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TRANSCRIPT
Not Free to Teach:
The Consequences of Neo-liberal Education
Policy in Maharashtra and England
Mary Compton
MA International Labour and Trade Union Studies
Ruskin College, Oxford
Open University Validation Services
June 2012
21,885 words
1
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the students, tutors and staff on the
MAILTUS course at Ruskin College for their comradeship, humour
and help. In particular I am grateful to Ian Manborde, who has
helped me patiently and unstintingly to think more clearly. Special
thanks are also due to Susan Robertson of Bristol University, who
introduced me to a whole new field of study, as well as helping me
to write and think in a more scholarly way.
Above all, I want to thank Ramesh Joshi, Simantini Dhuru,
Balkrishna Paktar and Nirmala Charles, who opened doors for me
into the education world of Maharashtra and looked after me while
I was there, and the many teachers who allowed me to enter that
world for a little while, and, I hope, trusted me to be true to their
stories.
2
Table of Contents
Not Free to Teach: ...........................................................................1
The Consequences of Neo-liberal Education Policy in Maharashtra
and England......................................................................................1
Acknowledgements...........................................................................2
List of Tables and Figures.................................................................6
Abstract.............................................................................................9
1. Introduction................................................................................11
1.1 Why India? Why England?....................................................12
1.2 Maharashtra and England.....................................................13
1.3 Research Questions...............................................................14
2.1 Framing the Research..........................................................18
2.2 The Global Scale....................................................................18
2.3 The Neo-liberalisation of Education.....................................21
2.4 The Globalisation of the Right to Education.........................22
2.5 From the Global to the National............................................25
2.6 The Educational Policy Landscape in the two Sites.............29
2.7 The Local Level: How neo-liberal Policies impact on Teachers
and Schools..................................................................................31
Year.................................................................................................32
Reform.............................................................................................32
Effect on Teachers...........................................................................32
Year.................................................................................................34
Reform.............................................................................................34
2.8 Resistance to Neo-liberal Reform..........................................35
3
2.9 Conclusion.............................................................................36
3: Methodology................................................................................38
3.1 Positionality...........................................................................38
3.2 Ethical Considerations...........................................................40
3.3 Research Methods.................................................................42
3.3 Research Design ..................................................................45
3.4 Research Design....................................................................46
Subject.........................................................................................49
Place............................................................................................49
Questionnaire..................................................................................49
Authors............................................................................................50
Topics Covered................................................................................50
Interivews 9 – 22 January 2012.......................................................51
Documentary evidence....................................................................51
Chapter 4 Neo-liberal Solutions to the Education for All Problem in
Maharashtra....................................................................................53
4.1. Right to Education Rhetoric promoting Neo-liberal
Solutions: “What is this Kind of Strategy?”.................................53
4.2 Not Free to Teach (or “What the Officers see in their Dreams
at Midnight”)...............................................................................63
4.3 “The Aim should be to understand what we mean by
Education.”..................................................................................79
Chapter 5: Comparing the two Sites...............................................85
5.1 Lack of Time and Intensification of Work..............................85
5.2 Unsatisfactory In Service Training........................................86
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5.3 Lack of Cover.........................................................................86
5.4 Poor or Absent Facilities.......................................................87
5.6 Low Pay.................................................................................87
5.7 Temporary Contracts.............................................................87
5.8 Testing and CCE....................................................................88
5.9 Impoverishment of the Curriculum ......................................88
5.10 Pedagogical Constraint.......................................................89
5.xi Social Problems – Parents and Poverty................................89
5.12 Structural Effects on the Education System......................90
5.13 Teacher Identities................................................................90
Chapter 6: Conclusion: ‘The Thread that links the Toiling Masses of
the World’ .......................................................................................92
6.1 MDG2: The mother of all targets...........................................93
6.2 Not free to teach....................................................................94
6.2 The Struggle for democratic and free public Education.......95
6:3 It’s a common struggle..........................................................96
6.4 Whither international Solidarity?..........................................96
References.......................................................................................98
Appendix 1 Front page story in DNA City (Mumbai) 27th January
2012 pp1, 8....................................................................................113
Appendix 3: Self-completion questionnaire for School D.............115
Appendix 4 Graphic depiction of results of Galton and MacBeath
Questionnaire................................................................................116
Appendix 5 Graphic Depiction of Results of School D Questionnaire
.......................................................................................................117
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6
List of Tables and Figures
Table2.1: A brief overview of the effects of neo-liberal reform on
teachers’ work in
England………………………………………………………………………………
…….32
Table 2:2 A brief overview of the effects of neo-liberal reform on
teachers’ work in
India……………………………………………………………………………………
……34
Table 3:1 A schedule of primary research looking at the local
level……………..49
Table 3:2 Summary of English comparator Literature. Those
authors highlighted in bold use interviews with
teachers……………………………………….50
Table 3:3 Primary research at the country/global
levels…………………………….51
Figure 3:1 From the global to the
local…………………………………………………… 44
Figure 3:2 Coding of key
themes……………………………………………………………..45
7
Figure: 4.1 Pratham organised the painting of School D’s corridors
and included the logo of one of its sponsors in the art
work……………………………..58
Figure 4:2 A Classroom in School
D…………………………………………………………68
Figure 4:3 A view of part of the catchment of School D
……………………………..76
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Glossary
AIFTO All India Federation of Teachers’ Organisations
AIPTF All India Primary Teachers Federation
ASER Annual State of Education Report
CCE Comprehensive Continuous Evaluation
CPD Continuous Professional Development
DfID Department for International Development
DISE District Information System for Education
EI Education International
EU European Union
GCE Global Campaign for Education
HIPC Highly Indebted Poor Countries
IEA International Association for the Evaluation of
Educational Achievement
IFI International Financial Institutions
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPT Indian People’s Tribunal
LFP Low Fee Private schools
MCGM Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai
MDG2 Millennium Development Goal 2
MLL Minimum Learning Levels
NFE Non-Formal Education
NPE National Policy on Education
NUT National Union of Teachers
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OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development
OFSTED Office for Standards in Education
PGCE Post Graduate Certificate in Education
PISA Programme for International Student Assessment
PPP Public Private Partnership
RTE Right of Children to Free and Compulsory
Education
SAP Structural Adjustment Programme
SATs Standard Assessment Tasks
SMC School Management Committee
SSA Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All)
TALIS Teaching and Learning International Survey
TfI Teach for India
UNESCO United Nations Educational Scientific and
Cultural Organisation
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
10
Abstract
This dissertation looks at the education systems in the state of
Maharashtra, India, and in England, in the context of the
globalisation of neo-liberalism in education. It seeks to discover
what role the global right to education discourse plays in the
promotion of neo-liberal education policy in Maharashtra and the
consequences of such policy for teachers’ work, learners and the
school system. It asks if there are commonalities between these
consequences and those in England and whether there is an
alternative strategy being developed in Maharashtra to the neo-
liberal one.
Using a vertical case study approach, it looks first at the global
context and its consequences at the country and state levels. In
Maharashtra, it concentrates on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the
Indian government programme set up to realise universal
elementary education. It goes on to look at consequences at the
local level, through interviews with teachers, a self-completion
questionnaire and observation in a low-income school in Mumbai.
In particular it seeks to allow the voices of teachers to be heard
and attended to. It also looks for alternative responses to the neo-
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liberal ones to the problems involved in providing education to all
children in Maharashtra.
In order to compare the consequences of the neo-liberalisation of
education to those in England, the literature on this subject is
reviewed, concentrating on those studies which use teacher voice
and interviews as part of their evidence.
The research concludes that global right to education discourse
plays an important role in the promotion of neo-liberal policy both
through NGOs, in particular Pratham and Teach for India, and
through SSA. It shows how a ‘discourse of derision’ about public
education, and the teachers who work in it is promoted, and has
the effect of advancing the privatising of education and how many
aspects of the SSA have detrimental consequences for teachers’
work and learners’ experience. It concludes that while many of
these consequences are similar to those felt by teachers and
learners in England, there are also differences.
It identifies an active campaign in Maharashtra, both to resist neo-
liberal policies such as privatisation, and to promote an alternative
vision of equal and democratic education. It suggests that teaching
unions in the North should re-examine their international work
with the Global South, moving it away from the predominant
development paradigm, which seeks to promote the global right to
12
education, and more towards a model of reciprocity and solidarity
with activists and unions in the Global South, who are developing
their own ways of contesting neo-liberal policy and promoting an
alternative.
13
1. Introduction
My interest in the globalisation of education began when I was a
national officer of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) over the
period 2002 – 2006 and participated in teacher union conferences
in many parts of the world. I became aware that the issues teachers
were facing in England bore remarkable resemblances to those
facing teachers in other countries in the Global North and South.
Joining forces with a United States education professor, I co-edited
a book on the issue of what we characterised the ‘global assault on
teaching, teachers and their unions’ (Compton and Weiner, 2008). I
also set up a website www.teachersolidarity.com on which I seek to
record the resistance of teachers around the world to this
challenge from what we can call neo-liberal policies.
The book was conceived as a collaboration between the
international education academy edited by Professor Lois Weiner,
and teacher trade union activists, edited by myself. My
contributions to the book were thus written from the standpoint of
an activist and advocate rather than one who is standing back and
thinking about this in more critical, theoretical, and reflexive ways.
Indeed I had no background in social science theory and little in
educational theory – since attention to theory was minimal in the
one year PGCE course I completed in 1978. Since that time, life as
a teacher, union activist, and mother of four children, was so all-
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consuming that to my great regret I paid little attention to theorists
such as Paolo Freire whom I now see as central to the kind of
education I have always – albeit not very consciously – fought to
provide and advocate for. It has therefore been necessary for me
to continually check a lifelong tendency to see things more in
emotional, Manichean terms, and to fail to take a more critical,
analytical, and theoretical approach.
It was not until I started to study for an MA at Ruskin College that I
began to grapple seriously with the theory surrounding the
globalisation of education and the hegemony of neo-liberal thought.
In this dissertation I tackle these issues through research in India
and England.
1.1 Why India? Why England?
Ball identifies the ‘discourse of derision’ to describe the way in
which teachers and their work are commonly framed in England
(Ball, 1990). The new head of OFSTED in England, Sir Michael
Wilshaw, for example, says teachers “don’t know what stress is.”
He tells them they need to “roll up their sleeves and get on with
improving their schools” (Shepherd, 2012). Meanwhile in Mumbai,
a group of local politicians on the School Management Committee
of a slum school say, in front of several teachers and the head,
“You need to talk to us to find out what’s really going on in this
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school for ‘all the money’ that goes in.”1 The union rep tells me they
are very “anti-teacher”.
In primary schools in England five and six year olds must be tested
on their ability to read 20 nonsense words like ‘blim’ and ‘blurst’
using synthetic phonics – the only methodology for the teaching of
reading which is now allowed in English schools. While in a
primary class in Mumbai children are given a worksheet about the
nursery rhyme ‘hickery dickery dock’ by a Teach for India ‘fellow’
and told, “You don’t need to know what it means, just put the lines
in the right order.”2
How are we to interpret these stories? Is the similarity that they
seem to demonstrate between the experiences of teachers and
learners in India and England a coincidence, or is it symptomatic of
similar forces acting in both countries? This dissertation sets out to
answer these questions and argues that a dual dynamic is at play
particularly in India; the globalisation of ‘the right to education’
discourse has been coupled to a standards, accountability and
privatisation agenda, in turn linking the Global South to the global
North. India has been one of the most prominent targets of
intervention by global organisations pursuing this kind of education
agenda (Sadgopal, 2010), whilst England was one of the earliest
1 Primary research 10/1/2012: Mumbai. All quotes from the primary research in this dissertation are italicised, to distinguish them from quotations from the literature.2 Primary research 12/1/2012: Mumbai
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and most enthusiastic adopters of neo-liberal policy. I shall be
examining education systems in these two countries to illustrate
this.
1.2 Maharashtra and England
Maharashtra, the state where I had the opportunity to research, is
identified as one of the ‘forward’ states in India, having an above
average rate of growth. Nonetheless it suffers from the same levels
of extreme poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor as the
rest of India (Kamat, 2007). Its principal city is Mumbai, with 20
million inhabitants. It is the most populous city in India, with the
fourth greatest population density in the world and almost half its
children not in school. The situation is worse in rural areas of
Maharashtra (Kashyap, 2008). It is also one of the only places in
India where English medium public education is offered (Kamat,
2007).
England3 is the comparator country for my study. It is one of the
first democracies, along with the US and New Zealand, to enact the
kind of large-scale educational ‘reform’ advocated by neo-liberal
reformers. This dissertation looks at the consequences of this
reform for teachers, learners and schools. By doing primary
research in Maharashtra and reviewing the literature in England, it
looks at two very different sites and asks if there are commonalities
3 The other parts of the UK, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have devolved education systems
17
in the education experiences between them, and the source of any
such commonalities.
1.3 Research Questions
The nature of the neo-liberal education project is well documented
(Hatcher, 2008, Robertson, 2008). So is its all-pervasive, global
reach (Kuehn, 2008; Stromquist, 2002; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004).
What is less well understood is the degree to which the discourse of
‘a global right to education’ plays an enabling role in realising this
agenda (Sadgopal, 2010; Ball, 2012). My research sets out to
identify some of the nodes of the global network identified by Ball
as they are manifested in Maharashtra, and to see how important a
role the discourse of a global right to education plays within that
network. By studying documentation and by talking to the people
most involved in implementing, and in some cases resisting neo-
liberal education policies, I hope to demonstrate the presence,
nature and form of connections between this discourse across
education spaces.
The realisation of a global right to education for Indian children is
pursued through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme. By
talking to the main actors involved in SSA in Maharashtra – civil
servants, education activists, union leaders and teachers, the
research looks at the consequences of SSA on teachers, learners
and the school system. It looks for consequences on pay and
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conditions of service as well as those on the curriculum. It also
places these in the social context of Maharashtra, with its
challenges of poverty, poor housing and precarious and often
exploitative labour conditions. It aims especially to allow the voices
of Indian public school teachers – which are hardly represented in
the literature - to emerge and be heard.
In England there is a wealth of literature on the effects of neo-
liberal reform on education. Because of this, I am able to compare
the recorded voices of teachers in England with those in
Maharashtra as well as looking at the conclusions drawn in the
literature as to the overall consequences of reform both on
teachers’ work and on their sense of their identity as teachers. In
this way I shall hope to demonstrate similarities as well as
differences in obstacles facing teachers in the two jurisdictions.
