How offering incentives to teachers and integrating schools could help Adi Dravida and Tribal students perform better

CHENNAI: Students from private matriculation schools recorded a pass percentage of 98.04 per cent in class 12 and 98.79 per cent in class 10 board exams 2018. On the other hand, Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare schools skirt around 85 per cent or less and Government schools range between 84 and 91 per cent. Prima facie, private schools are outperforming government run ones in all aspects and seemingly so because more money is pumped into it. But reports across the country have shown that private schools spend less money per student, and teachers in private schools are paid much lower than government teachers.

Why then, is there a giant academic gap between these schools?

Learning environment and the "untouchable" department

The academic rift between the schools is strongly related to the difference in access to resources, skills and opportunities, among others. Students from Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department are stuck in the blind spot of the school education department and the schemes that other school students get, opine experts.

For example, the functioning of these schools is monitored by revenue department officials from the district collecterate. On the other hand, the school education department has education officers at every block monitoring schools exclusively. Lowered surveillance has resulted in low accountability, said D Ravikumar, the general secretary of VCK. "These schools also don't benefit from the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) as they receive funds only from Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department. Even the teachers don't get the training government or private school teachers get," he said.

In addition to not benefiting from State level educational schemes, these schools suffer at the hands of "bureaucratic untouchability," charged retired IAS officer Christodas Gandhi. "All bureaucratic stakeholders and officials, even those from within the community, sulk to be a part of the department," he said adding that there is very little constructive dialogue on caste issues between politicians and officials. "The social malice against the communities has seeped far into the administration and there is no internal push to empower them through education as they people are appropriated as incompetent," said. But what role does the demographics actually play in education?

Demographic differences

Result analysis shows that the average exam performance of students from Social Welfare, Social Defense, Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Schools are significantly lower than others. A peek into the demographics of students from these schools suggests two over-arching problem: limited involvement of parents and their socio-economic background.

The Joint Director of the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare (ADTW) Department P Kasi said that many children from the department's school are first generation students in the family, making it hard for parents to understand the value of education. "In an urban set-up, parents often follow up on homework, mark sheets, syllabus and training at school. They know to question both the teacher and school. But on the other hand, parents who have no exposure to education don't understand it's role in empowerment. Therefore they don't follow up children's education at homes," he said.

Another problem he pointed was that aspirations for higher education was lower and early in life, men are expected to provide and women to run the house. "Most girls are married away right after school. So if they fail, their parents don't motivate them to re-attempt. Boys are sent to menial physical labour if they fail, " he said. In addition to these, parents often migrate, forcing children to either discontinue education or moving into hostels. "In Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Schools in Tiruvannamalai particularly particularly, parents often move to Bangalore or parts of Kerala, so often," he claimed adding that such children move in with relatives who don't provide personal care for the child's education. "If the child has a younger sibling, she might have to quit schooling to take care of the child, when her parents are away at work," he said. He concluded that it was the children's background that deterred their performance.

Students with educated parents from affluent socio-economic background perform visibly better than those who don't have the privilege. But, public education-for-all was introduced to alleviate poor demographics of under-privileged children, therefore demographics is a part of public education's agenda and not the problem pervading government schools.

Access to facilities

Fifty-three percent of Adi Dravidar schools are functioning without sufficient number of classrooms in the northern districts of Tamil Nadu, according to a 2013 study conducted by Samakalvi Iyakkam, a movement for child rights. The Samakalvi Iyakkam-Tamilnadu conducted the study on 90 Adi Dravidar Welfare Schools in Chennai, Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram, Vellore, Tiruvannamalai and Vilupuram districts.

The study showed appalling details. About 30 per cent of school buildings were in a dilapidated state and only 25.6 percent were in proper condition. About 16.6 per cent of the schools do not have a parapet wall, which made them targets for anti-social elements and some were also used as cattle shed. Of 90 schools, 57 had no playground. High pupil-teacher ratio too is lowering the quality of education charged experts.

Tamil Nadu can proudly claim to have complied with the Right to Education Act requirements in having provided enough primary schools within one kilometre perimeter. What is sufficient for mainstream people will not always deliver the goods or services to the Tribals. "Even if it is one or two kilometres to a primary school, for a tribal child to traverse that distance becomes a perilous journey through the jungles," according to 'Upholding Rights of the Tribal Child Tamil Nadu', a study by Fr KJ Kumar, Director, Social Watch, a non profit organisation.

