players can enter this sector.
How would you ensure quality of such schools?
Accreditation agencies will be put in place to create entry barriers for private schools. Government schools may be exempted but accreditation standards must be in place at the entry level for all others.
What about the education system itself?
It is important to de-traumatise education. Why should education be such a burden for parents and children? We could, for instance, think of abolishing the class X board exam. Why does a child need to appear for a board exam in class X if s/he is continuing in the same school? The exam can be for those who want to leave school. At present there is multiplicity of boards and no uniformity in the standard of education. We need to do correct this.
I want to introduce vocational training after class X for those who don't want to study further. Why can't we have degrees in masonry or plumbing or carpentry? This is part of skill development.