In England, there is a history of struggle against neo-liberal reform
(Carter et al, 2010; Jones, 2008). The research looks for evidence of
whether there is a similar history of struggle in India and
Maharashtra and through interviews seeks to establish the basis of
this resistance.
The underlying purpose of this dissertation is to revisit the way my
own union, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the global
federation, Educational International (EI), frame the issue of
19
international solidarity. I hope that by revealing the identity of the
global forces acting on us, and by highlighting similarities in the
experiences of teachers in the Global North and South and the
struggles to resist these forces, this research might contribute
towards a movement in teacher unions away from the pervasive
discourse of charity and targets - as articulated most saliently in
the Millennium Development Goal 2 (MDG2) for Universal Primary
Education by 2015 - towards a genuine discourse of trade union
solidarity.
These then are the questions that this research seeks to answer:
1. How does global right to education discourse enable neo-
liberal education policies to be advanced and enacted in
Maharashtra?
2. What consequences does the pursuit of a global right to
education have on teachers’ work, learners and the education
system in Maharashtra, particularly as it is manifested
through SSA?
3. What similarities and differences are there between these
effects and those of neo-liberal education policies in England?
4. Is there evidence of a struggle for an alternative strategy to
the neo- liberal one to improve education in Maharashtra?
In seeking to answer these questions, I use a vertical case study
approach, using multiple and predominately qualitative research
20
methods in Maharashtra in order to understand the impact of
global forces on education there. In England I use secondary
research so that I can make comparisons across the two spaces.
In Chapter two I review the literature on neo-liberalism, global neo-
liberal education policy and global right to education discourse,
and on the educational context in India and England. Chapter three
lays out the research methodology and research design as well as
my positionality and ethical considerations. Chapter four presents
the findings from my primary research in Maharasthra and in
chapter five I compare the experiences of teachers in Maharashtra
and England. Chapter six draws together my conclusions and
suggests their implications for teacher unions.
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2 The Global Right to Education and Neo-liberal Solutions
2.1 Framing the Research
In order to describe and analyse the differences and similarities
between the lived experiences of teachers and learners in the
Global South and those in a so-called ‘developed’ country, as well
as the source of some of these experiences I intend to use a vertical
case study approach, which I will set out in more detail in the
section on methodology below (Vavrus and Bartlett, 2006). Using
this methodological framework it is necessary to pay attention to
three levels: the local - that is in this case the experience of
teachers in schools in Maharashtra and England; the national – the
way the policies of national governments impact on those schools,
and the global – the way supranational discourses and policies
impact on national and local spaces . It is at the global level that
the two cases converge as a result of the globalisation of neo-
liberalism as a powerful political discourse, on the one hand, and
of the right to education, on the other.
2.2 The Global Scale
We are living through a period, which is characterised and
dominated by neo-liberalism as an organising paradigm, and which
shapes the nature, form and scope of governing our political and
economic organisations (Harvey, 2005; Peck, 2010). Harvey defines
this approach as one that; “…proposes that human well-being can
22
best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms
and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong
private property rights, free markets and free trade.” (Harvey,
2005, p.2). This approach had its genesis after the Second World
War with a group of thinkers in Europe and the US who opposed
the dominant Keynesian approach to economic organisation. They
divided between the so-called ordo-liberals, who were
characterised by their belief in stronger state regulation of the
market, and the Chicago school, which believed that the sole
function of the state was to establish conditions favourable to
competition (Friedman, 1962). The founding father and chief
architect of the latter strand of neo-liberalism, which has become
the dominant ideology over the last three decades up to the present
day was Milton Friedman (Peck, 2010). This group came to be
known as the ‘Chicago boys’.
It was in Chile, after the 1973 coup, that the Chicago boys were
able for the first time to test out their theories in the real world.
These experiments were taken up with enthusiasm by the Thatcher
and Reagan administrations in the UK and the US in the 1980s,
with far reaching consequences not least in education (Harvey,
2005).
The ideal of Chicago school neo-liberalism is to develop a
completely free market, totally untrammelled by any form of
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restriction in particular from the state and determined entirely by
the mechanism of free competition between entrepreneurs.
However there is a contradiction at the heart of this ideology since
the state is necessary to constrain and regulate the market and
allow it to flourish (Peck, 2010). Because of this contradiction,
though neo-liberalism has become an almost universally used term
for the hegemonic economic and political theory, Peck describes it
as an “unstable signifier” (Peck, 2010, p.31), which resists
definition precisely because of its contradictory nature. As he puts
it: “The tangled mess that is the modern usage of neo-liberalism
may be telling us something about the tangled mess of neo-
liberalism itself” (Peck, 2010, p.15). Given the contradictory nature
of neo-liberalism, it is not good enough for the word neo-liberal to
be a “political swearword” (ibid, p.276) for the left. It is the task of
researchers and intellectuals on the left to understand the
development of neo-liberalism through its processes if they are to
help the “countervailing forces and immovable objects” (ibid,
p.278) of which Peck speaks to turn back the tide of neo-liberalism
for the sake of a more socially just ordering of the world.
Almost in tandem with the formulation and ascendancy of neo-
liberalism as a global hegemonic project shaping political and
economic arrangements, has come the policy impetus to globalise
the right to education – starting with Article 26 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – and pursued through UN
24
agencies like UNESCO and UNICEF as well as the World Bank and
groups of world political leaders – most recently in the
establishment of Millennium Development Goal 2 (MDG2) – for
Universal Primary Education (Jones, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004),
in the year 2000.
In this dissertation I am setting out to understand how the neo-
liberal approach, interwoven with the pursuit of education as a
universal human right through Education For All and the
Millennium Development Goals, has affected the world of childhood
education. With this in mind, I shall begin to review the literature
which pursues these themes.
2.3 The Neo-liberalisation of Education
The contradiction at the heart of neo-liberal theory in defining the
role of the state is nowhere more clearly evident than on the
terrain of education. It constitutes one of what Peck calls the
“network nodes or transit points” (Peck, 2010, p.74) which enable
us to understand neo-liberalism. While the markets in goods,
services and finance are to be freed from any form of regulation,
neo-liberal education policy is characterised by intensive regulation
of schools, teaching and teachers by the state and as we shall see
by global governance organisations (Robertson, 2012).
25
To understand this emphasis on state and global regulation of
education, we should start with Milton Friedman, who advocated
the use of education vouchers over fifty years ago as a means to
buck “the general trend in our times toward increasing
intervention by the state in economic affairs,” (Friedman, 1955,
p.1). The voucher system would enable parents to ‘choose’ between
state schools or to eschew the state system all together and opt for
a private provider. This was the beginning of the encroachment of
private business on state education, which has advanced in various
forms in different countries over the last thirty years. In OECD
countries this policy turn has ranged from privately run chains of
charter schools in the US (Saltman, 2005), to academies in the UK
(Murch, 2008), to free schools in Sweden. In the Global South it
has morphed from education privatisation (Tooley, 2000) to Public
Private Partnerships (PPPs) as a more acceptable half-way house in
the wake of the egregious affects of full-scale privatisation
(Robertson, 2012; Fennell, 2007).
But the ostensible freeing up of parents to choose, and schools to
compete, brings us to the second strand of the project - an
intensification of centralisation in, and monitoring of, schools and
teachers. The rationale for this has been that central monitoring,
through mechanisms such as standardised testing, enables parents
to make an informed choice between schools. Various combinations
of standardised testing and league tables, performance related pay,
26
and punitive inspection in the drive for accountability, have become
a feature of education systems in most countries in both the OECD
and in the Global South (Robertson, 2008).
Contradiction follows contradiction, since the monitoring which is
supposed to ensure ‘quality’ teaching is accompanied by the third
strand - a deprofessionalisation of teachers and the increasing use
of poorly trained contract or temporary teachers, accompanied by
the intensification of teachers’ work as governments seek to get
more ‘value’ from teachers (Zeichner, 2008; Weiner, 2008). This
brings us to the fourth feature of the neo-liberal educational
landscape; deep cuts in the education budgets of countries
(Harvey, 2010; Hatcher, 2008). Finally we see the increasing
involvement of business in the shaping of education through direct
involvement in the formulation of the curriculum (DfES, 2004;
Rincones et al, 2008; Hatcher, 2008).
2.4 The Globalisation of the Right to Education
The discourse around the globalisation of the right to education has
been developing in tandem with the increasing dominance of neo-
liberalism. The formulation of MDG2 was central to this. In 1990 a
senior group of governmental and non-governmental
representatives met in Jomtien and established the goal of
Education for All by the year 2000 (Steiner Khamsi, 2004). When it
became clear that this target was not going to be met, a new
27
conference was held in Dakar in 2000, which set the Dakar
Framework for Action and the key target known as MDG2. The
target is actively pursued by the UN particularly through UNESCO
and by the World Bank. As I write it is clear that this target too will
be missed.
Few would argue with the premise that all children should be
entitled to a primary education. Indeed the goal has been
enthusiastically espoused both by EI and by national teaching
unions, and both play a leading role in the Global Campaign for
Education which was set up to promote it (Gaventa and Mayo,
2009). However I argue, along with Bond, that the problem with
the pursuit of this goal is that it “legitimat(es) and materially
strengthen(s) the adverse power relations, unreformed global-scale
institutions and capital accumulation patterns that work against
the poor and the environment” (Bond, 2006, p.339). And I illustrate
through my research the point made by Sadgopal and others; that
its pursuit has had a deleterious effect on teachers’ work and
therefore on children’s education (Sadgopal,2006), and is used as
the justification for neo-liberalising education.
There is a large body of theory coming from the education academy
itself which argues that neo-liberal policy prescriptions will
advance the universal right of children to education (Mundy, 2008).
Tooley (2000) argues that private education is the best way to
28
improve education quality and opportunity . Kerchner and
Koppich’s (1993) research aims to show that the freeing up of
schools from local school boards in the US and a change in the
nature of teaching unions towards what they call ‘professional
unionism’, will improve educational standards . Michael Barber,
one time advisor to former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has also
been instrumental in developing policy which has changed the
English education system from one where there was considerable
professional autonomy for teachers, to one which is driven by data
and standardisation – again with the aim of raising standards
(Barber et al., 2011). In all of these cases, the rhetoric has
concentrated on the beneficial effects of choice and competition in
enabling the realisation of education as a universal human right
(Tooley, 2000; World Bank, 2011). And as I shall show below,
educationists have provided the methodological framework for the
kind of competitive comparisons which are central to such policy.
However there is also a body of theory from the education academy
which contests the claims of neo-liberal theorists such as Tooley. In
the first place it is argued that a key underlying motivation in
opening up education to the market is the recognition that it is “the
last frontier for profit” (Edinvest News, 2000, quoted in Stromquist,
2002, p.49). Ball and Youdell describe the way in which
corporations not only promote and benefit from the trade in
29
education services but in many cases siphon off aid money in order
to do it (Ball and Youdell, 2008).
The claims for free-standing charter schools or academies in the
US and the UK are also contested, not least by someone who was
once a prominent spokesperson for them – Diane Ravitch (2010) in
the US. She is joined by many scholars who show how, far from
improving the educational chances of poor and minority children,
these programmes in fact diminish them (Saltman, 2005; Karp,
2008; Robertson, 2012).
The deleterious effects of testing on children’s education have also
been widely written about – showing how it impoverishes the
curriculum and saps creativity among teachers (Alexander, 2009;
Kohn, 1999). What’s more, the effects of deprofessionalisation on
the quality of education have been illuminated by many scholars
(Zeichner, 2008; Robertson, 2012). Similarly the turning over of
the curriculum to business has been shown to diminish the
education on offer particularly to poor and marginalised children
(Rincones et al, 2008; Hatcher, 2008)
2.5 From the Global to the National
The ways in which this project has been mediated from the global
to the national scale differs from country to country, and from
OECD countries to those in the Global South. However three
30
distinct, but interrelated, processes can be identified: policy
borrowing, soft pressure and hard pressure.
2.5.1 Policy Borrowing
In the US and the UK, where the neo-liberal project has been
enthusiastically embraced by governments, its development could
be seen as a form of policy borrowing as the UK followed the US,
for example in the introduction of standardised testing, and
England under New Labour copied the US charter schools model in
its academies programme (Steiner Khamsi, 2004; Sahlberg, 2007).
The neo-liberal education project can be seen as part of a common
project across public services in that it promotes ‘customer’ choice
and increasing input by the private sector, both ostensibly to make
it more efficient and to allow private corporations to make profits,
whilst this was legitimated by the state as necessary for the
purposes of cutting public spending. In that sense the policy
borrowing which went on was a direct result of the espousal of neo-
liberal ideology (Robertson, 2008).
2.5.2 Soft Pressure
However there are other forms of power at work. From within the
education academy itself, a tradition of international comparative
education took hold in the early 1960s with the creation of
International Education Assessment (IEA) by academics in the USA,
31
who regarded the world as a great laboratory where education
ideas were being tried out and where ‘what works’ could be
established (Mundy, 2008). The educational statistics, which were
produced by this body, were not intended to be used as league
tables to compare countries. However this initiative was seized on
by neo-liberal governments as they sought to compete in a
globalised world. Dissatisfied with the lack of league tables from
the IEA, the OECD set up its own global comparative system - the
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which
ranks countries against educational indicators, based on sample
testing of pupils. PISA studies, and the new Teaching and Learning
International Survey (TALIS) programme are now playing a
decisive role in determining national educational policy (Robertson,
2012). In Wales for example, the country’s low standing in the PISA
league tables is causing a policy panic which has precipitated a
retreat from that country’s previous resistance of the neo-liberal
project (Andrews, 2011). In the European Union (EU), policy
making at a regional level has also helped to shape the education
policies of its member states (Jones, 2008).
2.5.3 Hard Pressure
In the Global South the main impetus for the dissemination of neo-
liberal education policies has come through the international
finance institutions (IFIs) – the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) (Jones, 2004). Taking as their starting point
32
the putative connection between economic success and education,
and seeing education primarily as a means to develop ‘human
capital’, the IFIs have used their financial power to impose policies
on countries both through conditionalities through structural
adjustment programmes (SAPs) and through ‘debt relief’ in the
form of programmes like those for the so-called Heavily Indebted
Poor Countries4 (HIPC).
