1

Quality vs quantity. Has a human

capital approach to education diluted
quality in schools in India and can the
human capability approach offer any
solutions?

Guy Brickley
MAEID Student ID: BRI08064271

Learning Education and Development Final Assignment

January 2010

Abstract

This paper considers the issue of quality in education in India, to develop a clearer idea of what it
looks like in practice and to see how different perspectives on development affect our view of
quality. In doing so it reflects on how quality is currently being measured, specifically in India, and
asks how useful this measurement is for policy makers and the society they represent. I argue that
methods currently in use are strongly influenced by human capital theory and therefore education
policies at a central and state level continue to be driven by the same ideology. Consistently low
levels of quality prove that the human capital approach is not working and the paper asks whether
Sen's human capabilities approach can offer any potential solutions to the challenges faced.
 2
Introduction

India is the world's largest functioning democracy and is home to an estimated population of 1.2
billion people. Despite being ranked twelfth in terms of it's GDP, the country’s GDP per capita is
only $1,069 (World Bank 2008) and India is ranked 134 th on the Human Development Index with
34% of those aged 15 and above considered illiterate.1 In September 2009, the government of India
finally enacted the long-awaited Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, which
includes a mandate to improve the quality of education. According to the Annual Status of
Education Report (Pratham 2008) 95.7% of children in India in the age group 6-14 are enrolled in
some form of elementary school. The 2008 UNESCO Global Monitoring Report categorises India
as a country with high enrolment but low survival, with less than 75% of children reaching the last
grade of primary education. Enrolment rates at secondary level remain low (especially amongst
women), learning levels appear to be stagnant in many states and poor teacher motivation and
teacher absenteeism remain persistent problems (Kingdon 2007).

As the GMR 2009 quite succinctly puts it: progress in quantitative headcount indicators has
masked problems in qualitative learning achievement. India's tenth five year plan (2002-2007)
focussed heavily on universal access and enrolment and arguably neglected the quality of education
by making statistical gains the priority in their policy decisions. The government of India now faces
the huge task of addressing quality whilst maintaining access and enrolment, and the eleventh five
year plan highlights significant improvement in learning conditions.

Given India's vast size and population I have decided to observe the results of the ASER survey at
the state level, to see what the measurement of quality means for the state government and more
importantly for schools. I have chosen the state of Uttarakhand since I have some experience of
working in this state and have a working knowledge of the real challenges faced by schools in the
area. Uttarakhand has only existed as a state since 2000 (prior to which it was a part of Uttar
Pradesh), which makes it an interesting case study. Having only lived through one complete 5 year
planning cycle, it provides an opportunity to assess the progress of the state in terms of quality
indicators and to think about what the challenge of quality means for the state government.

The state of Uttarakhand is a geographically challenging area due to the fact that 93% is
mountainous and 64% is covered by forest. Many remote villages have poor access to education and
health facilities and population is sparsely distributed in several of the mountainous districts. The
1 Human Development Index figures 2009. Taken from the UNDP website
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IND.html
 3
capital of the state is Dehradun, which has a population of around 530,263, and is home to the state
government and house of representatives. The government recognises 15,620 villages and 81 cities
and urban areas and is home to 15058 primary schools. Due to inadequate agricultural yield, rising
population, increasing demand on natural resources and a lack of alternative employment
opportunities, there is a migration of the men-folk from the villages to cities, within and outside of
the state. This tends to put more pressure on the women to take on the responsibilities of managing
the households and bringing up the children. 2

Quality and the Human Capital Approach

The Dakar agreement lists improving the quality of education as one of its EFA goals:
Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized
and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and
essential life skills.3

