IT for Change wrote a chapter - "RTE in Karnataka: Pursuit of Equitable and Inclusive Education through RTE", for the publication, "Implementation of the right of children to Free and Compulsory Education act, 2009: Where do we stand? Status report 2024" of the Right to Education Cell (RTE CELL) of The Council for Social Development (CSD).

The publication followed the 2024 National Summit on the Right to Education Act, organized in New Delhi in April 2024 by the RTE Cell, Council for Social Development, in collaboration with the RTE Forum, in which Gurumurthy Kasinathan participated as a speaker. He spoke about RTE implementation in Karnataka during a thematic session titled, ‘Pursuit of Equitable & Inclusive Education through the RTE Act.’ The session was chaired by Manoranjan Mohanty, Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, New Delhi.

The publication was reported by The Hindu and by The Times of India.  Learn more about the event here.

RTE Karnataka - Pursuit of Equitable and Inclusive Education through RTE
 

- Gurumurthy Kasinathan and Marzia Ibrahim, IT for Change

Abstract

Karnataka has failed to prioritise investment in education, essential for implementing the RTE. Instead of investing in the overall improvement of the physical and academic infrastructure of all Government schools, the state’s priority is on creating islands of excellence ('Karnataka Public Schools'), which model not only is iniquitous, but has been repeatedly shown to be a failure. The choice of English medium in these and other schools, bringing back public exams for grades 5 and 8, large scale of guest teacher hiring, all indicate a lack of consideration for RTE imperatives.

The RTE asks the government to ensure 'providing good quality elementary education' and 'providing training facility for teachers'. Independent assessments such as ASER evidence dismal quality of education (this conclusion holds, irrespective of the limitations of ASER). Inadequate and inappropriate teacher professional development (TPD) is a very big cause for this (apart from inadequate physical and academic infrastructure).

Like other states Karnataka has largely limited TPD to online courses/ virtual resource repositories (NISHTA, DIKSHA), which is inherently ineffective and even tokenistic. A more meaningful use of Free and Open digital technologies for TPD, is evidenced by Kerala. Karnataka and other states can contextualize the Kerala EdTech model to improve the quality of teacher and school education, to help realize our childrens fundamental right to education.

Introduction

A 2023 report of the Union Ministry of School Education and Literacy on RTE compliance in the country says that only 25.5% of its norms have been achieved, which is poor, given that 14 years have elapsed since the enactment of the Act. Karnataka’s score is 23.6%, which is deplorable given that South Indian states have managed much higher levels of socio-economic development which should have enabled higher investment in education.

Earlier, UDISE data (collected annually from each school in the country), which has all information required for monitoring RTE - including status of school building, classrooms, drinking water, toilets, girls toilets, compound wall, library, play equipment, sanctioned and appointed teacher count, was available to the public. However the government is no longer providing this information on its website. Hence it is difficult to do either macro state/district-level analyses of RTE compliance. (The government must make this available to the public as it will strengthen transparency, and hence accountability to implement RTE).

The report discusses the challenges to implementing RTE in Karnataka, across key important aspects.

Key Area of Focus

Regional imbalances

The Kalyana Karnataka division of North-East Karnataka consisting of the districts of Ballari, Vijayanagara, Bidar, Kalaburagi, Koppal, Raichur, Yadgir are in a worse crisis compared to other regions, with many zero teacher and zero enrolment schools. The literacy rate of the region as per the 2011 census is 63.71% (state equivalent 75.36%). As per a Department of School Education report and Azim Premji University, the region has 115 zero enrolment government schools and 241 government schools with enrolment of 1 to 10 (2023-24). The teacher vacancies are 14,139 and the region has 1,046 (11.65%) single teacher schools¹ (state average 6% as per 2023-24 SATS data and national average is 7%). One reason for this is inter-divisional transfer of teachers². Given that historically, this region suffers higher socio-economic backwardness, it needs much higher level of support from the state.

The Kalyana Karnataka Regional Development Board (KKRDB), specially setup to address the regional imbalance, has designated 2023-24 as 'Academic Year' for holistic advancement of schools in the region. Under the 'Akshara Aavishkara' initiative, the board has allocated 25% of its annual grants for enhancing educational quality. A grant of Rs. 45,675 (lakhs) under micro schemes and Rs. 19,575.00 (lakhs) under macro schemes has been allocated for 2023-24. The recruitment of 'Akshara Mitras' (guest teachers) aim to address teacher vacancies. However, it is known that having short-term guest teachers (at much poorer compensation) will not help in providing quality education. Thus a much higher level and sustained funding is necessary to reduce regional imbalances.

Teacher vacancies

Karnataka has 1,41,358 teachers vacancies, the highest in the country³. The number of single teacher schools has increased, many schools have a high PTR,⁴ as Karnataka like most states, misleadingly relies on state and district PTR averages to announce RTE compliance on PTR. Only 68% high schools have teachers for all core subjects. SCERT has 60% vacant academic positions, 27% vacancy in DIETs⁵. This impacts the academic support to schools.

