A comprehensive analysis of the reservation in private schools under the Right to Education Act, providing a seven-step model for 25% implementation.

Author / Edited by:
Shekhar Mittal and Parth J Shah

James Tooley's research is a journey into the history of Indian education, drawing comparisons between the shutting down of indigenous schools then, on Macaulay's recommendations, and the closure of budget private schools today under the RTE, for being “not good enough”. He explores the well-intentioned policies, and their faulty premises - that people cannot be trusted to make judgements about what is better or worse for their own children; and suggests that we take a leaf out of Gandhi’s book and resist the closures, to win our educational independence.

The Indian education system is riddled with multiple challenges, especially with respect to financing and delivery. Centre for Civil Society proposes School Choice in education, i.e. public funds should follow students and not schools. This would enable competition among schools to attract students and funds, thereby requiring schools to be more responsive to students' needs. The monograph on School Vouchers: Direct Benefit Transfers in Education gives an overview of the challenges in this space and argues for the suitability of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) to Indian education.

Significant work has been done on de facto operations of state functionaries (World Bank 2004; Posani and Aiyar 2009; Aiyar, Chaudhuri and Wallack 2010; Pritchett 2018; Centre for Civil Society 2019). But there is limited research on the de jure framework for K-12 education in India, especially for private schools. Information on the roles of state education functionaries for public and private schools is scattered. Clarity on these roles is necessary to establish sharp lines of accountability.

Restrictions on for-profit education in India mainly stem from Supreme Court verdicts, Model and state Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Rules, and board affiliation norms.

For both, K-12 and higher education, the following two court judgements regulate the ability of educational institutions to run for-profit.
Unnikrishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh, 1993: The Court established education as a symbol of charity and disallowed educational institutions from engaging in “profiteering.”1

Education in India is a concurrent subject. Both Union and state governments can regulate school education. This has led to varying rule-sets across states. We compiled existing rule-sets for all states in India using legislation listed on the State Department website and online sources including Laws of India, Manupatra, Bare Acts Live and Latest Laws.

There are inherent information asymmetry problems in education that are characterised using the lens of the principal-agent framework. Principal-agent problems exist when the principal hires an agent to act on her behalf but the interests of the principal and the agent are not perfectly aligned. This necessitates that the principal has information to monitor the agent’s effort. Typically, in education, there is information asymmetry between parent-child, teacher-child, parent-school/teacher, parent-administrator, administrator-administrator, and administrator-teacher.