What do we mean by “quality” when it comes to education? It may be useful to look through the
lens of human capital theory to reflect on this question, as it is fairly uncontested that this has been
the dominant theory in worldwide policy formation over the past few decades. Human capital
theory is based on the assumption that an individual can acquire skills and knowledge that can
influence their ability to perform labour and therefore produce economic value. Human capital
theory consequently provides a framework in which both the private and social returns to education
can be measured and used to make policy decisions with regards to spending and resource
allocation. Becker (1964) talks of the desired outcomes of education being to ensure that children
are literate and numerate. “That is to say, resources will have been used effectively if their
education provides them with knowledge and verbal, computational, communication, and problem-
solving skills that can be applied in a wide range of work settings and that will enable people to
acquire job-specific skills in the workplace.”4

It seems therefore that quality from a human capital perspective is defined as the practical skills and
outputs gained by students from the experience of education. The emphasis is on whether these
skills translate into workplace-relevant practice and therefore assist the individual in entering the
workplace, improving their income and productivity, and thus the per capita income of the nation as
a whole. If what Becker (1964) expresses are the desirable outputs of education, which according to
2 Information taken from National Informatics Centre for Uttarakhand. http://gov.ua.nic.in/
3 Dakar Framework for Action 2000. From UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2005 Quality. Available from http://
www.unesco.org/en/efareport/reports/2005-quality/
4 Psacharopoulos, George Building Human Capital for Better Lives, World Bank 1995.
 4
Psacharapoulos (1995) will have a positive impact on many other social benefits such as child
mortality and life expectancy, then how can they be effectively achieved? Psacharopoulos (1995)
describes the ways in which governments can influence the quality of education, by suggesting the
inputs necessary. These are broken down into five main areas:

1) Pre-school education programmes and in-school health and nutrition programmes.

2) Curricula and syllabi should be focused on “core skills” at the primary level and emphasis
should be on “trainability” at higher levels. This should involve employers and private
training providers.
3) In-service training for teachers linked directly to classroom practice.
4) Lengthening the school year to provide more “learning time”.
5) Investment in “instructional materials” (ie. blackboards, chalk & textbooks).5

These measures are indicative of the policies and action being taken by the central and state
governments in India. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) programme has been at the
centre of India's education policy in recent years and has incorporated many of the more fragmented
programmes that were running prior to its launch in 2001-2002. Its main aim has been to have all
children to completing eight years of elementary schooling by 2010 and to achieve elementary
education of satisfactory quality with emphasis on education for life. The programme has adopted a
“bottom up” approach with the locus of planning being the school and the community who are in
turn supported by the district and state government, with funding available at the central level on
application. However, whether decentralisation in India has increased participation is largely
contestable, with several studies suggesting that in fact, decentralisation does not serve to empower
communities, but merely gives more autonomy to corrupt officials creating more complex layers of
beaurocracy, which slows down the democratic process (Bray 1985, Lauglo 1995). As Carnoy
(1999) puts it “many of the decentralisation reforms do not have their origins in the desire to
increase school productivity, but in the need to reduce central government and management
responsibility for primary and secondary education.”

The SSA programme in India suggests the following “major components” to be an essential part of
the effort to improve the quality of elementary education:

(a) Vision of Quality Elementary Education

5 As a pre-cursor to all of these inputs we must obviously include enrollment in schools, which has been a major drive
for policy makers in India since their independence over 60 years ago. The international pressure to achieve universal
primary enrollment has put enormous pressure on decision-makers to achieve the goal of 100% enrollment by 2015.
 5
(b) Curriculum Renewal Plan
(c) Teaching Learning Material (including text books)
(d) Teacher Training - perspective and annual plan / calendar
(e) Teaching-Learning Process
(f) Academic Resource Support Structure
(g) Monitoring of Quality Aspects6

The word “quality” features repeatedly in the planning and appraisal manual for SSA, yet there
seems to be little concrete strategy of how to achieve this beyond broad input-orientated criteria
suggestions. As we can see, the SSA quality component suggestions bear some resemblance to
those guidelines suggested by Psacharapoulos (1995) and confirm a human capital approach
towards achieving quality in education.

