How long before PPP bridges the education demand supply gap?

24 May 2010
By Deepali Sathe
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The Union Human Resource Minister, Kapil Sibal has taken it upon himself to completely overhaul the Indian
education system… a good and long-awaited move. The Right to Education Act (RTE) was indeed a major
development in the scheme of things. This is another move towards making education universal, as primary
education, something that many of us take for granted is actually out of bounds for millions others.

Recently the Minister talked about the need to recruit 2 million teachers to achieve the goals set out by the
Act. The other requirement would be more schools… schools where students are actually taught, and not
just decrepit buildings. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also expressed a desire to build 6500 ‘model’
schools. This is where the private players come in. That the Government will need help from the private
sector to successfully implement RTE, hardly needs an intelligent analysis. What is debatable is – Will the
PPP (Public-Private Partnership) work? How will it work? And how long do we have to wait before it makes
an impact? The problem, we cannot afford to lose any more time.

Rather than wait for policies to fall into place, what the private sector needs to do is adopt the already
existing schools and raise them to the minimum standards. Speed, experimentation, innovation and result-
oriented efforts are essentially required for such efforts to succeed. Two such examples to illustrate the point
– Citizens Foundation and Pudami Schools. Look forward to receiving links to many more of these.