BEGINNING IN THE MIDDLE

Begin in the middle and go on till you reach the beginning. – Chinese Proverb

This paper was presented at a conference of NGOs working for elimination of child labour. It argues for the importance of middle school or Universalisation of Elementary Education as against mere Universalisation of Primary Education.

All know the Indian Constitution guides states to provide free and compulsory education up to the age of 14. However, when implementing this policy, the emphasis is always on providing schooling up to the age of 11 only or what is generally known as Universalisation of Primary Education (UPE). This has been the practical goal of almost all state Governments and of international agencies such as UNICEF. The argument has been that, first things come first and one cannot extend schooling upto age 14 unless UPE has been achieved.

The argument put forth here is that: both in theory and practice this will limit education to the primary level, that too, of a very poor quality. Further, hundred percent capacity building for middle school level education is a must to achieve UPE and abolish child labour.

Children have been known to start working as early as the age of three. A significant number of girl children start work from the age of six or seven. However, the great majority of child workers belong to the age group of 11-14. So, even if schooling upto the primary level is available to all children, majority of working children continue to work because there is no middle school for them.

The capacity of the Indian school system at various levels is roughly as follows:

Installed capacity for primary school - 50%

Installed capacity for middle school - 25%

Installed capacity for High School - 10%

The percentage of children passing out of high school is 50%. These of course are average figures and a great deal of variation exists given - regional, urban, rural, gender, social grouping considerations. What it infers is that, 75% of children in the age group of 11 + have no option but to become a child worker.

Given this, talking about abolishing child labour is meaningless. The situation is even worse if one looks at primary school education in this context. The fact that there is no middle school available for 75% of the children has a tendency to lower the pass percentage of the primary school. In fact it will tend to equalise seats available in the middle school. This of course will not happen only at class V level, but will be seen down line. That is why there is such a high dropout rate at class II and class III levels.

This makes primary school itself a token affair, particularly in rural and poor communities. The total enrolment drive at class I is also meaningless as everyone knows that by class II and III most of them will drop out. The fact of the matter is: both enrolments and dropouts are on paper only. As elicited in the earlier article, 'The Teacher and Child Labour', this lowers the quality of the primary school and the standing of the primary school teacher in the community.

For any school education to be possible, schooling for 11-14 year olds or at middle school is an absolute must and not something that may or may not follow primary school. In fact, it is entirely possible to conceive of significant self-learning taking place at home and in the community up to the age of 11. But it may be rather difficult for scholastic learning to occur without the assistance and support of a formal institution like school, library, or other learning facilities beyond age 11 or 12.

Starting school at an early age is relatively new in the history of education. Till the 19th century most schooling began after the age of 9, 10 or 11. In India, children went to a Gurukul around this age for a period of 7 years. Sixteen years of schooling is a phenomenon of the 20th century. The firming of this phenomenon is in a round about way also linked to the emergence of nuclear families in urban areas. Here the requirement of jobs and government jobs at that, in the colonial context, gave rise to early schooling.

Presently the system has little to do with the requirement of learning by children. For example, children learn language and communication skills mainly in the community. Even practical arithmetic is learnt in shop transactions. However, the emergence of primary schools became a role model and demand for early school became a universal demand. In fact the camps run by M. V. Foundation illustrate this very well. Here 9, 10, 11 year olds pick up the primary school curriculum requirements within a matter of months. This is possible because these children have been developing their learning abilities outside schools.

The M. V. Foundation camps also underline the fact that if formal school is not made available to children beyond this age group, they will end up as working children with little scope of improving their knowledge base. A formal middle school is a must whether one goes from a formal primary school channel or from a primary school level skill base learnt in an informal setting.

The absence of middle school is mainly a question of resources. A middle school requires a building with several rooms, trained teachers with proper salaries etc. The state is reluctant to allocate resources for children of the poor unless there is pressure from the people as demonstrated by Kerala.

Therefore, the advocacy programme for elimination of child labour through education must include universalisation of elementary education (UEE) instead of universalisation of primary education (UPE). Without this there is a danger that the programme with all good intentions, may not succeed.