Since government teachers and officials usually work till superannuation, the hiring can be proactively planned to ensure the replacement teachers and officials are in place well in time. Thus, the large extent of vacancies show lack of seriousness in address the education needs of the state. Vacancies arise overtime, so the situation indicates a long term neglect.

Closure of government schools

The share of private schools in Karnataka has risen in recent years, accompanied by an increased emphasis on 'rationalization’ - closure of small, low-enrolment government schools. 12,990 schools in Karnataka were closed/merged till 2017⁶. This has contributed to inequity with students dropping out of school as parents, especially those from socio-economically marginalized groups would not send their children to schools that are not within easy walking distance of their homes.

By not filling teacher vacancies and closing schools, the government is ‘shrinking’ the public education system and reducing access to education.

Examinations instead of CCE

Karnataka conducts public exams for children studying in grades 5 and 8. This is counter to the RTE recommendation of CCE, and signals a move from holistic forms of learning to one that is based on narrow learning outcomes derived from centralized assessments. Ironically, though standardized tests are supposed to ‘reveal the truth’, NAS and ASER findings are in sharp contrast. This could be because in the NAS, with the support of teachers, students memorize and reproduce ‘right answers’, the same way they do for their SSLC exams.

The education system seems to be content to create a misleading impression of very high levels of learning (with the SSLC pass percentages exceeding 80%) and leave unaddressed, real issues of teacher shortage, inappropriate syllabi in the context of limited home support for children from marginalized sections, inadequate physical and academic infrastructure in schools, inadequate teacher capacities to address heterogeneous/multi-level student contexts and needs. Concepts of inclusion and ‘learning as meaning-making’, seem to have been sidestepped by the desire to improve ‘learning outcomes.’ This can be termed as an ‘Operation Successful, Patient Dead’ syndrome, where the student suffers despite the system’s ‘performance’.

Covid caused devastation

Starting in 2020, India suffered the second-longest school closure in the world. For around 18 months, 12 million students of Karnataka did not go to school, and a significant proportion did not benefit from any structured learning opportunities. In 2020, the state saw a reverse trend of movement of students from private to government schools, mostly in rural areas where parents moved back to villages due to the financial crisis during the pandemic⁷. Unfortunately, these students have now moved back to private institutions, due to the continued under-investment in government schools.

In another indication of the pandemic's impact on formal education, the enrolment of children to first grade across schools in the state had reached only 25 per cent in July 2021 when schools finally opened⁸. Many students who could not enrol during the pandemic were seeking direct admissions to grade-2. In 2021, there was also a huge delay in issuing textbooks and these were made available to students only in September.⁹ This delay was partly due to the Karnataka textbook revisions, pushed under the garb of NEP implementation, strengthened sectarian thinking¹⁰.

Investing in education

The RTE Act emphasizes governments 'responsibility for providing funds to carry out provisions of the act'. On average, states estimated to spend 14.7% of their budget towards education in 2023-24. Karnataka’s spending was 11% (12% for 2024-25). For a state that considers itself amongst the more socio-economically advanced in the country, this under-investment is unfortunate.

It has become normal for ministers to call out for CSR support¹¹ to provide the required infrastructure to schools. With increasing wealth being captured by the elite of the country, due to huge concessions provided to businesses, we have no resources for very basic needs of society, viz. public funding on education. There seems to be a general unwillingness to accept that if the school system does not provide quality education to all children, we risk a society where there is both social and economic distress in terms of strife and unemployment.

While the ‘five guarantees’ of the current government transfer resources to the poor and vulnerable sections of society, without ensuring that the guarantee of universal quality education, it should be recognized future prosperity and harmony is unlikely. Few organizations/networks such as PAFRE focus on creating larger awareness of the governments obligation to provide such education, most of civil society (NGOs) focus almost entirely on supporting the ‘supply side’, working to supplement and complement the governments efforts. Larger social mobilization is absolutely necessary.

Teacher Education

As per the minutes of the Annual Work Plan & Budget (AWP&B) 2023-24 meeting of Samagra Shiksha, Karnataka, the 2023-24 budget estimate had NO fresh allocation of funds for teacher education and TEIs as seen in the tables below:

Islands of excellence

The state is giving priority to creating islands of excellence - 'Karnataka Public Schools' which would get higher funding support, and provide education from grade 1 through 10. However instead of preparing a longer term program to ensure similar support to every public school, the government is content with one such school in each panchayat. It is known that ‘model’ schools are not able to support other schools in their vicinity, and while other schools remain less supported, even these ‘model’ schools become similar to other schools over time. Model schools is inherently iniquitous an approach and hence counter to the spirit of RTE. Governments use ‘model school’ model to showcase ‘achievement’, while ignoring the requirement of quality education for all.

