Making ‘Quality Education Accessible’ to All: Policy Perspective on School Education in Punjab

The school education system of Punjab is at the crossroads amid four important policy and context changes, viz. neo-liberal economic reforms, National Education Policy 2020, a decade of implementation of RTE Act and ‘covid-19’ shocks. In this context, this policy brief, based on various datasets (like DISE, NSS, ASER), critically examines the school education scenario in Punjab. The study highlights that the dismal learning outcomes, crumbling teacher education and questionable working conditions of teachers emerge as major challenges in the context of improving the quality. Also, the private schools, which have proliferated significantly during the neo-liberal reforms era with parental inclination, have led to reproduce social inequalities. Moreover, given that burden of the private school education in terms of household expenditure is very high which makes these schools increasingly unaffordable, it becomes imperative to regulate these schools with comprehensive policy and perspective by specifying stringent guidelines and regulations, particularly in terms of fee structure. Besides the policy brief also highlights an urgent need for adopting a multi-pronged strategy for efficaciously improving the quality of education at government schools. The closing down of physical classrooms and its replacement with ‘online education in distance mode’ has further widened the prevailing social inequalities as students from underprivileged sections are suffering the most. To revive education in the post-Covid period, the policy brief emphasizes that the Covid-19 predicament can be visualized as an opportunity to construct an inclusive education system, inter-alia, by beholding the public trust in government schools.