Why media should not be allowed into schools

Creator: razihusin | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphot0

Following the airing of a new clip showing the inability of children of a government school in Dhenkanal district in answering few fundamental questions, education officers have directed school principals to not allow media personnel into school premises and even file police complaints if required to prevent entry without permission. While the issue of poor learning outcomes is a serious one and the government must be asked questions about the same, media personnel barging into schools and thrusting a mic on an unassuming child is surely not the way to go about it.

Highlighting the concern

That school education is an important pillar of any society is well known. Equally well known is the fact that school education in most parts of India is poor in quality as well as quantity. Despite the best of intentions, inadequate number of teachers, ill-trained teachers, curricular lacunae, pathetic infrastructure, etc, has marred school education, including that in Odisha. The responsibility of the fourth estate of the democracy lies in constantly questioning the government of the day about measures that are being taken to fill such gaps. Such reportage, highlighting the concerns have made people and powers that be sit up and take notice.

That said, the education quality, the achieving of learning outcomes cannot be tested by reporters and journalists by asking a random few questions to any school kid. There are several good reasons for it, the first being that there is a due statistical process to evaluate these outcomes and sampling by picking any random child won’t provide the true picture. Doing that would border on sensationalism to put it mildly. Secondly, there is the issue of ethics. Does the child, a minor, provide consent to be interviewed and for it to be aired? Would there be an easy way for the video to be taken off the internet if in future the child or her parents would demand so? Would the reporter ask similar question to, say a top bureaucrat’s child? Thirdly, school is meant to be a safe space. It is ideally meant to foster growth in a non-threatening environment. The presence of any third party encroaching that space does not augur well for children at large.

School education in Odisha

The Ministry of Education recently introduced the Performance Grading Index (PGI) for schools in the country which evaluates schools on five parameters – Learning Outcomes & Quality, Access, Infrastructure and Facilities, Equity and Governance Processes. For the year 2019-20, the latest which has been published, Odisha figured in Grade I along with states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. There has been an increase in its grade from 2017-18. No guesses that following the 5T transformation of schools, the improvement has been in the infrastructure and facilities domain.

Odisha scored relatively low in learning outcomes & quality, the domain that deals with standard of students in language and mathematics (the bone of contention in the case) in standard 3, 5 and 8 in government and aided schools. In the PGI, average scores in both language and mathematics declined as the class progressed from 3 to 8.

As per Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of 2021, student enrolment in Odisha in private schools is increasing; more and more children are taking private tuitions (nearly 15 % jump from 2020), a mere 36% household reported that they received learning material when schools were closed during the pandemic.  Earlier ASER report of 2018 showed that a mere 35% children in Standard III were able to read Standard II level text in government schools while it was 64.5% in private schools. When it comes to arithmetic, 23.8% children in Class V of government schools could do a division meant for Standard II while in private the percentage was 43.2.

Ask questions – the right ones

The issue of not making spectacle of poor learning outcomes applies to ministers and bureaucrats too. Only a few days ago, the concerned minister during a school visit directed deducting salary of a headmistress due to poor response by a student. The whole 'catching by surprise' plank does not augur well with children in a school. The disallowing media person into schools is also seen in Odisha in conjunction of them being kept out of the secretariat, SCB medical college, etc, the latter being highly condemnable; yet which cannot be conflated with the issue of minor school children.

Not allowing media personnel to enter schools should not deter them from raising issues about school education. There are several studies starting from ASER to NITI Aayog to Ministry of Education which regularly survey schools which provide information about state of affairs. Teacher shortage is a massive concern and media should highlight that. RTI tools should be employed to learn more about quality of teachers, appointments, irregularities, etc. Nothing stops media houses, number of which are mushrooming each day, from investigating multitude of issues that plague school education. That said, these are more effortful processes as compared to asking few questions of mathematics to the unassuming school children.