Secondly, these schools offer only English medium of instruction (MOI), which is a violation of RTE, which requires home language as MOI. Karnataka is also encouraging government elementary and secondary schools to offer English Medium and many schools now offer English medium in addition to Kannada. However students do not have adequate resource support in the school and at home, to be able to understand and learn English. In such a situation it is not possible for them to ‘learn through English’. English medium thus creates severe challenges for learning. Karnataka (like other South Indian states) is continuously increasing English medium sections in its government schools, even though there has been no rigorous research whether English medium has helped or harmed students.

Other serious challenges to RTE implementation include the following:

1. Conducting public exams for grades 5 and 8 is counter to the aim of ‘formative assessment’¹². Public exams do not at all help in supporting student learning and instead cause a huge stress to students and teachers. Valuable instruction time is lost in conducting these examinations as well as preparatory examinations. It is akin to conducting blood tests repeatedly when it is well acknowledged that anaemia and malnutrition is prevalent, and conducting such tests diverts attention and energies from providing required nutrition.

2. Large scale guest teacher hiring is reflective of high level of callousness, as a regular, qualified teacher is essential for quality education.

3. Inadequate and inappropriate teacher professional development (TPD), lack of funds for TPD, limiting TPD to online courses/resource repositories (NISHTA, DIKSHA). YouTube video guides are now available for answering Diksha courses, indicating that the reduction of education to merely ‘passing exams’ now afflicts teacher education as well.

Recommendations and Future Directions

There is a need to significantly increase the investment in education and ensure that all schools comply 100% with RTE. After all, the RTE sought the minimum facilities required to provide quality education, and it is a shame for the country, that 15 years after enacting a fundamental right, we are so far away from ensuring this fundamental right of all children even as we launch Mangalyaan and have huge defence budgets, corporate subsidies and tax exemptions.

In this section, we would like to focus on an area that normally is not discussed adequately as a part of RTE compliance, the quality of teacher training, which has a direct impact of quality of school education.

Teacher Professional Development

The NCFTE talks about having teachers that are ‘professional and humane’. TPD needs to build capacities not only in content knowledge and subject matter expertise but in sensitivity towards children and their diverse needs. The issue of inadequate and inappropriate TPD which now largely focuses on online courses/resource repositories needs to be addressed.

A more meaningful and effective use of digital technologies for TPD, using Free and Open technologies has been evidenced by Kerala. Karnataka and other states can contextualize these approaches to improve the quality of teacher education and school education. The ‘private and centralized’ EdTech mainstream model that relies on proprietary vendors needs to be replaced by a ‘public decentralized EdTech¹³’ model to rejuvenate ‘public education’.

A systemic TPD program whose curriculum includes subject matter expertise, diverse pedagogies and affective aspects (including strengthening empathy of government school teachers to the contexts and priorities of their students, who are largely from marginalized sections of society¹⁴), is necessary to shift the education system from its current low levels of equitable quality. Such a program would benefit from the appropriate integration of digital technologies in the following ways:

1. Teachers should be supported to learn how to use digital technologies to access a variety of teaching-learning materials both for their own professional development as well as for integration in their practice. This is absolutely essential to broaden and deepen their perspectives and understanding on different aspects of education, not only covering subject matter and pedagogy, but also broader aspects of education including the foundational disciplines, as well as sensitivity and empathy¹⁵. The biggest educational contribution of digital technologies is the ‘world wide web’ which needs to be seen as a ‘global digital library’ that every teacher must be trained to use (and use wisely), as well as contribute to this library.

2. Using digital technologies to create text, image, audio-visual contextual teaching-learning materials which are multi-level, multi-modal and multilingual for supporting their students learning¹⁶. Textbooks developed in a centralised manner can never meet the diverse learning needs of learners. Only a teacher who is capable of contextualizing curricular resources for the needs of different learners can guarantee equitable and inclusive education.

3. Integrating technology for diversifying and contextualizing pedagogies can enable teachers to provide richer learning experiences, essential for inclusive education

4. Lastly, digital technology should be used to help teachers to collectivise themselves into ‘professional learning communities’ for teacher empowerment. This is necessary to negotiate with the education bureaucracy for a more agentic role for teachers. Such networking is also needed with parents and local communities to strengthen links between school and the community, a missing link in RTE implementation and sustenance. Such local networks can collectivise to work for institutional autonomy to counter the excessively centralized education bureaucracy in our country.

In schools which do not have computer labs, TVs/projectors and audio libraries (accessible through smart phones) can be made available. Of course, this investment must be seen as a part of the overall infrastructure investment and hence informed by the school and communities needs and priorities. A computer lab at the block level/ cluster level must be seen a necessary component of TPD.

The Kerala EdTech model has managed to make real, many of the TPD elements discussed above. Karnataka and states need to adapt/contextualize this model to enable inclusive universal education in the country.