Need to redefine the public-private play for improving India’s school education outcome

Providing better school education in India largely hinges on forging strong public-private affiliations. Having such close synergies in place is important for implementing overarching reforms in the pre-school to K12 (Kindergarten-to-Class 12) education system. Such associations also become imperative when it comes to the vision of establishing our economy as the third-largest in the world by the year 2030.

The proposed New Education Policy (NEP) also emphasizes on the working of such relationships for achieving desired goals for pre-school to K12 (Kindergarten-to-Class 12) education system in India. However, the approach to PPP participation is something that needs to be looked at with completely new lenses in order to ensure the workability of forging associations with private sector players.

The government recognizes that our economy's march towards the $10 trillion milestone will necessitate the creation of vast pools of knowledge resources. As the world's youngest nation and home to one-fifth of the world's youth, our country is at a huge advantage of positively reaping its demographic dividends. Half of India's population of 1.3 billion is below the age of 25, and a quarter is below the age of 14.

Currently, most of the PPP projects in early school learning are primarily focussed on attendance and the total number of students with no real emphasis on the actual education of the student. Unfortunately, it is not result-oriented and is not based on the extent of the learning outcome of the student or her/his overall progress. Thus, there is an immediate need to create and operate transparent assessment systems on online platforms to be able to continuously gauge and track the learning progress of a student along with an enticing incentivization plan to reward success. Such a result-oriented, incentivized plan is currently missing from the existing PPP framework in the education sector.

The School Education Quality Index (SEQI) report by Centre's policy think-tank Niti Aayog reinforces the need for "system-level interventions" across the entire school education system and stresses on the need to focus on creating efficient governance structures, providing necessary infrastructure and ensuring equitable academic opportunities. Creating a complete school infrastructure requires a lot more than merely setting up a physical structure. Safe school buildings, airy classrooms, open playgrounds, modern laboratories, and relevant libraries are among the most important aspects of school infrastructure.

The NEP talks about establishing school complexes by bringing together multiple primary schools. Implementation of this proposal will entail massive school infrastructure development in the near future. Following the most common type of PPP involving large infrastructure projects in the education sector - Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) will attract serious players from the private sector.

Education, being extremely critical to modern society, needs significant development efforts that can be boosted with the help of the private sector. The willingness and involvement of private players to participate in public sector initiatives and to become the government's partner for transforming education will determine the final outcome and also the overall pace of implementation of reforms. At the same time, the government must also recognize the private sector as an active partner for making its school education reform agenda broader and more time-bound.

In this context, providing an 'infrastructure status' to education can become a large catalyst in attracting greater interest from the private sector.

(Rustom Kerawalla is the Chairman of Ampersand Group. The opinions expressed are the personal views of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)