In the early days of World Bank intervention, policy prescriptions
were
framed in terms of fiscal cuts and the idea of developing a market
free to boost growth. This has however been modified as the IFIs
seek to intervene, not through what Cammack describes as
“economic shock therapy”, but “institutional shock therapy”
(Cammack,2004. p.11). Ruckert points out that social reproduction
under SAPs was largely a failure. Education systems, for example,
were often damaged by steep cuts in public spending. This gave
rise to a “new inclusive neoliberal regime” which would enable
everyone to participate in the market (Ruckert, 2010, p.822).
Cammack disputes those critics who see the IFIs’ commitment to
poverty reduction as disingenuous. On the contrary he points out
that it is real, but secondary. In order for capital to be able to
expand its global reach and exploit labour on a global scale it is
necessary for governments to play a part in providing labour, 4 Toussaint shows that far from countries in the Global South being ‘indebted’ to the rich nations, the net flow of money is in the other direction, with massively more money going from South to North than vice versa (Toussaint,2006; Harvey,2010).
33
which, according to a 1995 World Bank education report, has
“attitudes necessary for the workplace” (World Bank, 1995). Or as
Ruckert puts it, it is necessary to promote “the human capital
formation of children, designed to promote their productive
capacities” (ibid, p.823). Therefore governments have to be locked
into World Bank education programmes and their supporting
ideologies.
Central to this new ‘inclusive’ neo-liberalism is the need for client
governments to ‘own’ the neo-liberal agenda. Ruckert quotes the
IMF which sees as key “…the willing assumption of responsibility
for an agreed upon program of policies, by officials in a borrowing
country who have the responsibility to formulate and carry out
these policies” (IMF, 2001, p.6, cited in Ruckert, 2010, p.822).
Ball has argued, however, that IFIs are only one, albeit important,
node in a global network or ‘heterocracy’ which exists to advance
the neo-liberal education project (Ball, 2012).
2.6 The Educational Policy Landscape in the two Sites
2.6.1 England
As suggested above, UK governments have adopted the neo-liberal
project particularly enthusiastically, not least in education. While
34
Thatcher introduced a centralised curriculum, standardised testing,
league tables and local management of schools, the New Labour
administration, under Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, took the
project further with the academies programme which included the
erosion of nationally-determined pay and conditions, and the
introduction of performance related pay (Galton and MacBeath,
2008). Their project was expedited by the social partnership with
most teaching unions which, for the first time, allowed unqualified
people to carry out teaching duties and thus led both towards the
deprofessionalisation of teaching and the weakening of teacher
unions (Carter et al, 2010; Compton, 2008). The present
government is continuing this reform process with the free schools
programme and the introduction of a maze of curricular and
regulatory changes.
2.6.2 India
The 1949 constitution of India specifies the universal right to
education for all children up to the age of 14. The Indian Education
Commission took this further in 1964 by recommending a common
school system for all children. Since then, repeated policy
documents have advocated free education of equitable quality
(Kamat, 2007). However, with the imposition of SAPs in the 1990s,
these constitutional guarantees and policy decisions have been
consistently watered down and countermanded (Sadgopal, 2006).
35
Sadgopal shows how the National Policy on Education-1986 (NPE-
1986) opened the way for the World Bank to impose its policies and
explicitly accepted that all children in India were not entitled to
quality education since it introduced non-formal education (NFE)
for working children (Sadgopal, 2006; Kamat, 2012; Dhuru, 2010).
A central plank of these prescriptions was the promotion of
Minimum Learning Levels (MLLs) which reduced the curriculum to
the promotion of basic literacy and numeracy for children in low-
income schools, which formed the basis of the SSA programme
(Sadgopal, 2010).
In line with ‘inclusive neo-liberalism’ described above, the Indian
government has become a willing partner in the neo-liberal project.
Das describes “the ‘neoliberality’ – the neoliberal mentality – of
current state managers” (Das, 2012) which has had far-reaching
consequences, not least in education.
In 2009, the Indian government passed the Right of Children to
Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act which, although it has
been welcomed as a step forward by many campaigners, including
EI, is still contested by some education activists. They see it as a
watering down of the constitutional right to education, and as
perpetuating a two tier system with an increase in the role of
privatisation, particularly through PPPs, and the provision that 25%
of places in private schools should be reserved for children from
36
low income families. It also makes no provision for pre-school
education and institutionalises NFE for some child labourers
(Hensman, 2011; Kamat, 2012).
Ball shows how the network of non-state organisations promoting
the neo-liberal educational project is active in India, particularly in
promoting the notion that privatisation and the growth of low fee
private (LFP) schools favour the poorest parents and children (Ball,
2012; Tooley & Dixon, 2006). These assertions are contested by
studies which show that such choice is not available to the poorest
parents and particularly not to those in disadvantaged groups, such
as the scheduled castes and tribes, Muslims and also girl children
(Harma, 2009; Harma & Rose, 2012).
Central to the Indian Education system is the Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan (SSA) programme. This was part of the Indian
government’s tenth five-year plan for 2002. It aimed to ensure that
all children in India received education for at least eight years. By
2008, when official statistics showed that 52% of children still
either dropped out of school before completing eight years or never
went to school at all, the target was temporarily lowered to simply
ensuring that all children at least enrolled for five years of primary
education. The World Bank and DfID have a large role in the
promotion of SSA (Sadgopal, 2010). It is the effects of this project
37
on the work of teachers in Maharashtra which will be the principal
subject of my primary research.
2.7 The Local Level: How neo-liberal Policies impact on Teachers and Schools
2.7.1 In England
Ever since the conservative administration of Margaret Thatcher
passed the Education Reform Act in 1988, teachers and schools
have been under intense scrutiny and their work has become more
and more prescribed. (See Table 2.1)
Year Reform Effect on Teachers
1988 National Curriculum Subject choice and subject content prescribed by government. Less pedagogic freedom for teachers
1988 League Tables of schools based on examination results
Increased pressure on teachers to produce good results
1991 Standard Attainment Targets (SAT) tests for 7 year olds
More constraint on curriculum ‘teaching to the test’
1992 OFSTED inspection regime
Reports of huge increase of stress for teachers
1998 National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies
Prescribed lesson plans, monitored by OFSTED with risk of failure if not adhered to, therefore less pedagogic freedom for teachers
2000 Performance Related Pay for Teachers partly based on pupil attainment
More pressure on teachers to produce good results. Demoralisation
38
2005 School remodelling allowing untrained persons to do teaching work
Devaluation of professional expertise and pedagogy
Table2.1: A brief overview of the effects of neo-liberal reform on
teachers’ work in England
The overall trajectory of these reforms is to increasingly prescribe
and constrain the freedom of teachers to use their creative and
critical faculties to develop their pedagogy.
In order to compare the effects of these reforms on teachers,
learners and schools in England with those in India, I shall review
the literature on reform in England in more detail, a list of which is
included in the methodology section on page 51.
2.7.2 In Maharashtra
In Maharashtra I concentrate on the SSA programme since this is
the vehicle for the promotion of MDG2 through neo-liberal
education policies, and also the medium through which the
consequences of this project are passed on to teachers (Sadgopal,
2010). There has been much research funded by the World Bank on
SSA; for example, one paper looks at the effectiveness of
performance-related pay for teachers in India (Mualidharan and
Sundararaman, 2006); Sankar (2007) also looks at increases in
participation rates as a result of SSA whilst Goyal and Pandey
39
(2009) demonstrate the supposed advantages of temporary
contracts. All of these studies purport to show the overwhelmingly
positive effects of the programme. However Sadgopal has cast
doubt on the impartiality of much of this research, suggesting that
funding is contingent on the nature of the findings and that for
education scholars in India, the World Bank offers research grants
which are difficult to refuse in a country where such funding is rare
(Sadgopal, 2010).5
Indian teachers have never known the professional freedom
enjoyed by English teachers before neo-liberal policies took hold.
As can be seen from Table 2:2 however, reform in India –with the
exception of the ending of testing under RTE, has constrained
teachers’ pedagogical and professional freedom yet further as well
as depressing their conditions , pay, job security and morale. There
has been some research done on the effects of reform on
Year Reform Effect on teachers’ work
1986 Introduction of NFE Deregulation and deprofessionalisation of teaching
1990 Introduction of MLLs Reduction of curriculum to basic numeracy/literacy. Prescribed behaviourist approach
1990 Cutting of education spending in line with SAP
Deteriorating conditions and pay in public schools
5 Such rewards for research which confirms neo-liberal policies are not confined to the Global South; much education research in the North is funded by neo-liberal foundations and corporations (Ball, 2012).
40
1993 - 2002 Introduction of multi-layered system
Further deprofessionalisation and deterioration in low income public schools
1993 - 2002 Increasing use of parateachers
Depression of job security, pay, weakening of unions, demoralisation
2002 SSA Increased paperwork – less time to teach. Lower pay.
2009 Increased privatization and introduction of PPPs
Denigration of public schools and teachers. Further deterioration of conditions in public schools
2009 RTE Act: End of testing, introduction of CCE
Freedom from constraints of testing – more bureaucracy
Table 2:2 A brief overview of the effects of neo-liberal reform on teachers’ work in India
teachers’ work. For instance Chakraborty discusses the nature of
teachers’ work in SSA schools, and the priority given to data
collection over pedagogy, (Chakraborty, 2008). Alexander critiques
the failure to grasp the importance of pedagogy in the framing of
SSA activities (Alexander, 2006).
I have found one research study by the All India Primary Teachers
Federation (AIPTF) on in-service training for the SSA project,
which asks teachers for their perceptions of its usefulness. It
concludes that the outcomes for teachers and education of such
training are at best ambivalent, not least because the training is
carried out in school time with no substitute teachers provided
while the teachers are absent (Eswaran and Singh, 2008).
41
I have so far turned up no other primary research which looks at
the effects of the SSA programme on teachers and learners,
through interviews with teachers, or case studies of schools. I am
hoping that my primary research in Maharashtra will illuminate
this issue and enable me to make broad comparisons with the
effects of similar reform in England.
2.8 Resistance to Neo-liberal Reform
2.8.1 England
Just as teaching unions were in the forefront of struggle for
comprehensive education (Seifert, 1987), so they are resisting the
neo-liberal education project in all its manifestations. Teaching
unions have boycotted national testing, there have been strikes
against staff cuts and against the use of unqualified people to teach
and there are numerous ongoing strikes against the
‘academisation’ of schools (Murch, 2008; Carter et al, 2010). As I
write, more strikes are being balloted for against cuts. There is also
much literature contesting these changes (see p.50).
2.8.2 India
There is a long history of struggle for the provisions of the Indian
constitution to be realised. Most public school teachers in India are
unionised, and since Indian Independence, the unions have fought
for: decent pay for teachers, the ending of temporary contracts,
42
the nationalisation of education and an end to privatisation. These
struggles have taken the form of hunger strikes, mass
demonstrations and ‘pen-down’ strikes and have often been met
with police brutality leading to injury, death and mass arrests.
Kingdon and Muzzamil refer to the frequency of these struggles as
“astounding” but conclude that teachers have acted “to safeguard
and promote their own interests,” (Kingdon and Muzzamil, 2001, p.
3063). I would argue, however, that the struggle for a living wage
and improved working conditions is inseparable from the struggle
for high quality public education (Kamat, 2007, Sahlberg, 2007).
As well as unions, educationalists have struggled to see the 1964
Education Commission’s vision of education realised as a “critical
socio-political process for building citizenship for a democratic,
socialistic, egalitarian, just and secular society” (Sadgopal, 2010,
p.3). One notable example was the Hoshangabad Science Teaching
Programme, which worked with a thousand of the poorest public
schools in Madhya Pradesh and was regarded as an “innovative
approach to the teaching of science” (Fennell, 2007, p.12). After
almost 30 years of successful work this scheme was closed at the
prompting of the World Bank (ibid).
43
2.9 Conclusion
This review of the literature shows that India is a critical site for
the promotion of both the global right to education and neo-liberal
education policy. Questions remain, however, about the
consequences of this for the chief actors in education – teachers
and learners - and about the similarities and differences of those
consequences to those experienced in England. In the next chapter
I outline the methods used in this dissertation to attempt to answer
these questions.
44
3: Methodology
3.1 Positionality
My ontological and epistemological approach to research is
informed by my approach to education. I subscribe to a Freirean
position – emphasising the importance of critical education, which
allows learners to “…say their own word and name the world”
rather than the “banking” approach, which reduces education to
the transmission of facts from teacher to taught (Freire, 1970,
p.52). Thus, in my research I reject a positivist approach, which
would see the social science researcher as revealing immutable
facts, which can be metaphorically or literally weighed and
measured. Rather I take a critical interpretivist approach in that I
seek to understand the way social actors perceive and frame their
world, in order to better understand it myself (Bryman, 2008;
Charmaz, 2006). In naming it critical, I am also wanting to
understand that our interpretation and understandings are shaped
by wider structures and relations of power. In the context of
education, Apple et al (2009) define such a perspective as one,
which “…seeks to expose how relations of power and inequality . . .
are manifest and are challenged in the formal and informal
education of children” (ibid, p. 3). Apple et al. set out a detailed
and challenging list of eight tasks with which the critical
researcher must engage, while accepting that no one can “…
engage equally with all of them simultaneously” (ibid, p. 5). In a
45
dissertation of this limited scope clearly this is reassuring but I
intend at least to engage with the task of illuminating “the ways in
which educational policy and practice are connected to the
relations of exploitation and domination – and to struggles against
such relations - in the larger society” (ibid, p. 4).
Yet it is important to emphasise that I see “human beings as active
agents in their lives”, rather than “passive recipients of larger
social forces” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 7). At the same time, this cannot
be taken too far – since there is a culture which pre-exists
individuals and shapes their ideas (Bryman, 2008) – in this case
most importantly, Apple’s “relations of exploitation and
domination” which not only act on them but also through their
struggles are being constantly changed by them. Therefore I assert
that like all social actors, teachers are in a dialectical relationship
with the organisational culture in which they are situated.
I also come to these issues from an anti-capitalist position, feeling
along with Harvey, “moral outrage at what exploitative compound
growth is doing to all facets of life, human and otherwise, on planet
earth” (Harvey, 2010, p. 260), and allying myself with those, “who
work incessantly to produce a different future to that which
capitalism portends” (ibid, p. 259).
