Preface:

So, back in June 2020, I had written a research & analysis piece on the subject of “What Education 4.0 needs to be”. A couple of weeks after that, XXXXXX (a ‘national’ newspaper not to be named) got in touch with me to write a “comprehensive & positive” (quoting from their WhatsApp message) article about high school education in India using the “Delhi success story” as an example and that this would be a “paid contribution”.

Now, I have written several pieces, expert view pieces, op-eds, contributing comments, etc for national newspapers and in none of them did me or the newspaper even talk about money. So when the offer for money was made upfront, I was a little surprised but I didn’t really think much of it back then…

I do so now… and by the end of this article, you will know why too.

Anyway, I really did not have enough information / data about K12 education in India or Delhi for that matter back then, so I passed on the article…

End of Preface

Now, about a month or so ago, I ended up speaking to a principal of a CBSE school in Delhi. She had been part of a large project that Whistling Woods had done back in 2010-12 wherein we had written the curriculum for Media Studies as an academic elective for the 11th & 12th grade of the CBSE board as well as undertaken teacher training. She was one of the people from the original pilot project, and we’ve been in semi-frequent communication since, bumping into each other at education conferences and commenting on each other’s writing, etc.

Anyway she messaged me with a comment about another article I had written about “Finding your Passion” and we ended up having a nice chat about various things.

One of the things that came up in the conversation was me talking about how Delhi seems to have ‘done well’ with its K-12 public education setup. She reacted strongly to this statement of mine, refuting it vehemently saying that the AAP govt had done nothing of the sort.

That came as a bit of a surprise to me because she is/was a supporter of AAP.

Anyway, one of the things she mentioned was that there was only talk about education but no real work done in education in Delhi. And anecdotal evidence by way of photographs was being passed off as a sweeping revolution through ‘paid media articles’. She urged me to take a detailed look.

So I did.

And the results are not good at all…

In 2014, the % of students in pvt schools was 38% of all high school students in Delhi. In 2019, it was 45%. A 7% marketshare gain by private schools in just 5 years means that there is a stark reduction in the enrolment percentages of new students in government schools vis-a-vis private schools, in these 5 yrs. Why?

Further, while the pass percentages of 12th grade govt school students has been about the same between 2015-2020, the absolute number of students appearing for them has been reducing significantly consistently, as under:
2014 – 1.7L
2015 – 1.4L
2016 – 1.3L
2017 – 1.2L
2018 – 1.1L

Now, the question to ask is that – in an ever-growing student population, why would the number of students taking the 12th std board exams go down?

Clearly it was because the students were being stopped from reaching the 12th grade.

And when you look at the 10th std pass % in Delhi’s public schools, you see that it has crashed from 99% in 2014 to 69% in 2018.

Further, the pass percentages of students of Standard 9-11 over the years also tell a story:
In 2016, 9th std pass % was ONLY 52%.
in 2017, 10th std pass % was ONLY 69%
In 2018, 11th std pass % was 80%.

Based on the above three data points, if 100 students attempted the 9th std exams, only 29 out of those attempted the 12th std exams in 2019. This is TERRIBLE.

So, basically in order to maintain the pass % of 12th grade students, they are being held back in STDs 9, 10 & 11.

That is NOT a revolution in education. This is fraudulent manipulation of numbers and students lives.

Next, we look at the number of schools & enrolment.

The number of schools has remained constant at approx 3000 over the past 5 yrs, give or take 10-15 schools.

And enrolment in Govt schools has dropped from 16L in 2014 to 14.5L in 2018, despite a 3% growth in overall school enrolment. Clearly government schools are not being preferred by students & parents. Wonder why?

Next, let’s look at school operations.

Govt schools are operating with only 57% regular teachers on rolls (it was a WTF! 🙄 moment for me) with the rest being filled up by guest teachers, who are highly inconsistent as they teach only when they are free from their main jobs.

Approx 60% schools do not have a full time principal as of now. In all these schools, one of the teachers is on an ‘acting principal’ role. This was the 2nd ‘WTF! 😳’ moment for me.

I tried to find data contradictory to the above online but found nothing. All I found were a few photographs of new classrooms with colourful benches (the same 5 photographs) in articles by many media outlets about how Delhi’s school education is getting better. It was key to note that none of those media outlets had any data or numbers in their articles but was filled with comments & quotes by AAP leaders.

Now, after looking at all of the above, I am left wondering where is the great ‘revolution’ that is supposed to have happened in public school education in Delhi? Clearly and sadly, There isn’t one!
In-fact, things are much worse today, than they were in 2015… 🙄😏

P.S. Happy to receive data to the contrary, if anyone has any…

References:
The data is from many articles and reports, most of it is from the Economic Survey Report commissioned by the Delhi Government itself in 2019-20 about the period 2015-2019 and another one by Praja Foundation, an NGO working in the education sector which was released in 2019. (You can google and find both of these easily online).