Context: In first of its kind report by Central Square Foundation based on government data, “The State of the Sector Report: Private Schools in India” bring forth the rise of the private sector in school education
Key highlights of the report

• Nearly 50% (12 crore) students in India are enrolled in private school while the government schools’ enrolment has come down to 52.2% in 2017 from that of 74.1% in 1978.
• 45.5% students in private schools pay less than Rs 500 a month as fees and yet the sector contributes approximately Rs 1.75 lakh crores to the economy.
• Enrolment in private unaided schools rose sharply following the economic liberalisation that raised incomes in the early nineties.
• Enrolment grew by 9% between 1998 and 2007, and by 16.6% between 2007 and 2017. If considered on its own, it is the third largest school system in the world, closely behind China’s school system and Indian’s public education system.
• 16 states have over 50% of students in private schools. The following 6 states have the greatest enrolment share.

Challenges
Factors driving low learning levels in private school is because of

• Lack of information around school quality with the only independent markers being the Board examinations.
• With 60% of the private unaided schools ending before the grade board exam testing, it becomes difficult for parents to judge the quality of their schooling options. This means that schools are less likely to invest in learning-focused but likely to spend on things that are observable by parents but may not lead to much improvement in learning – like computer labs.
• Also, 42.3% of private unaided schools offer English as a language of instruction as opposed to 10.4% of government schools. However, schools which are English medium on paper may not be so in practice.
• Also, it may be hard for parents to judge how much their children are learning in school in absolute terms, or how good their school is in comparison to similar schools.
• There is insufficient evidence around the implementation on-ground of several regulations related to education, their context fit to private schools, and their impact on learning.
• Other reasons are teaching quality, students’ socioeconomic background and school fee level.

Suggestions

• Create a universal learning indicator to help parents compare learning performance across schools and make informed decisions.
• Develop a pragmatic accreditation framework that factors in constraints of low fee schools and state capacity to implement while focusing on learning outcomes and child safety.
• Establish an independent regulatory agency for the private school sector.
• Review the non-profit mandate for the education sector and existing fee regulations to attract investment.
• Strengthen RTE Act Section 12(1)(c) which mandates 25% reservations for underprivileged children to ensure more robust targeting and fee reimbursements.
• Stronger targeting mechanisms for disadvantaged sections wishing to participate in the scheme are needed, and transparent and direct fee transfers to parents rather than reimbursements to schools will create greater accountability around fund release.
• Funding:  As suggested by NITI Ayog in its Strategy Paper for New India @75, Government spending on education as a whole should be increased to at least 6% of GDP by 2022. So that maximum student are cover under it.