46
My approach to social justice is most accurately framed by Fraser’s
proposal of the “all-subjected principle” by which anyone who is
affected by regulating governance structures should be “accorded
equal consideration” (Fraser, 2010, p.293). It is this view which has
had most impact both on my website and on this research, since I
am aiming to combat the implicit view in teaching unions and their
global organisations that while teachers in the Global North are
engaged in a legitimate struggle against neo-liberal regulation and
degradation of public education, teachers in the Global South are
primarily in need of help to achieve global targets set by
international governance structures like the UN and the World
Bank.
Apple also emphasises the importance for critical research of both
learning from counter-hegemonic struggles and contributing to
them. It is my hope that what I have learned from teachers and
activists in Maharashtra will enable me to make recommendations
to teacher unions which could be used to help them reframe their
international strategy, and this is an issue with which I am actively
engaged with my own union as I write.
In doing my primary research in India, my positionality as a white,
British woman of 61 inevitably had an effect on my findings and I
shall say more of this below.
47
3.2 Ethical Considerations
In carrying out my primary research, I took Ruskin’s code of ethics
as my starting point. At School D where I was given permission to
observe and talk to teachers I explained the purpose of my
research both to the Headteacher and to the union representative
who organised my lesson observations, interactions and interviews.
I explained to a staff meeting that my main aim was to find common
problems, that I was a long-serving secondary teacher and union
activist, and that I was coming in a spirit of solidarity. I also made
it clear that anything they said to me would be confidential and that
they were perfectly free to refuse to speak to me or let me watch
their lessons. When interviewing, I explained that anything they
said might be used in my research but that it would be anonymous
and obtained their permission for that.
Problems did arise, however, as a result of my age, my ethnic
origin and my nationality, especially as regards the teachers in
School D. Some teachers seemed to believe that I was there to
judge their teaching – although I made it clear that this was not the
case and that in fact I was not an expert on primary teaching. This
problem was exacerbated by more communication difficulties than
I had anticipated. Teachers at the school were multi-lingual, but
their English was often very different from mine and, in some
cases, limited.
48
The union leader was the main gatekeeper for my research. He
kindly obtained the necessary permission for me to research in
School D, gave me a series of interviews, and arranged for me to
meet the deputy head of SSA in Mumbai. On the whole I did not
feel that this skewed my research findings except in one case
where I was prevented from talking to members of the School
Management Committee (SMC), who were keen to meet me,
because they were perceived by the union as being anxious to make
trouble.
I also had independent access to a group of education activists
whom I interviewed and observed, and I felt that this helped to
validate my findings since they were not all controlled by one
gatekeeper.
The relative poverty of resources at School D, and my gratitude to
them for their co-operation and friendliness, meant that I wished to
make a contribution of books to help them in their struggle to build
a school library. I did make such a contribution but not until I had
finished my research at the school.
A final ethical consideration is my position as an activist and former
leading member of the NUT. As a result of the sudden death of
General Secretary Steve Sinnott in 2008, a foundation was set up
49
in his memory to promote the achievement of MDG2 – a cause to
which he was very devoted. Inevitably my research will have to
take into account the feelings of those in the union, including his
widow, who support and run the foundation.
3.3 Research Methods
Although the research for this dissertation is sited in Maharashtra,
India and in England, it does not use traditional comparative
methods but rather a vertical case study approach, which was
advocated by Vavrus and Bartlett as a way of broadening the
epistemological base – in particular in comparative education
(Vavrus and Bartlett, 2006). As I point out in my literature review,
the tendency to regard the world as a great education laboratory
where ‘what works’ in one country can be transplanted into any
other has had the unintended consequence of promoting the
instrumentalist and neo-liberal view of education, which is the
subject of this dissertation (Mundy, 2008). By looking at the
consequences of the neo-liberal education project at a global,
national and local level and making comparisons among the levels
as well as across states, I hope to overcome what Vavrus and
Bartlett call; “…the absence of contextualized knowledge that takes
into account how larger forces, structures, and histories inform
local social interactions and understanding in conventional
comparative education research” (Vavrus and Bartlett, 2006, p.97).
50
In Figure 3.1, I present diagrammatically the framework of this
method.
Vavrus and Bartlett advocate a sustained period of research,
possibly stretching over years, in order to complete a viable
vertical case study. Although within the framework of MA research
this is not possible, I feel that this approach is particularly
appropriate to the topic of this dissertation and I will discuss in my
conclusions how successful or otherwise this has been. In
particular, the authors advocate the use of multiple research
methods, and as I show below, I have followed this advice.
During the course of my two weeks observation, I attempted to
develop as I went along, my theory about the way neo-liberal
ideology and the globalization of education as a human right were
interacting with each other and affecting teachers’ lives in Mumbai.
It was also necessary for me to modify my methods in the light of
my experience for example in the way I conducted interviews (see
p. 48). This was an iterative process, similar to that described as
‘grounded theory’ insofar as my immersion in the world I was
studying caused me continually to modify my theory and methods
(Bryman, 2008).
51
However to the extent that my overall hypothesis – that neo-liberal
ideology had similar effects on teachers in India and England -
remained constant, my research was also deductive.
52
InindaIn
E
Teachers and learners
Figure 3:1: From the Global to the Local
In analyzing my fieldwork notes, the interview transcripts and the
documentation I have collected in Mumbai, I use coding to identify
key themes. The coding is included as Figure 3.2
53
GlobalNeo-liberal education
policy
Global right to education
World BankDfID
NGOs eg Pratham.
Political / corporate/philanthropic rhetoric
Policy borrowing
Policy borrowing
Teachers and learners
EnglandIndia
Maharashtra
documentation I have collected in Mumbai, I use coding to identify
key themes.The coding is included as Figure 3.ii
In analyzing my fieldwork notes, the interview transcripts and the
documentation I have collected in Mumbai, I use coding to identify
key themes.The coding is included as Figure 3.ii
54
Privatisation (3)Loss of pupils (7) SSA
Privatisation: Pratham (6)Denigration: Pratham (13)Teach for India (10)RTE Act (5)World Bank (7)MDG2 (6)Charitable attitudes (5)
Other forces
Effect on school system
How does global right to education discourse enable neo-liberal education policies to be advanced and enacted?
Paperwork (9)Infrastructure data (4)Lack of time (7)Multiple subjects (2)Irrelevant work (12)Poor CPD (9)Lack of cover (9)Poor facilities (10)Corruption (2)Oversized classes (6)Multigrade teaching (1)Low pay (3)Temporary contracts (2)
Obstacles: pay and conditions of service
Testing (7)CCE (12)Lack of creative ed. (4)Lack of pre-school (5)Children’s world ignored (14)Language problems (9)
Obstacles:curriculumissues
Causedin part by SSA
Parents (9)Absence (3)Poverty (3)
Other obstaclesNot caused by SSA
What consequences does the pursuit of a global right to education have on teachers and learners in Maharashtra, in particular as it is manifested
AIFTO (11)Abacus Avehi (2)Teacher commitment (4)
Contesting neo-liberal policies
Is there evidence of a struggle for an alternative strategy to the neo-liberal one to improve education in Maharashtra?
Figure 3:2 Coding of key themes
3.3 Research Design
3.3 Research Design
3.4 Research Design
3.4.1 Access
In designing the research I was able to make use of my global
education contacts. In particular I sought out the head of one of the
largest teaching unions in India at the quadrennial conference of EI
who very kindly agreed to obtain permission for me to research in
55
an SSA, English-medium school in Mumbai. He also opened doors
to some of the educational bureaucracy both of SSA and Mumbai,
as well as sharing his own experience as a union leader with me. I
also obtained a contact with an education activist in Mumbai
through an education academic in Bhopal. She was not only
generous with her time, but also enabled me to meet other
activists and teachers and observe some of their work.
3.4.2 The local Level: Primary Research
School D is situated in the largest and one of the oldest slum areas
of Mumbai, which is home to people of many faiths and languages.
It is one of eight different SSA programme language medium
schools in a multi-storey building in the middle of the slum, with
approximately 1500 pupils working in two shifts in the English
medium school and approximately 8000 in the building as a whole.
Schools X and Y are other schools in the same area.
I was able to observe lessons, talk to teachers and pupils, and
observe the life of the school. I had anticipated possible reluctance
to allow me to watch lessons, knowing as a practising teacher that
the presence of an unknown other adult in the classroom can be
unsettling and disruptive. However this problem did not
materialize. One unanticipated problem, however, was my age,
which got in the way of my attempts to be viewed as a fellow
teacher and equal – even teachers who were close to my age, whom
56
I thought I had got to know well still addressed me as ‘madam’ – a
term of respect usually reserved for those in authority. One young
teacher who took me shopping, and even invited me to eat at her
family home, explained that the age difference made it impossible
for her to treat me “disrespectfully.” Therefore although I had
hoped to be in a position to a certain extent of an ‘insider
researcher’, this proved impossible, and at best in the school I was
perceived as an ‘outsider’ with some ‘insider’ experience.
In observing, interacting with, talking with, and occasionally
helping the teachers at the school, I tried to establish “rapport”
with them. I was attempting to gather “rich data” and see their
lives “from the inside”(Charmaz, 2006, p.14). I therefore neither
claimed to be, nor could be, an unbiased observer, and in order to
get them to share their feelings about their work, it was inevitable,
and I believe helpful, that my emotional reactions to the
circumstances in which they found themselves and the similarities
and differences between our respective teaching lives, emerged.
Although as I have detailed above I explained to all the
interviewees that what they said may be drawn on in my research
but would be anonymous, I omitted to get written permission from
them. I attempted to put this omission right retrospectively in line
with Ruskin’s ethical policy. Clearly it was not practical for me to
return to the country, so I did the following things:
57
I obtained a Marathi and English version of my permission to
visit the school
I emailed all those interviewees for whom I had an address to
ask them for permission
I asked my union contact to ask the others which he agreed
to do
As a result I received 8 acceptances, one refusal and from
the rest I have heard nothing
After consulting with my Ruskin tutor, I have decided to use the
transcripts of the interviews as part of my data (except for that
from the teacher who explicitly refused), on the basis that I had
made it clear before each interview what I was doing and had
obtained permission from all of them to record their comments on a
digital recording device on the table in front of them.
Although I started with the intention of conducting semi-structured
interviews with a series of common questions, I quickly found that
it was impossible to do this. Firstly this was because there were
severe language difficulties, as mentioned above, and secondly,
because the cultural differences which emerged meant that some of
the questions I had hoped to ask were not understood no matter
how they were framed. Thirdly, my perceived status as an older
British woman also inevitably affected the responses from
58
participants. For all these reasons, I modified my technique from a
semi-structured interview to an “interview conversation”, where I
attempted to “listen, to observe with sensitivity, and to encourage
the person to respond” (Charmaz, 2006, p.26). After the first
interview, which I did with a digital recorder and without notes, I
realized that both were necessary – since language difficulties and
ambient noise in the school setting made small but significant parts
of the recordings indecipherable. With the rural interviewees, the
education activist acted as an interpreter and also joined in the
discussion, which added a layer of difficulty in knowing who said
what – I treated these as three way conversations.
Observations 9 – 22 January 2012
Interviews – 9 –27 January 2012
Subject Place Subject Place
13 lessons with government teachers
School D 6 Government teachers
School D
2 lessons with TfI fellows
School D 1 headteacher School Y
2 Avehi Abacus lessons
School X 1 rural teacher Pune
Break times – HT’s office, corridors
School D 1 beat officer6 Pune
Journeys with teachers to School D
On foot through slum. On train to teacher’s home
Questionnaire
Creative Arts AcademyArt exhibition and singing workshop
MCGM 56 teachers (150 distributed)
All schools in School D’s block
Data Sources: Exercise books/ text books/ worksheets/ 6 The beat officer is a promoted teacher who plays a monitoring role in a group of schools in one area (beat)
59
Table 3:1 A schedule of primary research looking at the local level
Table 3:1 sets out the primary research I carried out to look at
consequences for teachers and learners of SSA and other
manifestations of the global pursuit of the right to education.
Authors Topics Covered
Galton & MacBeath (2008)
Workload. Teachers’ perceptions of their role. Inclusion. The role of teaching assistants/ parateachers. Pay. Testing. Poverty. Derision
Carter, Stevenson & Passy(2010)
Workload. Testing and assessment. Teaching assistants. Deprofessionalisation. Teaching unions
Gerwitz, Cribb, Mahony &Hextall (2009)
Teacher identities. Teachers’ emotional lives.Teacher professionalism. Teacher autonomy
Helsby (2000) Teacher identity. Teachers’ emotional and intellectual lives. Teacher autonomy.
Muller, Norrie, Hernandez & Goodson (2009)
Autonomy. Professionalism. Privatisation.
Alexander (2004) Pedagogy. Teacher autonomy. Testing and targets. Compliance
Webb (2009) Intensification. Testing. DerisionMacbeath (2012) Intensification. IdentitiesBangs, MacBeath & Galton (2011)
Compliance. Temporary contracts
Hodgkinson (2009) Professional DevelopmentWoods, Jeffrey, Troman & Boyle (1997)
Resources. Poverty
Ball (2008) PrivatisationMenter (2009) Teacher autonomy. Identities. CurriculumJames (2009) Teacher identity
60
Table 3:2 Summary of English comparator Literature. Those
authors highlighted in bold use interviews with teachers
3.4.3 Comparing across local Sites: England and Maharashtra
In order to test my theory that teachers in Maharashtra face
similar problems from a similar source to those in England, I use
secondary sources of research on teachers’ lives in England. Most
of these use interviews with teachers as a research tool (see table
3:2). The questionnaire mentioned above is adapted from a similar
one used by Galton and MacBeath in their book Teachers under
Pressure (Galton & MacBeath, 2008, p.46). In both Galton and
MacBeath’s, and in my version, teachers were asked to put in order
of importance the ‘obstacles to teaching’, although my version was
modified to take the Indian context into account (See Appendix 4-
6).
61
Table 3.2 sets out the literature I use to compare Maharashtra and
England and the main topics covered. Using coding, I will look for
common themes and differences across the two sites which reflect
the consequences of globalisation of education and neo-liberal
policy on teachers’ lives.
3.3.4. The sub/national and global Levels
It is impossible to disentangle these two levels in my primary
research since the effect of the global was mediated through its
effect on the Indian government and Indian educational law and
policy. Indeed, one could add a
Interivews 9 – 22 January
2012
Documentary evidence
Subject Place AIFTO reports on PPP, response to World Bank, court submission on testing, other union publications
Union leader AIFTO HQ Education activists’ study of RTE in Maharashtra. Acehi project materials
3 education activists
Avehi project office
Newspaper articles on education during my time in Mumbai
Deputy head:
SSA
SSA HQ in MCGM offices
Web based evidence: http://www.pratham.org.uk/http://www.teachforindia.org/
Ex-head SSA – critical of SSA
Govt offices
Table 3:3 Primary research at the country/global levels
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third level – the level of the state of Maharashtra – since education
policy is partly devolved to the states, although SSA and the RTE
Act are overarching policies, which apply to the whole of India. I
use the literature review as well as documentary evidence and
interviews to investigate these levels (see Table 3:3).
