Shopping for Schooling in Seelampur Janata Colony

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Parth J Shah of the Centre for Civil Society says "the right to education cannot become meaningful unless it becomes the right to education of choice." He is an economic libertarian who believes the application of free market principles can deliver quality schooling even to slum children. So I went to Seelampur in North-east Delhi, for the launch of the second edition of school vouchers.

CCS received 1,600 applications after a door-to-door call, over the course of a month, on 1,900 municipal girl students in seven wards with a concentration of Muslims, Dalits and tribals. Of these 400 were selected by lottery for entitlement to annual fee vouchers ranging from Rs 3,600 for Class II to Rs 4,000 for Class V. They have a choice of 35 private schools. The fees are funded through donations. The security-enhanced vouchers are supplied and processed by Accor Services, that provider of meal tickets.

"Fund students, not schools," is the idea behind vouchers. Shah wants to demonstrate that given choice poor parents will fly for quality and opt out of municipal schools. Instead of standing in the way, the state to pay whoever delivers better. If state schools cannot make the grade, they must fold up. Baladevan Rangaraju, CCS's man behind the project says the Delhi administration can get better value too as private schools can teach at half the monthly cost - Rs 900-1,250 - of government schools.

At Welcome, I find Sonia Sharma happy at her daughter getting a ticket to improved teaching in a private school. But many were anxious. Jannatul Firdaus hopes her daughter will be able to get back to a municipal school once the four-year voucher programme runs out. Najma Begum wants a admission to a state school assured after Class V. Most of the women are illiterate. Will they be able to exercise choice when they lack the capacity to make informed decisions?

CCS had launched the first edition of school vouchers in 2007. That was a three-year programme covering 408 students from all over Delhi, male and female. An evaluation by the Centre for Media Studies found they had done better than their peers in municipal schools.

Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit was present at that ceremony. This time education minister Arvinder Lovely declined the invitation, we are told, and the state congress president J P Aggarwal failed to turn up. Political sensitivity may have been a reason. School vouchers will not compel state schools to improve if they do not compete for funds based on performance. Cutting of funds is not an option when school teachers are so unionised.

Private teachers might be more diligent but are the cubby holes in slums better than municipal schools? To keep costs down they have to cut down on frills like play grounds. If the government provides land at a discount, it will have to keep a lid on fees and we know how difficult that is.

Meera Samson of CORD, a group that studies the problems of the down-and-out, says its research on private schools did not suggest that they can substitute government schooling on a national scale, particularly for those at the bottom of the social heap. Education vouchers may be useful in some situations but it is government schools that set the standard. CORD's study of a Haryana district saw private schools being forced to improve their offering by the more functional government schools there. But the quality of private schools was found to be "extremely low" in a UP district where government schools were dysfunctional.

"I do not believe in this abstract notion that if there is competition quality will improve," says Vimala Ramachandran of Educational Resource Unit. "Look at the health sector."

Rolling back the state from schooling is no cure for its underperformance just as we cannot give up on it because of poor policing.