Educational Initiatives and the agenda for literacy became a compulsion with the Indian Constitution embarking upon the status of a Welfare State. Educational and literacy achievements in India have been somewhat of a mixed bag. India has 23% of the world’s population and accommodates 45% of the world’s illiterates. According to ASER Survey [14], 93.4% of the Indian Elementary School age children were enrolled in Schools in 2006. Secondary school enrolment in Brazil and Russia are 27% points higher than India. Even Sri Lanka has a youth literacy rate of 95.6%, distinctively higher than India (76.4%). Official data from Unaided Schools (Siliguri Municipal Corporation area), shows that there is very little intervention from the regulatory agencies to plug the loopholes in the system. In the same parlance, the true size of the private schooling statistics is much more than what is reflected in the official statistics. The State has not come up with an adequate number of Schools to meet the agenda of EFA. The poorer section of the Society, disenchanted with the quality of education in Government Schools also aspires to enroll their children in a private school. But their dreams remain unfulfilled due to the high costs of Schooling. There are severe issues of Profiteering by Private Schools with aggrieved Guardians seeking State intervention. Even during the COVID period of 2020-2022, State initiative and enforcements have been extremely unsatisfactory as Private Schools raised fees by over 20 percent without any justification and Guardians in the Private Sector were out of jobs and unable to pay fees. This is more evident in the Metro cities and booming townships like Siliguri, Surat, Vijayawada and Noida. The Agenda for EFA calls for a cohesive approach to eradicate literacy. This calls for efficient governance and regulations to meet the EFA Agenda of eradicating illiteracy for a new world order. Private Schools in India have different agendas, and are certainly not fine-tuned with the EFA Agenda. The debate of Public vs. Private Schooling in India, especially in light of meeting the MDGs is a challenge to our Government. It is therefore, necessary that our Government revamp its policies and programs with proper regulations in order to meet the agenda of EFA. The aim of this Paper is to scrutinize how far the EFA Agenda is being adhered to in the light of the predominance of Private Schooling in a regulatory state and efficacy of Public Schooling as a Constitutional Agenda.

Author: Sandipan Bhattacharya

Published in: London International Conference on Education (LICE-2023)

• Date of Conference: 13-15 November 2023
• DOI: 10.20533/LICE.2023.0024
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-66-2
• Conference Location: St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK