Food for the taught up’s meals only schools highlight a deeper problem of misaligned incentives in basic education

Food for the taught up’s meals only schools highlight a deeper problem of misaligned incentives in basic education

Midday meals are no doubt a great education innovation in India, well-fed children learn better, and for poor parents, a free meal for their child is an incentive to send the child to school. But what if there are no lessons to be learnt? A TOI report highlighted how shiksha mitra Neelam Rathore manages students aged six to 12 at a Firozabad, UP government primary school all by herself. Records show a healthy enrolment even as this school has become only a midday meal booth, and there are hundreds of others like it across UP. And the problem extends across several states.

Last year a Unesco analysis of the Unified District Information System for Education data found around 7% of schools to be single-teacher schools, with as many as 89% of these in rural areas. Likewise, of the 19% of schools that were estimated to have vacancies, 69% were in rural areas. Bihar at 56%, Jharkhand at 40% and UP at 33% topped the vacancies table. Wouldn’t a single qualified teacher be better than an untrained para-teacher? Yes, but not if the teacher has to cook meals. UP’s basic education minister Sandeep Singh, responding to the TOI report, said the government will identify schools operated by shiksha mitras and appoint permanent teachers there soon, while the mitras will continue as support staff. But every day until this happens, students at these schools will go without learning anything.

A general problem is state-level politicians’ low incentives for improving local schools – welfare, quotas and public works draw more votes. Delhi’s government schools are an example to the contrary. The government is effectively a local government, and its incentives for improving government schools are high, because parents are voters. In other states, empowering local governments to run schools, and giving service users, parents, a voice is an experiment worth conducting.