Corporate Sector Can Play Important Role in Achieving RTE

NEW DELHI, India, 14 December 2010 –  Seventy-four per cent of the  top 500 Indian companies are involved in some form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)  activity and the education sector is the most preferred area of involvement for majority of these companies.The Right to Free and Compulsory Education and the role corporate sector can play in helping to achieve it was the theme of the conference jointly organised by UNICEF, CII and TSMG.

These were the among the many key findings of a study presented at a conference jointly organised by the UNICEF, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Tata Strategic Management Group (TSMG).

The conference focussed on the theme ‘Universalisation of Education: Role of Corporate India’ and deliberated at length India’s Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) and the role corporate sector can play in successfully achieve it across the country.

Spread over three panel discussions, the issues related to quality of education in India’s primary schools, teacher workload, absenteeism and the need for monitoring mechanisms were discussed.

The conference was attended by major corporate and foundations active in implementing CSR projects in the field of education.  The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and prominent NGOs were also part of the consultation.

“The estimated spend by top 500 companies in India is around Rs. 4000 crores (US$ 880 million),” said Mr. Raman Kalyanakrishnan of TSMG, while presenting the findings of the study.  “Only four per cent of companies release annual CSR reports,” he added.

The study, part of developing a Toolkit for corporates to help them structure their CSR activities in education sector, was commissioned through TSMG and aimed at identifying models for business houses to begin their engagement in strengthening education sector in India.

The Toolkit ‘Business as a Partner in India’s Right to Education’ also has a collection of key features of the RTE, an outline of the roles that central and state governments need to play to implement RTE in the country. UNICEF models like the Child Friendly Schools, monitoring and evaluation tools and checklists for ensuring minimum standards in schools also form part of the tool kit.

Releasing the Toolkit, UNICEF Representative, Ms. Karin Hulshof, addressing the corporates said, “The knowledge and skills children acquire today will have a direct impact on the success of your businesses in the years to come.”

"Successful public private partnerships play a key role in reaching the goal of having every child in school and learning well,” Ms Hulshof added.

In her keynote address, Ms. Kiran Bhatty, National Coordinator of RTE with the NCPCR, provided an overview of the RTE Act, its legal basis as well as the process to seek redressal of the complaints where the RTE provisions were violated.  Ms. Bhatty emphasized that corporates could play a useful role in raising awareness of the provisions of the Act among their own employees and networks.

Citing a comparative example on the quality of education in government and private runschools, Colonel Gopal Karunakaran, Project Director of HCL Schools stated that 20 per cent of private schools in India were catering to 40 per cent of school-going children.

“Despite the higher expenses involved, parents preferred to send their children to private schools,” Mr. Karunakaran added.

 Mr. Clement Chauvet, the Chief Resource Mobilisation at UNICEF, explained the contents of the Toolkit and how it could be effectively used by the corporates. 

“It is a priority for UNICEF that RTE becomes a reality for every child in India. Every individual could take a pledge to learn about the RTE and get at least one out-of-school child back into school,” Mr. Chauvet added.

Ms. Urmila Sarkar, Chief of Education at UNICEF, while addressing the gathering, said getting 8 million out-of-school children back to schools in age appropriate classes was the biggest challenge in making the Right to Education a success in India.

CII along with UNICEF and TSMG plan to hold more such consultations in different regions of the country in 2011 to build a movement to engage the corporate sector in taking up implementation of the Right to Education. 

In October 2010, UNICEF had launched a online campaign Awaaz Do to initiate and promote a dialogue around Right to Education provisions. Till date, the campaign has garnered over 125,000 sign-ups.

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No Child Left Behind Act

No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, signed into law by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the central federal law in pre-collegiate education. The ESEA, first enacted in 1965 and previously reauthorized in 1994, encompasses Title I, the federal government's flagship aid program for disadvantaged students.

Coming at a time of wide public concern about the state of education, the NCLB legislation set in place requirements that reached into virtually every public school in America. It expanded the federal role in education and took particular aim at improving the educational lot of disadvantaged students, experts from many countries have been included to tutor the students. These offshore Online tutors have helped the children of America learn better at low cost.

At the core of the No Child Left Behind Act were a number of measures designed to drive broad gains in student achievement and to hold states and schools more accountable for student progress. They represented significant changes to the education landscape (U.S. Department of Education, 2001).