Nestled in Bargur Hills in Erode is a Government Tribal Residential School, which recorded a pass percentage of 55 per cent. "A Government school in Bargur has eight teachers for about 70 students in class 1 and 12, but this tribal welfare school has nearly 120 students and had only one teacher for a year," said SC Natarajan, the director of Sudar, a non-profit organisation that runs special schools for Adi dravidar and Tribal children under prevention of child labour central schemes. He added that the single teacher was expected to handle all subjects for higher secondary students.

He argued that the nature of relationship with teachers played a far more significant role than demographics does. Students in residential schools leave behind their homes to pursue schooling among students who hail from similar origins. However, they often lack recreation, love and engagement that they may otherwise get at home. "If teachers are working on students' health and well-being, she won't have the time for education and mentoring. And what's the time one teacher can spend on 120 students!" he exclaimed. The school at Bargur recently received three more teachers after hunger-strikes and protests that lasted a year.

Incentives for teachers

High vacancy among teacher employment, high pupil-teacher ratio and low attendance of teachers are among important reasons why students in these schools don't perform well, said PB Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary, State Platform for Common School System. "Teachers who major in one subject, are forced to teach other subjects. The teachers feel incompetent and students don't learn their fundamentals well," he said.

'Private and public schooling: The Indian experience' a study by Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, University of Oxford on comparison of per pupil expenditures in public and private schools shows that recurrent per pupil expenditure in private schools was only 41 per cent of that in government schools and 55 per cent of that in aided schools. "The relatively low per pupil expenditure in private schools is due to the fact that teacher salary levels are drastically lower in private than government schools. The average teacher salary in private junior schools was only 42 per cent of that in government schools and 43 per cent of that in aided schools," the study noted.

Despite lower salaries how are teachers bale to help students perform better than government schools? Rohan Joshi from Centre for Teachers Accreditation argues that teachers need to be motivated given incentives. Speaking specifically about Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare schools, he said that teachers need to be competent enough to empathise and understand local cultural and social issues apart from knowing how to impart education. "This gap can be filled by involving educated community youth. They can even be employed on a contract basis for short term, but they would in some way help with bridging differences between teachers and students," he said adding that this would also help students find role-models within their own community.

He said that the time available for academic engagement would be low if teachers also had to deal with other problems themselves. This would also give teachers time to work on their career advancements. "Good teachers don't like working in schools in rural or hilly areas. Therefore good teachers working in these schools should be recognised and rewarded with titles like best teacher of the year or other incentives," he said. While social recognition is a long term solution, in short term, the government should also ensure incentives such as favorable transfers, additional bonus, to keep teachers motivated to come to such schools.

Achieving high performance

Although at the face of it, a comparison between private schools and state-run schools that hosts students from similar demographics show that the performance gap is not too wide, according to 'How do Government and Private Schools Differ? Findings from two large Indian states'- a study by Sangeeta Goyal and Priyanka Pandey.

Government schools run by the State school education department has shown significantly better performance than Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Schoools. The later kind comes under the purview of ADTW department like forest, railway and cantonment schools. "The division of schools by the departments prevents us from imparting the same standard of education across all schools. The inter department so-ordination is really poor," said a top official from the school education department.

School education department should devise an action plan to ensure that students from these schools get the education they need to find better career options, said Gajendrababu. "There are hamlets in Satymangalam, from where children have to walk eight miles to reach their school, thus increasing dropout. Government should comply with RTE norms and have friendly neighbourhood schools within 1 km radius across the State," he opined.

However prescribing a minimum population for location of a primary school will not provide a practical solution to all situations in the demographic and geo-physical settings of our country or state, the study by Social Watch concludes.. "Engaging non-tribal teachers from outside would end up in absenteeism. The concept of residential primary schools militates against the very right of the child to live under the tender loving care of parents. Therefore, an innovative module of primary schooling addressing these specific requirements needs to be put in place through the existing development programs (Integrated Tribal Development Schemes)," the study says.

While a complex array of arguments surround the private vs public education debate, experts suggest that implementation of a few factors, could elevate the standard of public education largely: lowering the pupil-teacher ratio, improving community engagement, creating incentive programmes for teachers, building interdepartmental co-ordination between different school managements and compensating for student's social background.