3.5 The Resistance to Neo-liberal Education Policies in
Maharashtra
Many of the interviews and documentary sources described above
at the global and sub/national level yielded insights and
information about the level of resistance to the neo-liberal project
in Maharashtra, as did aspects of some interviews with teachers. I
shall draw conclusions from these in discussing this feature of the
educational landscape.
I will now turn to the presentation of my analysis of the primary
research conducted in Maharashtra; in the subsequent chapter I
compare these with an account of teachers’ work in England.
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Chapter 4 Neo-liberal Solutions to the Education for All
Problem in Maharashtra
4.1. Right to Education Rhetoric promoting Neo-liberal
Solutions: “What is this Kind of Strategy?”
Ball identifies complex advocacy networks promoting neo-liberal
solutions to the provision of education for all in India (Ball, 2012).
In this section I analyse the effects of those nodes in the network
that I came across in my primary research in Maharashtra.
4.1.1 The Indian Government: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
SSA’s website describes itself as: (the) “Government of India's
flagship programme for achievement of Universalization of
Elementary Education.” Whilst critics argue that the education
envisioned for the masses in SSA is reductive and inadequate
(Sadgopal, 2010; Kamat, 2012), it was clear in talking to both the
present and past SSA officials that for them such universalisation
was perceived as their primary task. For the current SSA official, it
was this mission which caused his organisation to “welcome”
private schools since they were “part of the solution”. Such a view
implies an acceptance of the neo-liberal logic discussed on page 31
(Tooley & Dixon, 2006).
64
Inextricably linked with the notion of choice is the question of why
poor parents should choose private provision. Studies show that it
is the parent’s perception that public schooling is of inferior quality
which is the overwhelming factor in their choice often to put family
budgets at risk by choosing LFP schools (Harma, 2012; Peter et
al ., 20??). So how does this perception arise in Maharashtra? It
was the view of both the education activists and the union leader
that SSA is one agent in fostering this perception in that it is
largely responsible for the fact that both the media and parents
conclude (correctly) that teachers are too often not in the
classroom (Kingdon & Muzzamil, 2001).
The World Bank produced a report: “Teacher Absence in India: a
Snapshot” (Kremer et al., 2004) which in the words of the AIFTO
rebuttal produced “…a tremendous bedlam all over the world”
(AIFTO,2008). It has been widely quoted both in subsequent World
Bank reports and in the international media. However, as the
AIFTO points out, this report does not take into account the volume
of non-teaching work which teachers are required to do, for the
most part by SSA, nor the lack of arrangements for cover of absent
teachers in which SSA is at least complicit as discussed below. In
the AIFTO study, one of the reasons cited by parents for sending
their children to private schools in Maharashtra was presented in
the following terms: “Non academic work given to teachers in
private schools is less compared to government schools. So, they
65
are more attentive to the class” (AIFTO, 2008). So by loading
teachers with administrative tasks, with no help and no cover, SSA
appears to be indirectly contributing to the growth of privatization.
As I show below, conditions in school D are inadequate, and the
failure to fund public education properly also contributes to the
perception that public schooling is of poor quality (Peter et al.,
20??; Kashyap, 2008). In the interview with the SSA official, the
union leader challenged him with the fact that 2500 classrooms in
public schools and 38 school buildings had been handed to the
private sector by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai
(MCGM) and accused him of failing to prevent this, despite SSA’s
remit to ensure the provisions of RTE are met, including providing
school up to the 8th grade7. The fact that the interview collapsed
into a loud argument at this point was itself indicative of the
frustration felt by teachers and their advocates at the failure of
SSA to carry out even its limited remit and its privileging of the
private sector.
I come back to the ways in which SSA promotes the neo-liberal
project in section 4.2.
4.1.2 The Indian Government: Right to Education Act (2010)
7 Elementary schooling is only provided to 7th grade in Mumbai
66
The RTE act is framed in the language of the global right to
education. As discussed above though RTE has been welcomed by
EI, and to a certain extent by the AIFTO, its framing and effects are
heavily contested (Hensman, 2011; Sadgopal, 2010; Sobhan, 2010).
I found much evidence of this criticism in Mumbai, with one
education activist telling me: “it’s the worst thing India has done
since independence.” The activists saw it as explicitly encouraging
the growth of privatization – particularly through the 25% provision
(see p. 30), which they saw as implying that private schools were
de facto better than public provision. Less directly, one education
activist told me that Comprehensive Continuous Evaluation (CCE),
which was introduced in the RTE Act, was a “well thought out way
of closing government schools” because it was “bound to fail”.
Some of the research detailed below (see pp. 72 –73) lends weight
to this claim.
For all the activists, the main problem with RTE was that it
provided for a multilayered education system where children from
disadvantaged social groups are possibly made literate but not, as
one put it, “… educated as we look at education . .. So long as it is
not of the same quality provided by the same institution for all
children in the same neighbourhood it is going to institutionalize
the difference that is already there.”
67
For the union leader, RTE provided some leverage to improve
education in Maharashtra, which he said “was not serious” about
its provisions since it took them 18 months to enact the legislation
and still they do not carry out the requirement to provide free
education up to the 8th grade, nor the requirement that class sizes
should not exceed thirty to forty.
4.1.3 Philanthropic Organisations: Pratham
Pratham is an educational charity based in the US, UK, Canada and
Germany and funded by multi-national corporations, which,
according to its website, is committed to “every child (in India) in
school and learning well” and “preparing India’s next generation
for the global marketplace.” With the turn to PPPs by the IFIs,
philanthropic organisations are seen as important partners in
education (Robertson & Verger, 2012). In my primary research I
found Pratham’s influence on the global right to education
discourse and its effect on schooling in Maharashtra, to be
pervasive. This is echoed in the literature (Fennell, 2007; Ball,
2012).
Pratham was mentioned by the rural teachers, the education
activists and the union leader, as one of the main driving forces
behind the denigration of public schools, in turn leading to growth
in the private sector. During my primary research in Mumbai,
Pratham produced its ‘Annual Sate of Education Report’ (ASER) –
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full of league tables based according to the union leader on
“humpty dumpty statistics”. These have been collected by
volunteers using a “simple and effective tool to . . test children
anywhere, any time” (available on its website) which consists of
two small, sparsely-printed pages of simple arithmetic and reading
tests. The report generated media headlines such as: “Rural
students cannot read, subtract, divide” and descriptions of teachers
including “casual”, “lax” and “failure to show up” (Appendix 1). The
effect of the report on teachers was mentioned by the rural
teacher: “a teacher phoned me and said, ‘What is this kind of
strategy? They are trying to defame us. Why are they doing this?”’
The ex-head of SSA described Pratham’s attitude thus: “Their
paradigm is – there is a problem in education and it is only related
to teachers – they don’t think that it’s the whole system –
everything needs to be improved – it is only the teachers who are
not doing their job.” Later he described this attitude as
“dehumanising”. For the union leader, Pratham was “the
spokesperson for private education”. It was noteworthy that
education activists, the union leader, the ex-SSA official, and some
teachers, all mentioned Pratham and often with extreme irritation
or even anger.
This sustained denigration of public school teachers, partly as a
result of Pratham’s work, according to several of my interviewees
and to the AIFTO study, has the effect of increasing enrolment in
69
private schools and provides justification to some politicians who
themselves own private schools. As the union leader put it:
“Politicians are also rubbishing public education and opening
private schools. They are supposed to be responsible for public
schools but they are destroying public education.”
Figure: 4.1 Pratham funded the painting of School D’s corridors
and included the logo of one of its sponsors in the art work
4.1.4 Philanthropic Organisations: Teach for India
Teach for India (TfI) is an NGO which is supported by international
philanthropic foundations and social enterprises as well as the
70
Times of India corporation and HSBC. Like Pratham, TfI’s aim is
framed in the language of a universal right to education: “one day
all children will receive an excellent education.” TfI is another
example of the “mobility of policy ideas” (Ball, 2012, p.110), since
it is based on the contested Teach for America (TfA) model and
kick-started by a consultancy report from McKinsey and Co -
another node in Ball’s network (Ball, 2012). TfI cites four reasons
for the ‘educational crisis’ in the country, two of which it directly
attributes to failures by teachers: “I in 4 teachers will be absent on
any given day” and “our teachers could be more engaged: only 50%
are likely to be teaching at any given time” (TfI, 2012).
I observed two lessons given by TfI ‘fellows’ which appeared to
confirm what I had been told by one of the education activists; that
in their short training they are taught to use a behaviourist
pedagogy, emphasising rewards and sanctions which were written
up all over the room. I also observed an emphasis on the
responsibility of children for their own success, in keeping with the
turn of IFIs towards promoting the learning of “the value and
rationale of new social behaviours specified by an outside expert”
(World Bank, 1996, p.4, cited in Ruckert, 2010). They were
encouraged to repeat slogans, such as “We are Responsible
Leaders!” According to their website: “English is the medium of
instruction in all Teach For India schools”, chiming with the
71
Pratham view that education for all, “prepares children for the
global marketplace.”
For the two fellows I met, TfI was a pragmatic solution to a
perceived problem and they measured their success according to
the test scores the children were achieving. Nonetheless, the
fellows I spoke to have no intention of becoming teachers. Indeed
the website made it clear that TfI fellows “will be in high demand in
any sector because they have the experience of overcoming
immense challenges and have developed widely applicable
leadership skills”, or as their principal sponsor, Times of India put
it TfI is “a break from a blue-chip job” (Times of India, 2012).
Having said that, one of the two fellows I spoke to was keen to
carry on the work of TfI and join the organization as an
administrator.
By their very presence in School D, the TfI fellows represented a
challenge to teachers’ professionalism and to the teachers’ union in
the school. Unlike the other teachers, they are unqualified and are
paid 16,000/ - a month plus allowances and often a salary from
their firm – as against 10 –11,000/ - for the regular teachers. They
were not obliged to use the textbooks and brought in their own
materials, and if they required more materials, they received
money to buy them – an advantage, needless to say, not extended
to regular teachers.
72
The attitude of the other teachers to the TfI fellows was
ambivalent, while some felt that they “tried hard” there was
bemusement at their lists of rewards and sanctions and resentment
at their being allowed to teach. As the union rep put it: “These
people are excellent executives but they are not excellent teachers.
Teaching for them is a hobby not a commitment. And what saddens
me as a senior teacher is that they don’t have to follow the
prescribed syllabus. It makes me sad that my students have to
follow the syllabus and theirs don’t.” One TfI fellow expressed
some sympathy with the teachers saying, “They are running a
marathon, we are doing a sprint”.
Talking about TfI was the only occasion when one of the education
activists became really angry, saying, “Why would you bother?
Would I be allowed to go to a hospital and practise medicine? For
what purpose (are they there)?”
4.1.5 Global Agencies: The World Bank and DfID
About a third of SSA funding comes from the World Bank and DfID.
However, I did not witness much evidence of their involvement in
Maharashtra. Sadgopal, though, sees their six monthly Joint
Review Missions as an unwarranted interference in Indian
education (Sadgopal, 2010).
73
Several interviewees said that India does not need World Bank
funds – “we don’t need these loans – they are foisted on us” – a
view strongly echoed by Sadgopal (2010). The ex SSA official
described a DfID-funded fact finding visit to the UK and US. He
was very dismissive of what he had seen in the UK and the US
which could be summed up by his statement: “the people here have
got some semblance of humanity – in the US they know only
competition and nothing else.’” Far from his Indian group of fact
finders learning from the US and the UK, he said that they “need to
learn (from India)” He was particularly critical of the competitive
nature of the PISA process and the pressure to compete with other
countries (Robertson and Verger, 2012).
However one education activist said that the World Bank insists on
data, and the union leader said that the World Bank and the IMF
were urging the government to get “more work from fewer
teachers.” World Bank funded studies often have a negative effect
on the public perception of public schools and teachers (see p. 54).
4.1.6 Global Agencies: MDG2
MDG2 was not mentioned by the teacher interviewees. However it
was seen by the education activists as one of the main drivers
behind the emphasis on data collection, a reductionist pedagogy,
and segregated education. This attitude to MDG2 reflects the
critical approach discussed in the literature review; one activist
74
told me that the MDGs had come from “the banks and
corporations” and had nothing to do with the constitution of India.
She said: “we are not talking about MDGs, we are talking about
human rights forever, not some sort of target.”
Several interviewees said that the pursuit of MDG2 was driving the
volume of data demanded from teachers. This policy was summed
up by the ex-head of SSA who said: “We treat children as statistics.
How many boys? How many girls? (But) Which girl and which boy?
That it won’t say.”
The depoliticisation of the ‘contested field’ of education through
philanthropy is discussed in the literature (Srivastava & Oh, 2012).
For the activists, MDG2 was being promoted by people “who are
trying to do something good for (the children) because they are
unfortunate – no-one is unfortunate.” This attitude is found in
both Pratham and TfI whose fellows are quoted as “doing their bit”
in the Times of India article cited above. The activists also objected
to the paucity of MDG2’s pedagogical mission. One described it as
aimed at providing “one: a workforce that is required and two:
consumers of what is being produced” (Cammack, 2004; Kamat;
2012, Ruckert, 2010). One activist summed it up thus:
“I think the aim should be for everyone across the world…to
understand what we mean by education…and if I am a parent what
75
kind of education I would like for my child – an education which
makes all children independent thinkers, independent learners,
being able to think and critically engage with it and being able to
become an adult who is able to make decisions for himself or
herself. If it is not then I’m sorry – I think we should not go for it –
we should not even think about it.”
MDG2 was also mentioned as a direct cause of the employment of
contract teachers (see p.): The state government said, “If the goal
is to be achieved, then they should be given the option to
employing unskilled, underpaid teachers on contract basis and the
courts agreed with the governments”(AIFTO, 2008).
I now move on to look at the consequences of the pursuit of a
global right to education on teachers and learners in Maharashtra
as it is manifested in SSA.
