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Global edu-business pushing for school privatisation is in flagrant violation of the RTE Act.
EI has warned that transnational companies such as Pearson and Bridge International Academies were ramping up their takeover of schools for the poor in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. It spelled trouble since a vast majority of people in India still survived on less than 1 GBP a day.
Union federation Education International (EI) is raising its voice against privatisation of government schools in Hyderabad. It said that the privatisation by big businesses is in “flagrant violation” of Indian education law.
EI warned that transnational companies such as Pearson and Bridge International Academies were ramping up their takeover of schools for the poor. A report revealed that more than 50% of children are currently enrolled in private schools in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states, while in their shared capital city Hyderabad the figure exceeds 80%.
Further, EI said Hyderabad has become a “laboratory for global edu-business,” with a staggering 1,300 “low-fee” private schools clustered in and around Hyderabad’s Old City district.
These low-fee private schools operate out of residential buildings, with untrained, low-paid teachers giving scripted lessons.
The edu-businesses are backed by the World Bank, Britain’s Department for International Development and a trio of IT tycoons — Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg and Michael Dell — through their ostensibly charitable trusts.
Along with venture capital firms such as Gray Ghost, they offer school proprietors high-interest loans to scale up and start-up funds to set up franchises and create profit-making private schools.
They are looking for models that are easily “scalable” to much larger operations, said the report by Sangeeta Kamat from the University of Massachusetts, Carol Anne Spreen from New York University and Indivar Jonnalagadda of the Hyderabad Urban Lab.
While it is debatable that private schools offer better quality of education compared to government schools, but with 70% of Indians living on less than £1.50 a day — and more than 40% on less than £1 — EI said the push toward private schools for the poor is a matter of serious concern.
EI project director Angelo Gavrielatos warned: “The commercialisation of education is in flagrant violation of India’s Right to Education Act, and will deepen inequality and undermine an already ailing education system.”
The model has already been applied in Kenya, Liberia and Uganda, where in May BIA harassed EI researcher Curtis Riep and had him arrested on spurious charges.
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