Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

98
The current tendency, even in the US, is to resort more and
more to scholarships, instead of loans (Arenson, 2004).
8. Access as a Social Issue
8.1 Education and Social Mobility
Education, especially higher education, has been an
important vehicle of social mobility in Kerala. The costs
have been borne by generations of parents and defrayed
by the State through generous budget provisions. Many
middle and upper middle class parents, who are now
running from pillar to post in search of self-financing seats
for their wards, are the beneficiaries of this State policy,
which continued well into the 1980s. The dispute about
merit seats and payment seats is merely a scuffle for sharing
of the spoils among the victors.
This realisation is gradually setting in among the victims of
the system. For a long time, the socially and economically
backward sections have been fed on the hope that they too
could partake of the gains of the so-called ‘Kerala Model’, if
only their children attend school and study well. Now, they
see that you have to go to expensive private schools and
afford private tuition as well. Each time, they move near the
goal, the posts are shifted.
8.2 Equity and Excellence
Equity and excellence are often posed as opposing
objectives, to be offset against each other. This is not
tenable. If the entire community of engineers in a society
comes from the top 5 per cent or even 20 per cent of the
population, how can it attain the excellence it is capable
of? This is especially relevant in a competitive world.
So, a beginning must be made at the very beginning.
It has to be ensured that all children, irrespective of the
educational or economic status of their parents, get a level
playing field. They should be able to receive all the learning
experience that the curriculum prescribes in the classroom
itself. Private tuition should become not only unnecessary
but also bothersome. Any child ought to be able to take any
examination, including the CEE, and display her/his full
potential, without recourse to private tuition, based purely
on the strength of classroom learning experience. This is
quite an ambitious goal, but not impossible. This can be
attained by reforming the curriculum, by strengthening
the public schools, and by training and empowering the
teachers. Decentralisation and the emergence of panchayati
raj institutions offer an opportunity and a challenge.
There was a time when schools were started as societal
enterprises, with even the most humble chipping in with a
handful of rice or a basketful of coconuts. There are some
lessons there.
9. Concluding Observations
Chapter 6 has been an extended discussion on the need to
consolidate on the already very considerable gains which
have been made on the educational front, and stresses the
importance of paying attention to issues of quality, access and
the functional orientation of education, with particular reference
to technical education, so that this vital component of human
development may serve as an impetus to economic growth
in a mutually reinforcing relationship. The neglect, relatively
speaking, of higher education in Kerala was not felt for some
time. However, dramatic changes in the labour markets around
the world, because of technological change and particularly
labour migration, has started to impinge on employment
opportunities. These changes carry important signals for the
education system. Education needs to respond to the increasing
demands for adaptable workers, who can readily acquire new
skills rather than for workers with a fixed set of technical skills.
Specific skills can be imparted more efficiently on the job than
in a training institution. There are already a good number of
institutions for technical education; the majority of them in the
private sector, and with new initiatives like ‘Technical Education
Quality Improvement Programme’, it may be possible to
improve the quality of technical education.
The fact that private investment flows into technical and
management education should not be a deterrent to good
quality general education, where social return outweighs
private return. It may well be suggested that public investment
can be routed into good quality general education, especially
basic and applied natural sciences and social sciences. 13
As is often the case, some of the discouraging features of
Kerala’s socio-economic landscape today are a product
of what one might call the 'excesses of success.' The next
chapter deals with these issues, with specific reference to the
problem of educated unemployment and aspects of female
disadvantage, which are not commonly picked up by human
development indicators.
13 This does not imply that technical and management education should be left entirely to the private sector on the ground that
private investment to meet the demand from students is flowing into these segments; the equity dimension is important as
pointed out earlier.