4.2 Not Free to Teach (or “What the Officers see in their
Dreams at Midnight”)
I concentrate on the effects of SSA as the conduit for policy effects
of the global right to education discourse on teachers and learners.
I look first at the obstacles to teachers’ work and learning which
could be said to be wholly or partly caused by SSA, starting with
pay and conditions of service, followed by curriculum issues. I then
look at problems caused by children’s home circumstances, which
76
cannot be said to be caused by SSA, but which feature high in the
list of problems which teachers and learners face, and help to paint
a picture of the contexts in which teachers are working. In
answering this question I draw on the questionnaire as well as
interviews, observation and documentation.
4.2.1 Pay and Conditions of Service in the context of SSA
Lack of Time or Intensification of Work
This was mentioned in various contexts around 30 times across the
interviews; it was also one of the most highly rated issues in the
questionnaire. Teachers mentioned the volume of paperwork
required by SSA as part of its accountability requirements, for
which they had no clerical help and negligible ICT facilities.
Teachers had a multiple role, not only being responsible for
teaching and learning, but also for the children’s physical
requirements, their enrolment, their attendance and even their
health. Many teachers mentioned the 27 articles provided by SSA
for each child in their class for which they were answerable. On
one occasion I witnessed half the teachers being taken out of their
classrooms with no notice and no cover to attend an hour’s training
on how to complete new medical records forms.
Many teachers and the beat officer described the volume of data
which could be demanded at a moment’s notice. One Headteacher
said: “What the officers see in their dreams at midnight, in the
77
morning they try to make us do.” Much of this paperwork was as a
result of demands from the SSA programme and its software tool
the District Information System for Education (DISE). The SSA
official described it thus: “We collect the information from each and
every school which is often headmaster gets information and that
contains each and every detail about students’ strength on each
and everything.” The beat officer made it clear that teachers also
have to provide information: “I’m responsible for supplying all sorts
of information – supply material, performance records, caste,
religion, language profile, disability. Distribution of materials,
scholarships, welfare schemes and all those cultural gatherings –
sports and so on – so all I do reflects what each teacher does
because I get the information from the teachers – so if I need
anything I have to call the teachers”.
This all puts a huge burden of paperwork on the teachers. As one
put it: “When SSA was not there we were free to teach the way we
wanted to but now we don’t get that liberty. The change is – they
give us material support but not time support. They have taken
away our time to do any activities – if I want to help a particular
pupil I don’t get that chance.”
For the ex SSA official, there was a problem about the number of
hours which teachers actually worked – as he put it, “I work 14
hours a day – one way is for teachers to work for 8 hours a day –
78
then it would be solved.” It is true that the working day was shorter
in School D than a typical school day in England – starting at 8 in
the morning and finishing at 12.30 to 1.00 for the first shift,
although teachers in Mahrashtra work a six day week – as against
five for their English counterparts. However, my observation was
that most of the teachers had train journeys of up to two hours to
get to work and many were women with caring responsibilities on a
subsistence income (see p.70). Moreover, there is no evidence that
teachers who work a longer day are more effective; indeed there is
some evidence to the contrary (Sahlberg, 2007). The problem being
identified by teachers, their union and the activists, was that
teaching time itself was compromised by the requirement to do
other duties (Chakraborty, 2008).
This is compounded by the use of teachers to run the Census –
involving three weeks away from school in 2010 for example and
election duty. The teachers in Mumbai I interviewed were about to
do four days training for this – these duties predate the SSA
programme. For some scholars who are otherwise critical of
teachers’ supposed lack of commitment, however, “this reliance on
state-paid primary teachers (to run the census and elections) is
necessary” (Kingdon & Muzzamil, 2001). However my research
leaves no doubt that this work takes teachers away from their core
task of teaching and deprives children of time to learn, and SSA is
at very least complicit in this situation.
79
SSA Training
The overwhelming view of the teachers I interviewed was that SSA
training was not helpful and took them away from teaching. Only
one teacher mentioned “mixed views” on the training and even she
suggested that they should “talk to teachers.” More cynical
comments like, “we go and we come back” or “a lot of good recipes
are swapped there” were much more typical. Several interviewees
mentioned the lack of training of the trainers. One said that they
simply read from a handbook. This was also mentioned in a local
newspaper report while I was in Mumbai. Two interviewees said
that the materials produced by SSA were usually put in a cupboard
and forgotten about. One experienced teacher gave this assessment
of the training: “They tell us nothing about the method of teaching,
nothing about the content of teaching. They only talk about
evaluation. Without teaching content how can you evaluate?” This
was typical of the views I heard about the training, and seems to
indicate that SSA is indeed promoting an instrumentalist and
reductive pedagogy. These perceptions are supported by the AIPTF
study (see p.34).
Lack of Cover
Lack of cover was mentioned by three teachers and emphasised as
an issue by the union leader in the context of attacks on teacher
absence. Cover was not provided for up to 10 days annual SSA
80
training, census taking, election duties, other compulsory
administrative duties or even maternity leave. While at school D, I
witnessed classes left without a teacher. The other teachers would
either share their time between the two classes or look in every so
often. One teacher told me that recently one class had been without
a teacher for four months, so he would spend an hour a day with
them and leave his own class.
The SSA official denied that this was a problem which was partly
generated by SSA, blaming it on poor management by the
Headteacher: “SSA always says that according to RTE we have
provided a teacher in each and every class – headteachers should
not be allowing teachers to do this,” – an assertion which caused a
protracted and heated argument with the union leader. It was
difficult to accept the validity of the official’s statement given my
observation in School D, and interview statements.
Poor or absent Facilities
While there was some acknowledgement and evidence of improved
facilities as a result of the SSA programme, much more evident
were the severe problems. Two teachers mentioned the fact that
SSA provided science kits but that there were no laboratories. In
the multi-school building in which school D was situated, there was
just one laboratory. Several interviewees mentioned the SSA’s
interest in infrastructure, which generated yet more paperwork as
81
reports of issues like drainage or toilet facilities had to be written
by the teachers, but there was the perception that there was no
follow–up; that it was “on paper only.” Cases were also mentioned
where facilities were provided, such as disability ramps, but no
dedicated help for disabled pupils, or such as shoes, which did not
fit the pupils.
Figure 4:2 A Classroom in School D
The facilities I observed were inadequate. The classrooms were
overcrowded and there was no furniture so that all the children
were sitting on mats on the floor and sometimes not even that.
There was no staffroom, a space which one study describes as a
crucial “emotional zone” in schools (James, 2009, p.169). On two
82
occasions the stench from the toilets was so bad that pupils had to
be moved to the Headteacher’s office to be taught. These
observations are backed up in the literature (Peter et al, 20??;
Kashyap, 2008; Chakraborty, 2008; Duhru, 2010).
Two teachers cited corruption as an issue with SSA funds, where
money and food provided is siphoned off by local political leaders
(Hensman, 2011; Chakraborty, 2008; Kamat, 2007). This created a
double problem for teachers; not only was there a shortfall in
funding, but fear of standing up to local corrupt officials meant that
the teachers were sometimes complicit in the corruption since they
were responsible for the disbursement of funds and food.
Class Size
Getting ‘value for money’ from teachers is a key plank of World
Bank education policy, and large class sizes are seen as one way of
achieving this. Oversized classes were one of the most commonly
cited obstacles by respondents to the survey and were mentioned
by 4 of the teacher interviewees as a problem. One young teacher
with 52 students in his class said: “The ratio should somehow be
changed so that we can give proper attention to all the students.
For instance there was one child this morning – usually he’s full of
mischief- I ask him what’s the matter. He say last night there was
big fight between Mummy and Daddy. So that affected his mental
83
ability. So we must get time (emphatically) for the child so that he
knows there is someone there who can understand me.”
According to the SSA official I met, the pupil teacher ratio for 1st to
4th standard should be 30:1. The SSA’s failure to fund this was
another cause of a heated argument between the union leader and
the official during my interview with him. Every class in school D
was larger than 30.
For one of the education activists the bigger problem was multi-
grade teaching, and although I did not see any evidence of this in
School D, except where teachers were attempting to manage two
classes at once due to teacher absence, it was mentioned as an
obstacle to teaching by several of the respondents to the survey.
Low Pay and Temporary Contracts
Another way of getting ‘value for money’ from teachers is by paying
them less. The starting pay of a teacher in Maharashtra is 10,000 –
11,000 rupees a month (£126 - £139). This was cited as one of the
top seven problems identified by questionnaire respondents and
was mentioned by two teachers in interviews. While teachers’
salaries in Maharashtra are sufficient for a relatively simple life,
they are very low in comparison to other graduate professions and
were cited by the TfI ‘fellows’ as one of the reasons why they would
not consider becoming teachers (Kamat, 2007). Low pay is
84
mentioned in the literature as one cause of teacher absence since
teachers with families are sometimes forced to take extra paid
work in order to make ends meet (Sobhan, 2010) – although I saw
no evidence of this. This problem pre-dates SSA; nonetheless SSA
sets its own pay levels for the teachers who it employs directly
(Sadgopal, 2010).
The problem of contract labour in India has a long history
(Hensman, 2010). Its use in schools is actively promoted by the
World Bank as discussed in the literature review, as part of its
strategy to deprofessionalise and discipline teachers, (Goyal &
Pandy, 2009; World Bank, 2011). SSA actively employs contract
teachers in Maharashtra who receive a fraction of the pay of their
permanently employed colleagues. In school D, there was one
young teacher – with a B.Ed described thus by the union rep: “She
is doing the same job as I am yet she gets 3,000/- a month. It makes
me cry when I sit next to her in the office. The union has fought and
now she should get 6,000/- this year.” I also met a secondary
Headteacher – also on a temporary contract on 4,000/- a month.
These examples belied the claim by the SSA official that such
contracts are only used for short-term help in special
circumstances. He also did not explain why even if that was the
case these teachers should receive such low salaries.
85
4.2.2 Curriculum Issues: ‘ Learning with their Hands tied behind
their Backs’
Testing and CCE
For eight years since the introduction of SSA, schools have been
required to administer multiple tests in order to fulfil the
accountability requirements of the neo-liberal project. The Union in
Maharashtra fought, and won, a legal case in 2005 against this
level of testing, calling psychiatrists as witnesses for its adverse
effects on children. However it was not till the passing of RTE in
2010 that testing as a part of the regular curriculum disappeared
for children up to the age of 14, to be replaced by Comprehensive
Continuous Evaluation (CCE) (it should be noted, however, that
testing and league tables still persist under the auspices of
Pratham, as discussed above).
CCE involves teachers in a box filling exercise which grades
everything from children’s attendance, to their health, to their
willingness to work, their achievement, their parents’ attitude and
so on. Teachers are expected to complete and hand in a profile for
two children each day and this takes the place of formal testing.
The attitude of the teachers I interviewed was ambivalent
regarding this change. On the one hand, most expressed pleasure
that the testing had gone, with one saying how good it was that he
86
could tailor his assessments to individual children, for example. On
the other hand, two teachers mentioned the problem of doing
detailed individual assessments with large classes and limited time.
Another felt that it was a system that worked for more able
children but not for those with problems. Two interviewees
mentioned the lack of adequate training for CCE. One rural teacher
said, “The teacher can actually sit at home – imagine the child’s
face and fill up that grid – it has nothing to support – no evidence –
and no-one examines whether that child can really do this or not do
it – so this is a gross injustice on the child. If a concerned teacher
shows that children in his class need more help for example then
the officer will change the results – they don’t want bad grades for
their block.” This view was echoed by the beat officer. One
education activist likened CCE to “sticking band-aid on a cancer
patient.” And one union activist said that while it was a good idea,
without training or a change to teaching methodology it could not
possibly work.
Lack of Creative Education
The reduction of the curriculum to MLLs (see p.30) is a major
component of neo-liberal education policy. Although RTE explicitly
rejects MLLs, it cannot be said that a broad curriculum was being
followed in school D. In particular there was a lack of opportunities
for creative education (Peter et al, 20??). This was mentioned by
two teacher interviewees in School D. One said he had many
87
students who were good at drawing or singing but had no
opportunity to use their talents. In another lesson, when a child
brought in a piece of craft for the teacher to see, she commented:
“students are having lots of talent which they are not showing us”.
One rural teacher commented that creative subjects “are central
things – learning by doing – its true you should learn other subjects
but these will help you learn”.
The head of music at the creative arts academy said that there
were only 104 music teachers for 1100 schools. The Deputy Head
of SSA agreed that they did not provide money for creative
education, but said it was because the MCGM was able to provide
this itself, and that SSA’s role was only to plug the gaps. This
statement was not borne out by the statistics quoted above, which
the SSA official did not contest.
During all my observations in School D, I only saw two lessons with
any creative arts content, and this was minimal. There were no
dedicated art, craft, or music, rooms in the whole building. Clearly
this lack of creative opportunities meant an impoverished
experience for the learners.
Failure to relate Curriculum to the Children’s World
The paucity of the curriculum and its failure to relate to the
children’s world also featured in the interviews with teachers
88
(Alexander, 2006; Sadgopal, 2010). Three mentioned the
exceptional strengths of the children from the slum. One said,
“these children are strong mentally and physically, they have
suffered hardships since childhood.” Another mentioned their skill
with money transactions – many of their parents are small traders
or hawkers – and others mentioned their practical skills – many of
them are employed in paid labour when they are not in school
(Hensman, 2011). One education activist talked of the need to
contextualise education in the child’s own knowledge and sense of
place; a need which is discussed in the Indian National Curriculum
Framework document of 2005, but not enacted in either training or
the regular curriculum. The beat officer said, “What is inherent in
the child should get primacy and that’s not being done. People
know how to do things – every society knows about these things – it
has its own culture and way of expression and understanding of the
world – those children know that world.”
The SSA official insisted that SSA did provide money for extra
lessons, which he considered to be relevant to the children’s lives.
He cited the example of getting in a local fisherman to show the
children how to make nets. However, both the beat officer and the
ex SSA official said that SSA was not interested in developing
pedagogy.
89
Lack of Pre-School Education
An important objection to RTE and SSA, and one mentioned
frequently in the literature (Sadgopal, 2010; Narinjanaradhya,
2009) and also by the education activists, was its lack of provision
for pre-school education. It was the fourth biggest obstacle for
respondents to the survey and was also mentioned to me by several
teachers, particularly in the context of English medium instruction.
As far as I could tell, none of the children at School D had had pre-
school education.