Looking at the regular full-page adverts taken out by The Ministry of Human Resources in the
Hindustan Times (See figure 1.1), we are given a numerical representation of how the SSA
programme is succeeding in terms of the number of new schools built, new teachers employed,
additional classrooms and toilets and the amount of money spent on teacher training, learning
equipment etc. The advertisement makes for quite a dull, figure-heavy read, and gives us little idea
of how the quality of education is actually improving beyond input statistics, paying no attention to
outputs of the schools in terms of achievement.

Figure 1.1 Uttarkhand Data 2007-087

New Teaching No. of No. of Community Drinking Toilets Expenditure till 31st
Teachers Learning Teachers Free Training Water built March 2008
equipment Trained Textbooks (Rs. In Lakhs)
(schools)
537 206 36418 924433 66709 253 907 18761.37
($40.35million)

One of the major criticisms of the human capital model of education is precisely this emphasis on
the measurable, economistic benefits of education, which tends increasingly to block out any
notions of the cultural and social benefits of education. Appiah and Mc Mahon’s (2002) study into
6 Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Manual for Planning and Appraisal Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Department of Elementary Education & Literacy April 2004.
7 Data taken from the Govt of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education and
Literacy information - Hindustan Times, Friday February 13 2009.
 6
the social outcomes of education in Africa implies that education also has a positive effect on what
are termed the external benefits of education, including strengthening civil institutions, political
stability as well as infant mortality and longevity. However, a human capital perspective would see
these effects in terms of how they will subsequently impact on the economic growth process, rather
than being goals of development in themselves.

The screening hypothesis is another significant argument against the human capital approach,
implying that rather than education leading to increased productivity and increased earnings, it is
merely a device which makes the employer’s selection of a candidate easier by narrowing down
their options. Cohn and Geske (1972) make a valid point stating that in many societies educational
achievement does not necessarily correlate with productivity. A human capital approach essentially
assumes a fully-functioning competitive labour market. For the model to be effective, we need to
assume that a) when individuals leave school, there are sufficient jobs to suit their abilities and
skills and b) that the wages paid for these jobs are indicative of productivity. Due to India’s large
population and a huge civil service, where corruption and nepotism are commonplace, this is
certainly not the case. The case of teachers is an excellent example of this, with the average Indian
government school teacher earning way above the GDP per capita (in some cases at a ratio of 7:1),
due to beaurocratically set salaries…which teacher unions have worked hard to secure (Kingdon
2007, Atherton & Kingdon 2009). The power of these unions and the status of the teacher in general
in Indian society, means that once they are employed, teachers are unlikely to lose their job, no
matter how poorly they perform. This, combined with a lack of accountability to the communities
they work with, has led to a culture of apathy and ineffectiveness amongst teachers and school
management which is evident throughout much of the civil service in India.

India also has a massive large non-formal employment sector made up of agricultural workers,
traders and non-skilled labour where it is difficult to measure the benefit of education in economic
terms. Philips (1994) argues that education has a positive impact on the productivity of farmers, but
to equate this directly with earnings, social benefits and economic growth prove problematic. How
useful can the measurement of quality in terms of test scores and student achievement be in
showing us to what extent education influences these kinds of trades?

Hanushek and Woessman's (2007) study of School Improvement and Development provides an
interesting summary of what factors influence quality from a human capital perspective. They
conclude that no single factor has an overwhelming influence on quality, and highlight the problems
faced by policy-makers given the amount of conflicting and inconclusive data available. According
 7
to their research, the answer lies in focusing attention on the true policy goal – instead of imperfect
proxies based on inputs to schools – performance can be improved. They offer three areas for
increased policy focus: choice and competition; decentralization and autonomy of schools.

