In late July, when I visited the Government High School in the Khunde Halal village of Punjab’s Sri Muktsar Sahib district, students of the eight standard were sitting cross-legged in a corridor. Their bags were strewn on floormats inside an empty classroom which did not have any benches. The school’s records showed that 361 students were enrolled between standards one to 10. Of these, 350—almost 97 percent—are from the Scheduled Caste community.
The number of students enrolled in the primary classes of the school, between standards one to five, dropped from 168 in 2015 to 140 students in the ongoing academic session. Of the 140 students, 138 are Scheduled Castes. Referring to the lack of students from the general category in the school, the primary wing’s headmaster Jaswinder Singh said, “These schools, as you see for yourself, have remained for the poor only.”
The primary wing seems to illustrate the situation in all of Punjab’s government schools, according to data of the state’s school-education department. In the past decade, the enrolment of students in Punjab’s government schools has dropped by more than 1.2 lakhs—from 24,52,203 students in the 2009–2010 academic session to 23,29,622 in 2018–2019. Moreover, the number of Scheduled Caste students in the schools has increased by almost 1.2 lakh in the same time frame—from 14,18,790 students in 2009 to 15,37,759 students in the ongoing academic session, as of 25 July 2019. The schools had 57.8-percent Scheduled Caste students in 2009 and the percentage increased to 63.59, as of 25 July this year. The data suggests that more Scheduled Caste students than before seem to be suffering due to the poor quality of education in government schools.
Bharat Bhushan Wadhawa, the headmaster of a dilapidated government school in the Lakhewali village in the Sri Muktsar Sahib district, told me that the school was facing a dearth of funds. It procured 120 desks last year, he said, before which students sat on the floor in the school. “We shell out money from our pockets for black boards, chalks and the required stationery,” he said. The educationist Pyara Lal Garg, who is a former registrar of the Punjab’s Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, said the problem went beyond infrastructure.
According to the 2018 Annual Status of Education Report by Pratham, a non-profit organisation in the education sector, 59.5 percent of third-standard students in rural Punjab’s government schools could not do subtraction in mathematics, while 63.6 percent of them could not read the text meant for students of the second standard. More starkly, 41.6 percent of students in the eighth-standard could not do division. According to Garg, the teachers in government schools also “socially alienated students who predominantly hail from poor families.”
Families I met from the Scheduled Caste community echoed Garg’s statement. A man in his forties who works as a house painter in Muktsar district, and his wife, who is a farm labourer, told me that their three children study in government schools. The couple asked to not be identified in fear of retaliation from their employers. According to the house painter, teachers often insulted his children and did not treat them with “dignity.” He said, the teachers often used the name of their caste as a slur and made statements, such as, “Yeh Chuhre-Chamaar ke bache hai, yeh kya padhenge”—How can children of people from Scheduled Caste communities be capable of studying. “The teachers come from well off families and sometimes don’t take our children seriously,” he said. His wife added, “No one respects the poor—neither in a school, nor outside.”
Their statements were borne out by a conversation with Harbans Jhumba, a teacher at a government high school in Chibranwali village, on why financially sound families belonging to the general category do not want to send their children to government schools. While referring to students who are poor and belong to lower castes, Jhumba said, “These kids, from such families, keep abusing. So, who wants their kids to study with them?” Khushveer Kaur, an English teacher in a government high school in the Bhangewala village of Muktsar, said that those who “have money do not admit their wards in government schools” because of classism and casteism. This seemed to be a factor behind the dropping enrolments in government schools as well.
Balwinder Singh, the headmaster of a primary school in the Lakhmireana village, told me that he held a door-to-door campaign to enrol more students this year because of pressure from the state’s school education government. In the academic session 2009–2010, a total of 2,48,989 students enrolled in the first standard in government schools, according to the state government’s data. The figure stood at just 1,32,173 in 2018–19. In 2017, the government officially launched an initiative to hold pre-primary classes in its schools. The initiative should have secured more enrolments to the first standard this year, but the figure has dropped by more than forty thousand— from 1,73,253 in the 2017–2018 academic year to 1,32,173 in the ongoing session.
According to the ASER report, 52.2 percent children between the ages of 6 and 14 in Punjab have opted for private schools. But private schools are effectively inaccessible to Khunde Halal’s Scheduled Caste community. Dharminder Singh, a vegetable hawker in Khunde Halal, told me that two years ago he shifted his daughter Harnoor Kaur from a government school to a faraway private school, in hopes of a “better quality education.” He could not afford Kaur’s school fees for long as he had to pay his own medical bills, apart from household expenses. Within three–four months, Dharminder withdrew her admission and shifted her back to the Khunde Halal government school.
On the directions of the Punjab and Haryana high court, a committee was formed in 2013 to look into the arbitrary fee structures in Punjab’s private schools. Garg, who was a member of the committee, told me that some private schools as well as the state government bodies did not cooperate with the committee. As a result, it only submitted the report to the high court in May 2017. No action has been taken on its findings so far, he said. In 2016, the state government also passed the Punjab Regulation of Fee of Unaided Educational Institutions Act, which made provisions for state officials to regulate fee hikes in Punjab’s private schools. According to news reports, some private schools have continued to flout the provisions of the Act.
Even if Dharminder could afford to send his daughter to a private school, there might not have been a drastic improvement the quality of her education. According to some parameters of the ASER report, the quality of education in private schools seems abysmal as well. Of the class 3 students in private schools, 58.2 percent could not read the level of text for students of the second standard. In the eighth standard, 31.4 percent students did not know division. According to Balwinder, “There is a false notion that private schools are better off. It is nothing more than a status symbol.” Dharminder’s daughter is now preparing to get admission in the central-government affiliated Jawahar Navodya Vidyalayas now. He said a government school is his “only option.”