Language Problems
English is increasingly seen by parents of all classes as a passport
to a good job, and therefore English medium education is much
sought after (Ball, 2012; Sobhan, 2010; Kamat, 2007). This is both
a hangover of Empire and a result of globalisation, which “…
devalue(s) the cultural capital and values of the colonised,”
(Macedo et al, 2003, p.80). It is the most obvious disjunction
between the curriculum and the children’s lives. It was the second
biggest obstacle to teaching mentioned by respondents to the
questionnaire, and was mentioned by eight of the interviewees.
One of the education activists described this as expecting children
to learn, “with their hands tied behind their backs.” None of the
children had English as their home language. The textbooks, which
the teachers have to follow, appeared antiquated, with stories for
Standard 6 about Robin Hood, April showers and Pandora’s Box for
90
example (see Appendix 2) and little relevance to India let alone
Mumbai or the children’s home area, an experience echoed across
the old Anglophone empire (Macedo et al, 2003). I saw answers in
exercise books such as
Figure 4:3 A view of part of the catchment of School D
“Horatio was killed by an arrow” and “Rome is on the river Tiber”
from children who could scarcely answer simple questions in
English. The union leader referred to it as the blue-eyed poem
phenomenon: “They read poems about little girls with blue eyes –
what child in India has blue eyes? Every child in India has brown
eyes!”
91
I saw little evidence of specialist language teaching; moreover
many of the teachers had not been trained to teach in English but
had been drafted into School D because there were not enough
qualified English medium teachers to meet the demand. I heard no
conversations between teachers in English, and apart from the TfI
‘fellows’, I met no-one for whom English was their chosen language
of communication.
I was not able to ascertain the attitude of the SSA official to English
medium teaching. In answer to my question, he said: “Teaching
English was never decided by SSA (inaudible). Learning a language
– English is not our mother language especially in D for instance –
so it depends on the teacher.” From this it would appear that SSA
is at least complicit in the failure to promote mother-tongue
teaching, despite the fact that the RTE act and the constitution talk
about the right to such education. The ex SSA official saw the
emphasis on English as part of the legacy of colonialism.
4.2.3 Obstacles resulting from Student Problems
Parents and Poverty
Levels of poverty, precarious work and child labour are widely
covered in the literature (Sobhan, 2010; Hensman, 2011; Kamat,
2007). The catchment of School D is no exception to this situation
(Sharma, 2003; Harvey, 2012). This has a profound effect on
families, and particularly on the ability of parents to support their
92
children’s education. Five teacher interviewees mentioned the
inability, or unwillingness, of parents to offer support as major
obstacles to their work. This was also the most highly rated issue
by respondents to the questionnaire. Interviewees cited the lack of
time parents had to help their children. The Headteacher of School
Y, who took me to the shanty where most of her children lived,
pointed out that most parents had to leave home early in the
morning to do subsistence jobs, like road sweeping or scavenging,
and didn’t come back till the evening. Parents rarely came to
school meetings. Some teachers cited the parents’ illiteracy and
perceived lack of understanding of the importance of education. It
was interesting to observe, however, that the children came to
school looking well-kempt and tidy (see picture p.68), despite living
in one room dwellings with a single tap at best, and that parents
chose to send them to the English-medium school, which would
indicate the importance they placed on education as a means to
escape poverty, as discussed above.
Although poverty was specifically mentioned by two teacher
interviewees as a problem for children, the hardship of the
children’s lives was also seen as a potential strength (see also
p.74). However, the lack of any realistic prospect that most
children would get beyond 7th standard education – since there are
few free secondary places and children are needed for paid labour
for the family economy – presents teachers with a problem. One
93
introduced me to a boy he identified as very clever, who wanted to
be a doctor. Later, however, he told me sadly that there was no
chance that the boy’s dream would be achieved because of his
family’s poverty.
Absenteesism
Three teachers mentioned pupil absence as a problem. One pointed
out that many families returned to their native villages in the
spring and/or in the monsoon season, causing long spells of
absence. I observed that classes were regularly missing up to a
quarter of their students, more on a Saturday when Muslim
children were absent at Koranic lessons. The ex-Head of SSA said
that a big issue with girl pupils was the lack of adequate toilet
facilities, which meant that they often did not come to school
during menstruation.
Pupil absence was a double problem for teachers since they are
also responsible for attendance. The Maharashtra RTE act states as
a duty which may be assigned to teachers: “ensuring attendance of
children enrolled in the school” (like attending training sessions
this was to be done “without interfering with regular teaching”).
Teachers are also responsible for identifying out of school children
and ensuring their enrolment at a neighbourhood school. This
problem was further compounded by the attitude of some
education officials. The Headteacher told me that she had received
94
an instruction not to take any child off the register – even if she had
not been seen for months - another example of data, which was “on
paper only.”
I now go on to look at alternative solutions to improve education in
Maharashtra
4.3 “The Aim should be to understand what we mean by
Education.”
4.3.1 The Union
Teaching unions are widely regarded as one of the main blocks to
neo-liberal reform both by its proponents (Corral, 1999), its critics
(Fennell, 2007), and its opponents (Compton & Weiner, 2008). The
AIFTO in Maharashtra is no exception. It has undertaken numerous
actions to fight the privatisation of schools and the impoverishment
of the public school system. The state government’s turn to the
Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, (Ball, 2012; Robertson,
2012; Fennell, 2007) is contested by the AIFTO, although there had
been some attempt at rapprochement when the union set up its
own version of a PPP to develop teachers’ ability to perform a
multiple role. The union leader expressed great bitterness,
however, that this had been suppressed by the local politicians who
“don’t want unions.”
95
The union resisted successfully when Pratham tried to make
Mumbai the launching pad for its plans to promote the so-called
‘bal-sakhi’, or children’s friend, model in 2001. This policy would
mean that unqualified people would be employed for five hours a
day at a salary of 500/- (£6) a month (Juneja, 2001). The union also
won the legal case against testing, as discussed above, and was
fighting on the issue of oversized and multi-grade classes, as well
as successfully opposing the closure of some rural schools.
For the union activists, the AIFTO played an important role in the
struggle for decent pay and conditions and for the Headteacher, it
was thanks to them that the infrastructure of the school was
improved, whereas for SSA, information about infrastructure
problems was “on paper only.” The role of the union was also
acknowledged by the education activists in countering some of the
worst effects of neo-liberal policy such as contract teachers and
PPPs.
On the other hand, there were criticisms of the union. One rural
teacher said that they took a “protectionist” attitude to teacher
promotions. One of the activists said that they “concentrate on
their own (teachers’) pay” (but see p. 36). However, the majority of
campaigns detailed above were specifically aimed at a defence of
public education, and the AIFTO also carries out several
educational projects.
96
4.3.2 The Education Activists
The education activists in this study were involved with advocacy
work for a common neighbourhood school system with the Indian
People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights. This
organisation produced a detailed Report of the state of education in
Mumbai, particularly in relation to out of school children, the
quality of education, access to pre-school education and
inclusiveness (Kashyap, 2008).
As discussed earlier, there is a long history of a struggle for a
critical and emancipated pedagogy in India (Sadgopal, 2010;
Fennell, 2007). The work that I observed by the Avehi Abacus
project was in this tradition, and works with teachers in all the
public elementary schools in Mumbai to enhance the curriculum
and pedagogy by “connecting what is being taught in schools to
children’s daily lives”. For example, one part of the course asks
questions about the media, politics, caste, class and religious
conflicts, patriotism and war. As the activist I interviewed about the
course put it: “it is about how common people like us have tried to
overcome these problems and encourages children to ask questions
like ‘why am I poor?’, ‘why do children work’? etc”.
The course aimed to get children to talk and discuss, and the two
lessons I observed taken by regular teachers in a Marathi-medium
97
school were the first I had seen where children were asked for their
opinions and to discuss with one another, as opposed to being
asked questions to which the answer was already decided by the
teacher.
4.3.2 The Teachers
The teachers I observed had clearly been trained in a methodology
described by one of the education activists as, “You read it out, you
ask them to by heart it, you ask them the questions and that’s it.”
This she identified as a legacy of colonialism, which had not
changed after independence. For this reason, I did not get a sense
that teachers felt constrained by a lack of pedagogical freedom and
the ‘prescribed methods of teaching’, which were identified as an
obstacle on the Galton and MacBeath questionnaire (Galton and
MacBeath, 2008, p46). However, I saw some evidence of teaching
that went beyond the textbook, using what little material was
available to make lessons more interesting and as one teacher
interviewee put it, “We bring our own experience to it –we make it
interesting.” Another teacher told me that her task went far beyond
the prescribed textbooks and that she had to “teach the children to
be human” a view echoed by critical educationists like Slouka
(2009, cited in Giroux, 2012).
I observed and heard many examples of teachers for whom their
relationship with the students and their achievement were a source
98
of professional pride and fulfilment. Most seemed to have a warm
relationship with their students, and many said they liked the
children, despite the difficult conditions and the large class sizes.
One said of a girl who “never writes a single line” and has to look
after siblings in the absence of her mother: “She loves coming to
school and for me that’s a great thing – a wonderful thing. She
comes to school every day. That’s my greatest achievement. I never
scold her – never.” Another said, “I want to stay in this school. Ya.
When I came to this school when I saw the area I wasn’t happy. But
then I came close to the students, their problems and all. I think I
can do much better here. I can understand their feelings.”
I only met one teacher who said she would prefer to be at a
different school – “more comfortable – not with these
surroundings.” However she, too, felt a sense of achievement. She
said, “Here there are different rewards – for me that boy speaking –
for 9 months he didn’t speak at all - that is an achievement for me”.
For some teachers, their work was framed in religious terms. One
teacher told me that she had been “selected by God to do this
work.” Another called teaching a gift from God. I witnessed all the
teachers at School Y praying aloud together for ten minutes on
their knees that their school, which was threatened with closure
because the shanty where most of the children lived was being
cleared, should be allowed to stay open.
99
One of the education activists criticised the attitude of teachers; as
one of “doing service to these poor children”. Yet I think the
following quote sums up the many examples I saw of teachers who
saw their work as a “huge task”, and one which was central to their
identity as a teacher and a human being:
“I love to teach. I have a love for teaching. I will tell you a story.
When I was coming to school 3 years ago there was a bomb blast
on my train- in my compartment, 89 people were killed. I was
injured – I had to have 40 stitches in my head. I am happy because
I am not disabled. I am not blind. I lost 40% of my hearing but it
has come back. And why am I happy? Because I love the children.
All my life I took pains to teach. That is the greatest blessing that
God has given me. When I get home in the evening I am so tired I
cannot speak for half an hour – not to my family, not to anyone. I
just sit. In four or five years I’ll be finished. I will go home. But my
heart will hurt.”
In Maharashtra, then, I observed and spoke to many teachers who
were working in a setting which, although vibrant, was blighted by
poverty. I saw how SSA, whose main purpose was to universalise
education, was either directly or tacitly allowing obstacles to be put
in the way of authentic learning, and how teachers were the
subject of a discourse of derision which was having an adverse
10
effect on them and on the public school system. I also saw evidence
of contestation of the neo-liberalisation of education. I shall now go
on to look at the similarities and differences of the effects of neo-
liberal reform on teachers and learners in England.
10
Chapter 5: Comparing the two Sites
In order to address whether it is possible to see similar effects on
teachers and learners in England as I have outlined in relation to
teachers in Maharashtra , I draw on secondary sources and
compare the evidence from these to the findings of my primary
research in Maharashtra. I start by presenting the evidence from
my small self-completion questionnaire for teachers, which I
compare to a similar study done in England (Galton & MacBeath,
2008).
School D respondents were asked to choose seven obstacles to
teaching, out of a list of 19, and place them in order of importance.
The list differs slightly from the 15 used by Galton and Macbeath to
allow for the different context. It is significant that despite the
differences between schooling in Mumbai and England, 12 of the
15 obstacles in the English survey are recognised by both sets of
teachers and some have a similar weighting (see Appendices 3 - 5).
This questionnaire then, sets the scene for the literature review to
detect areas of similarity and difference for teachers in England
along the lines identified in Maharashtra.
5.1 Lack of Time and Intensification of Work
The intensification of work remains one of the biggest obstacles
identified by teachers in England, and the Workforce Remodelling
10
process, the putative purpose of which was to reduce teacher
workload in England, has, in fact, not achieved that (Carter et al,
2011). Seemingly endless ‘reform’ is “generating escalating
paperwork” (Webb, 2009, p.48) . One teacher talks of “copious and
needless paperwork” (Galton & MacBeath, 2008, p.27). A
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study cites; “…tasks which could
be carried out by staff other than teachers’ as one of the main
reasons for leaving the profession” (Cited in MacBeath, 2012).
5.2 Unsatisfactory In Service Training
There is much evidence in the literature that in-service training in
England is often formulaic, and addressed to government
strategies, striving for a “culture of compliance” and promoting a
“state theory of learning” (Bangs et al, 2011: p.62; Hodgkinson,
2009). As Alexander puts it, “to be ‘informed’ is to know and
acquiesce in what is provided/expected and/or required by
government and its agencies . . . – no less and, especially, no more”
(Alexander, 2004, p.17). These comments echo those of the Indian
teachers to SSA training.
5.3 Lack of Cover
It has never been the case in the modern period in England that a
class in a state school would be left without an adult supervising
them, as is the case in Maharashtra. However, the introduction of
untrained individuals to cover classes, such as cover supervisors, is
10
problematic and contested, since the “children know they are not
teachers” (Carter et al, 2011, p.110). The change in regulations to
allow unqualified people to do specified teachers’ work has been
challenged by teaching unions as a step towards the
deprofessionalisation of teaching (Compton, 2008). So it could be
argued that the difference between the situation in Maharashtra
and England is only one of degree: in the former there is no cover;
in the latter, there is cover, but it is provided cheaply and is often
inadequate.
5.4 Poor or Absent Facilities
Although few schools in England would recognise the kinds of
facilities in School D, nonetheless “shabby rooms and poor
equipment” are an increasing feature of life in English schools
(Woods et al. 1997). There was some improvement after 1997, with
New Labour investing more in school infrastructure than their
predecessors, but the situation is worsening with “lack of suitable
space and often inadequate resources” being identified by
MacBeath as one of the top reasons why teachers leave the
profession (MacBeath, 2012 p:11).