Measuring Quality of Education in India

The most recent study into quality of education in India is the Annual Status of Education Report
(ASER), which has been carried out nationwide every year since 2005. This study aims to assess
learning levels of primary school children across India using simple tools to measure literacy,
numeracy and various “life skills”. Data is collected in homes rather than at schools to ensure an
unbiased result and these learning levels are then published in the annual report, which compares
data from different states and gives a nationwide picture. In 2008 the study was composed of
reading, arithmetic, telling time and currency tasks. Factors taken into consideration included
enrollment status, type of school frequented by the child as well as the mother's educational status,
household characteristics (to determine income) and village information (to measure local amenities
and facilities). This data differs in its approach to that of the National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT) in its focus on the child, rather than the school as the unit to be
observed. For more information on the NCERT model of examining quality see Robin Alexander's
(2008) study of issues of quality in education.

The National picture shows that only 56.2% of children in standard V 8 are able to read a standard II
level text and only 32.8% of children in standard V are able to do simple subtraction. 60.9% of
children in standard V were able to tell the time and 83.2% of standard V children were able to do
simple currency tasks. Below are some statistics from the state of Uttarakhand in order to provide a
state-level picture of how the learning levels break down to create the national data.

Figure 2.1 Uttarakhand

Data, ASER 2008

8 Standard V is the equivalent to Year 6 at primary level in the UK. The Indian Primary school system in
Uttarakhand incorporates Standard I to V.
 8

Figure 2.1 shows us the results of the reading tests in the state of Uttarakhand, and depicts a decline
in the percentage of children who can read at least Std II level texts in government primary schools
between Std III and V. This trend is similar in Mathematics (Figure 2.2) learning levels in
Uttarakhand, showing a progressive decline since 2006 of the percentage of children who can do
division in government school in Std III to V.

Figure 2.2 Uttarakhand

Data ASER 2008

Declining or stagnant trends in learning levels are common to most other states in India apart from a
few exceptions like Chattisgargh and Madhya Pradesh where the learning levels have improved
since 2006. It may be interesting to look specifically at these states in order to ascertain why these
improvements have occurred, and whether different attitudes to quality exist, but this does not fall
into the scope of this paper. In the majority of cases, including Uttarakhand, this downwards trend
has coincided with increased enrolment in primary schools.

It is worth observing that by the time they reach secondary school age, almost 90% of children
tested in Uttarakhand can tell the time and over 90% can do simple currency tasks, irrespective of
whether they are enrolled in school. This raises significant questions of how much value is being
added by schooling, and how much is learnt outside of the formal environment from “real-life”
experiences.

Why is this the case?

Obviously, the situation is worrying if we are to see these results as indicators of the quality of
education in India. The ASER study is definitely one of the most comprehensive and effective
 9
studies of its kind that India has seen, but it is essentially a more detailed and objective version of
test scores data. Although other factors are taken into account, which make the data less likely to be
biased in any particular direction, ASER is still very much within the Human Capital mould of
measurement. It offers us a selection of outputs and indicators and presents statistical results. I
would argue that it will lead to the same kind of policy decisions that a simpler collation of test-
scores would. More teachers will be trained, more resources will be allocated, schemes such as the
para-teacher programme9 will be implemented, curricula will be changed and teachers and pupils
will be put under heightened pressure to perform.

How will these kind of inputs make a difference to scheduled caste or scheduled tribe children, who
are “discriminated against by their teachers and peers, continue to drop out of school at a young age
and have little chance of competing in the job market” (Sedwal and Kamat, 2008)? In their paper,
Sedwal and Kamat suggest that for SC and ST children, quality refers not just to school
infrastructure, textbooks and superior teaching, but also needs to address issues of curriculum
content, social interaction that is free of bias and prejudice and casteism by teachers and school
administrators. The SSA makes little effort to address these issues beyond the tokenistic measures
of providing more access to SC and ST children, and the fact that most of these children will go on
to work in the non-formal agricultural rural sector is not reflected in the curriculum or education
policies. This has inevitably led to many NGO or community led efforts to bridge this gap, in order
provide a meaningful and relevant education for children from the scheduled castes and tribes, but
the scale of this task on a national level means that these initiatives have minimal impact on
attitudes and opportunities for those affected.