• Annual Testing: By the 2005-06 school year, states were required to begin testing students in grades 3-8 annually in reading and mathematics. By 2007-08, they had to tests students in science at least once in elementary, middle, and high school. The tests had to be aligned with state academic standards. A sample of 4th and 8th graders in each state also had to participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress testing program in reading and math every other year to provide a point of comparison for state test results. Testing is essential to judge level of knowledge retained by every student.
• Academic Progress: States were required to bring all students up to the "proficient" level on state tests by the 2013-14 school year. Individual schools had to meet state "adequate yearly progress" targets toward this goal (based on a formula spelled out in the law) for both their student populations as a whole and for certain demographic subgroups. If a school receiving federal Title I funding failed to meet the target two years in a row, it would be provided technical assistance and its students would be offered a choice of other public schools to attend. Students in schools that failed to make adequate progress three years in a row also were offered supplemental educational services, including private tutoring. For continued failures, a school would be subject to outside corrective measures, including possible governance changes.
• Report Cards: Starting with the 2002-03 school year, states were required to furnish annual report cards showing a range of information, including student-achievement data broken down by subgroup and information on the performance of school districts. Districts must provide similar report cards showing school-by-school data.
• Teacher Qualifications: By the end of the 2005-06 school year, every teacher in core content areas working in a public school had to be "highly qualified" in each subject he or she taught. Under the law, "highly qualified" generally meant that a teacher was certified and demonstrably proficient in his or her subject matter. Beginning with the 2002-03 school year, all new teachers hired with federal Title I money had to be "highly qualified." By the end of the 2005-06 school year, all school paraprofessionals hired with Title I money must have completed at least two years of college, obtained an associate's degree or higher, or passed an evaluation to demonstrate knowledge and teaching ability.
• Reading First: The act created a new competitive-grant program called Reading First, funded at $1.02 billion in 2004, to help states and districts set up "scientific, research-based" reading programs for children in grades K-3 (with priority given to high-poverty areas). A smaller early-reading program sought to help states better prepare 3- to 5-year-olds in disadvantaged areas to read. The program's funding was later cut drastically by Congress amid budget talks.
• Funding Changes: Through an alteration in the Title I funding formula, the No Child Left Behind Act was expected to better target resources to school districts with high concentrations of poor children. The law also included provisions intended to give states and districts greater flexibility in how they spent a portion of their federal allotments.

Given its scope and detail, the No Child Left Behind Act was the source of considerable controversy and debate in the education community. As the law’s effects began to be felt, some educators and policymakers questioned the feasibility and fairness of its goals and time frames.

An opinion poll released in December 2003 found that nearly half of school principals and superintendents view the federal legislation as either politically motivated or aimed at undermining public schools. Likewise, a study Policy Analysis for California suggested that, because of its requirement to evaluate school progress on the basis of demographic subgroups, the law might disproportionately penalize schools with diverse student populations (Public Agenda, 2003; Policy Analysis for California Education, 2003).

Concerns about the law grew, particularly concerning its rules surrounding adequate yearly progress and the goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2013-14. Traditionally high-performing schools made headlines as they failed to meet their set rates of improvement, and states saw increasingly high rates of failure to meet the rising benchmarks. By 2010,38 percent of schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress, up from 29 percent in 2006.In 2011, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as part of his campaign to get Congress to rewrite the law, issued dire warnings that 82 percent of schools would be labeled "failing" that year. The numbers didn't turn out quite that high, but several states did see failure rates over 50 percent (McNeil, Aug. 3, 2011).

requested waivers from the rules. In the summer of 2011, Mr. Duncan promised to create a waiver option for all states, though it would have strings attached requiring those states to adopt some of the administration's education priorities (McNeil, Aug. 9, 2011). In Congress, meanwhile, members from both parties saw a need to rewrite the law, but agreeing on the shape of a new version of that law was slow in coming (Klein, Jan. 16, 2011; Sept. 14, 2011).

The No Child Left Behind Act has had advocates, with some education leaders expressing support for the law’s stringent accountability mandates, characterizing them as vital levers of change, inclusiveness, and transparency of results. The laws’ ultimate effectiveness, some observers have argued, may depend on how closely states and schools stick to its principles of "tough accountability" (Education Trust, 2003; West & Peterson, 2003).

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