5.6 Low Pay
There is no comparison between the actual levels of pay of teachers
in Maharashtra with those in England. However the comparative
undervaluing of teachers relative to other professions is a feature
10
of the educational landscape in both countries (Galton & Macbeath,
2008, Kamat, 2007). It features in the list of obstacles to teaching
in both countries but is fairly low down. From my interview data in
India, I would suggest that it is for the same reason there as Galton
and Macbeath posit in England; “…it is not the money that
motivates’ teachers” (Galton & MacBeath, 2008, p.12).
5.7 Temporary Contracts
The turn towards casualisation and deprofessionalisation of
teachers is a feature of both school systems. As discussed above,
the Workforce Remodelling Agreement has meant that increasingly
unqualified and low-paid people are being used to ‘teach’ in
England (Carter et al, 2011). This not only affects teachers’ pay and
security of tenure but when funds are low, headteachers will often
choose unqualified over qualified staff (Carter et al, 2011). This
affects learning. Bangs et al (2011, p.61). cite a number of studies
of the pedagogical effects of this policy which they describe as
‘downright gloomy’.
5.8 Testing and CCE
Teachers and their unions in England have contested testing in the
form of SATs since their introduction in 1991 because of their high-
stakes nature and use in league tables, they skew the curriculum
towards the test, and they can have an adverse psychological effect
on children (Webb, 2009; Galton & MacBeath, 2008; Carter et al,
10
2011). Although state organised testing is no longer a feature of
life for public school children in India, it has been, was contested,
and is likely to be again, as I discuss above. CCE is another
accountability framework which could be compared with much of
the paperwork, which is being required for children in England in
the present – particularly in the early years phase.
5.9 Impoverishment of the Curriculum
Much of the literature points to the reductive nature of the English
curriculum with its emphasis on literacy and numeracy, very like
the MLLs in India, and its focus on those basic skills necessary for
a flexible workforce (Alexander, 2004; Menter, 2009). Alexander
points out that a broad curriculum has been shown to improve
learning – echoing the point made by the rural Indian teacher in
the previous chapter (Alexander, 2004). Like the Indian teachers
MacBeath identifies the need “to take much greater account of the
multiplicity of learning experiences which children and young
people have outside schools.” (Macbeath, 2012, p.48).
5.10 Pedagogical Constraint
Unlike their colleagues in Maharasthra, English teachers have
historically known much greater pedagogical freedom before neo-
liberal reforms were institutionalised, so the regret of its loss
identified in England is not replicated in Maharashtra. Galton and
MacBeath, for example, quote a primary teacher who says, “the
10
creative stuff is going isn’t it; the art, the building, designing,
making” and another laments the inability for spontaneity based on
for example “children bringing something in” (Galton & MacBeath,
2008, p.28).
5.xi Social Problems – Parents and Poverty
The detrimental effect of poverty on children’s learning and
teachers’ ability to do their jobs has long been identified in
England. In 1997,Woods et al quote a teacher as saying: “some of
the children’s problems were horrendous. In every classroom we
had three or four who were living in extreme poverty or very
difficult family circumstances” (Woods et al, 1997 p.161). The scale
of the problem was different in School D, where almost every child
was living in poverty, but the effects were similar and the problem
in England has been worsening as the poverty gap widens. Parental
neglect of their children and their education, identified by some
interviewees in Maharashtra, is also identified as a problem in
England (Galton & MacBeath, 2008).
5.12 Structural Effects on the Education System
The effects of the neo-liberal education project on the structure of
the English education system are well documented in the literature
(Murch, 2008; Carter et al, 2010; Ball, 2008). The breaking up of
the system of neighbourhood comprehensive state schools is
proceeding apace, with the growth of privately-run academies and
10
free schools. Indeed some of the same organisations and
individuals identified by Ball in his policy networks, such as ARK
and James Tooley, are active in the promotion of privatisation in
both countries (Ball, 2012).
One of the main instruments, which I identified in Maharashtra as
promoting this project, was the denigration of public schooling and
in particular public school teachers. This is well documented in
England. Ball coined the phrase “the discourse of derision” in 1990
to characterise this trend, and it occurs frequently in the literature
as a growing issue for teachers (Ball, 1990; Carter et al, 2010;
MacBeath, 2012; Webb, 2009). Giroux (2012: p.16) also identifies
“humiliation masquerading as generosity”– with the domination of
philanthropic groups such as the Gates foundation in the US. This
is increasingly replicated in England, with organisations like ARK
and Harris claiming to be advocating for children as they help to
denigrate and dismantle public education.
5.13 Teacher Identities
Although teachers in Maharashtra have less pedagogical freedom
than those in England, the sense of their identities as teachers,
which emerged in some interviews, is not dissimilar from that
identified in the literature about England. Menter says that many
teachers are “driven by a deep commitment, sometimes religiously
driven” (Menter, 2009 p: 218), and Webb (2009) talks about
10
teachers’ love of children for example. However, Webb sees these
identities as being under threat as teachers are assigned “a new
social identity, emphasising teacher competences rather than
personal qualities, consumerism to replace care and accountability
to replace autonomy” (Webb, 2009, p.54; Galton &
MacBeath,2008; Woods et al, 1997). This sense of loss is echoed
by one of the teacher interviewees in Maharashtra (see p.65).
However, while the pressure on teachers’ self-identities is felt in
both countries, so are what Apple calls the “counter-hegemonic
practices” (Apple, 2009 p:xvi) which enable teachers to undermine,
to some extent, the constraints of neo-liberal educational ideology.
“Good teachers have always known how to be educationally
subversive” and I saw some evidence of this in Maharashtra too
(Galton and MacBeath, 2008 p.115).
It is clear, then, that while there are myriad differences of context,
degree, culture and history, in many respects teachers in England
are facing similar pressures, constraints and obstacles to those
faced by their colleagues in Maharashtra and that some of these
come from a similar source; the global neo-liberal agenda for
reforming education and teachers’ workplaces and work.
10
Chapter 6: Conclusion: ‘The Thread that links the Toiling
Masses of the World’
“Neo-liberalism – the onslaught of capital on the toiling masses – is
the thread that links the toiling masses of the world”, so says Das,
in his analysis of the Indian Government’s New Economic Policy
(Das, 2012, p.1). In adopting the vertical case study approach, I
argue, through the lens of primary research in Maharashtra and a
review of research in England, that a key part of this ‘onslaught’,
the deep advance of neo-liberalism in education as a political
project, links the teachers and learners of the world.
With such a short period of research, and using only secondary
sources for one country, this was a truncated version of the kind of
vertical case study envisaged by Vavrus and Bartlett (2006).
However framing the research in this way helped me to overcome
some of the problems I encountered when faced with the living
reality of School D. For example, I had been confidently expecting
testing and the consequent pedagogical constraint to be a common
issue for teachers between the two sites and was disconcerted
when this did not appear to be the case. However, by using this
approach, I was able to place the advent of CCE, and the teaching
methodology I observed, into their political and historical contexts,
and thus understand them better.
11
In setting out on this research journey, I was motivated above all
by what seemed to be a disjunction between the contestation of
neo-liberal education policy in the Global North by my own union
and the EI, and an apparent acceptance by the same institutions of
a form of discourse that promoted such policy in the Global South.
At the most basic level, it seemed that while eschewing the
language of targets and league tables for the North, we were
accepting and promoting them in the Global South – in particular
the biggest target of all - the MDG2.
6.1 MDG2: The mother of all targets
I take it as read that the all children are entitled to education. But
the question of course is: what kind of education? I argue that
MDG2 is being misused for the benefit of dominant interests; to
create flexible workers and willing consumers, and at the same
time, to profit from educating the poor. In doing my primary
research, I witnessed the work of organisations which are
important nodes of the policy networks identified by Ball, which
promote neo-liberal education policy in India. I also saw how they
used the global right to education discourses to advance their
causes (Ball, 2012). I saw how widely publicised league tables,
produced by Pratham, purported to show how well or badly
different areas were doing in achieving MDG2, and how this was
used to create a ‘discourse of derision’ in the media about teachers
11
and public schools which served to promote enrolment in private
schools and the flight of parents from public schools.
I saw the Teach for India programme implicitly promoting the
deprofessionalisation of teachers by putting ‘fellows’ into schools
after a few weeks of training to promote what I regard as an
instrumentalist pedagogy which promoted English as the language
of aspiration.
Above all, I observed how SSA, which was set up to achieve MDG2
in India, is failing to fund schools adequately in Maharashtra, is
making use of low paid contract teachers, is complicit in the
absence of teachers from classrooms with no cover, and also
complicit in the failure of MCGM to provide a broad education up
to the 8th, grade or reasonably sized classes as specified in the RTE
act. Furthermore, it has not prevented the MCGM from handing
over large parts of the public school estate to private providers. I
document how the burdening of teachers with large amounts of
paperwork involves their being absent too often from lessons, and
how this further promotes the denigration of public education and
fosters privatisation. I learned that SSA sees private providers as
“part of the solution.”
11
6.2 Not free to teach
For teachers and learners in Maharashtra, the consequences of this
are severe, particularly in a context where families are involved in
an unrelenting struggle for survival, with virtually no welfare safety
net, and parents are therefore often unable to support their
children and their education. In School D I saw the impoverishment
of the curriculum, where learners were working “with their hands
tied behind their backs” as they struggled with an alien language
and script. Further, learners had virtually no creative education,
and there was sometimes little relationship between the curriculum
and the world they lived in.
In this context, teachers were already faced with an uphill task. As
well as grappling with the large amounts of paperwork, mostly
generated by SSA, and responsibilities which went far beyond their
core task of teaching, I watched teachers coping with low pay,
temporary contracts, inadequate facilities and oversized classes. I
saw how though many would have appreciated help to improve
their teaching; the compulsory CPD provided by SSA was largely
viewed as worthless and unprofessional.
6.2 The Struggle for democratic and free public Education
This dissertation relies on the voices of education and union
activists who have documented and demonstrated the struggle for
11
a different kind of education in Maharashtra; one based on a
critical pedagogy which takes as its starting point the world in
which the children live, their need to understand it, and to be
equipped with the critical thinking skills needed to change it. These
voices demonstrate too that the struggle is ongoing in Maharashtra
for properly funded public education, yet is hampered by the
‘philanthropic’ efforts of organisations like Pratham and TfI who
seek to promote a solution that is anchored in the neo-liberal
paradigm. I saw how the union used legal and other resources to
combat aspects of neo-liberal reform. I noted how the Avehi Abacus
project, which was being taken into all the public schools in
Mumbai, was on the whole welcomed by teachers. The teachers in
Maharashtra are central to the struggle. Though they are
hampered by the legacy of colonialism in their teaching
methodology and though, as in all countries and professions, there
are some who need support to develop their work, the evidence I
found - of the strength of commitment of many interviewees - gives
hope for the future of public education in Maharashtra and belies
the discourse of derision to which they are subject.
6:3 It’s a common struggle
By comparing my primary research with the literature on England,
I have found many significant similarities in the causes and
consequences of neo-liberal reform for teachers in both countries.
There were, of course, differences of context, culture, history and
11
degree. Salaries in Maharashtra could not be compared with those
in England, but the relative undervaluing of teaching against other
professions could. The context of poverty was much more extreme
in Mumbai, yet relative poverty is a problem too in England. And as
I discovered, many of the obstacles to their teaching identified by
teachers in School D are recognised by those in England. Teachers
in both countries too are subject to the discourse of derision. And
in the structure of education, I saw similarities in the way
privatisation and PPPs are being promoted, noting in particular
Ball’s observation that some of the same actors are involved in both
systems.
6.4 Whither international Solidarity?
I contend that the present emphasis on MDG2 by the NUT, EI and
too many teaching unions in the Global North, is an example of
what Fraser calls the humanistic principle of social justice. By
framing the issue in this way we are, as Fraser puts it, “staking out
a view from the commanding heights” without any attempt to “take
account of actual or historical social relations.” (Fraser, 2010,
p.289). The problem with this is that it “distracts us from solidarity
with the real agents of progressive social history” (Bond, 2005,
p.89) – in this case, those involved in struggles to defend public
education in the Global South and develop the kind of critical
pedagogy which can change the “relations of exploitation and
domination . . . in the larger society” (Apple et al, 2009,p.4). My
11
research journey has been an enriching and heartening one. It has
forced me to confront some of my ingrained habits of thought, and
be open to the contradictions in the real world in which my
research is situated. At the same time, it has confirmed my hope, if
not belief, that teachers and activists in the Global South are
themselves contesting neo-liberalism and its consequences, and
that our role as teacher unionists and education activists in the
North is to offer and receive solidarity and share ideas, not to
encourage them to meet targets, or rattle collecting tins.
Fraser (2010, p.287) suggests a different way of framing social
justice from the humanistic one mentioned above. She calls this the
“all-subjected principle”. In comparing the effects of neo-liberal
reform on teachers in Maharashtra with those on teachers in
England, and by using a vertical case study approach, I hope to
have illuminated this principle and shown that both groups of
teachers are subjected to similar oppression, coming from the same
source, albeit through different agents of power and control. In
doing this, I hope to stimulate a debate in the global and national
teacher union movements about the nature of the solidarity which
will really progress the cause of social justice; namely one which
recognises the agency of teachers, activists and teacher unions in
the Global South to challenge and change the conditions for
children and teachers, just as we recognise the agency of those
actors in our own countries.
11
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Appendix 1 Front page story in DNA City (Mumbai) 27th
January 2012 pp1, 8
13
13
Appendix 3: Self-completion questionnaire for School D
Please choose any 7 of the following issues, which could present a problem to your teaching in the way you would like to, and rate them in order of importance, where 1 is the most important and 7 the least. (e.g. if you consider oversized classes to be the biggest problem, write 1 next to it):
[ ] Lack of time for discussion and reflection
[ ] Large class sizes
[ ] Language difficulties
[ ] Poor pupil behaviour
[ ] Too many new regulations
[ ] Overloaded curriculum
[ ] No pre-school education
[ ] Pressure to meet targets
[ ] Inadequate pay
[ ] Lack of resources, materials and equipment
[ ] Requirement to do non-teaching duties – eg census taking
[ ] Lack of resources for children with learning difficulties
[ ] Lack of parental support
[ ] Inspection and monitoring
[ ] Poorly maintained buildings
[ ] Centrally dictated methods of teaching
[ ] Limited professional development and training
[ ] Multigrade teaching
[ ] Other – please describe
13
Appendix 4 Graphic depiction of results of Galton and
MacBeath Questionnaire
13
Appendix 5 Graphic Depiction of Results of School D
Questionnaire
13