A human capital approach to quality has also done little to alleviate the alarming rates of teacher
absenteeism, and poor motivation amongst educators. Kingdon (2007) observes several studies in
India that exposed 25% of teachers to be absent on the days visited, with “many teachers making no
efforts to engage with the students and a quiet inertia...which has become a way of life in the
profession”10 being a prominent feature amongst teachers. This is clearly an issue that cannot be
easily combated by increasing inputs and resources, although it is interesting to observe Kingdon
and Atherton’s (2009) study on the effectiveness of para-teachers on education in Uttar Pradesh and
Bihar. Their study indicates that despite much lower pay and very little training, para-teachers do no
worse than regular teachers and in some cases may be more effective than regular teachers. This is
not exactly something that the government of India should be proud of, when considering how

9 The para-teacher programme is a govt. initiative to employ contract-based teachers in many states in India. The
para-teachers are recruited from the local community to meet the needs of schools and are generally untrained.
10 Kingdon, Geeta Ghandi The Progress of School Education in India March 2007 Global Poverty Research Group.
 10
much is spent on training and employing regular teachers. It also proves that a human capital
approach has been ineffective, as the para-teachers who have had less education and training are
producing a similar or greater output in terms of achievement, despite having lower earnings and
MRP.

I would argue that it is the information which cannot be gleaned from the measured data – that falls
between the gaps, which provides the most significant challenges for policy makers. It is clear that
education leads to economic benefits and often social benefits as Appiah and McMahon (2002)
clearly point out, but the human capital approach falls down because so many of these external
benefits are almost impossible to measure effectively. It is the inequalities and injustices which
occur for individuals, communities and often whole nations, that cannot be measured and affect not
only education, but the whole fabric of life surrounding these institutions. If we are to accept that a
continuing focus on statistics, inputs and outputs is not a complete way of improving quality of
education, where should decision-makers be looking for new ideas?

Quality and the Human Capability Approach

The Human Capability approach is largely associated with the work of Indian nobel laureate
Amartya Sen and is based on the principle that Development should be a process of enhancing the
lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy (Sen 1999). Freedoms, according to Sen's approach
constitute the increase of certain capabilities which enable individuals and communities to do what
they have reason to value. Therefore the purpose of institutions such as schools and governments
should be to enhance these freedoms. Sen (1999) highlights five distinct types of “instrumental”
freedoms which include 1) political freedoms, 2) economic facilities, 3) social opportunities 4)
transparency guarantees and 5) protective security.

Educational institutions play a vital role in Sen's theory as both a cause and an effect of increasing
human capabilities and it is generally accepted that education can be instrumental in expanding
capabilities (Robeyns 2006, Unterhalter 2003). The school can be the place where young people
develop their individual agency, thus becoming more active members of their community, and more
able to participate in the political process. This could equally lead a community to become more
empowered to demand a higher quality of education for their children, through their awareness of
rights and their own participation in local politics. The participation of local communities in the
educational process in India is often hampered by an unjust social structure, which favours higher
castes and male members of society. It is also often the case that the highly beaurocratised civil
 11
service makes it extremely difficult for individuals to penetrate their systems by using complex
paperwork which is sometimes even written in English, thus excluding large numbers of illiterate
members of the community from the democratic process.

The education process may also lead to an increased ability to participate economically in the
market, through mathematical skills learnt in school. As we observed in the ASER results, 83.2% of
standard V children in India could carry out simple currency tasks, although it is unclear how much
of this skill is learnt at school and how much is picked up from everyday life and social interactions.
This again raises the question of schools’ effectiveness and points to the fact that individuals will
tend to learn what is useful to them and what improves their capabilities, regardless of whether it is
taught in school. However, an individual's capability to actually participate freely within a market-
driven economy is not solely dependent on whether she can count rupees. Many other factors come
into play such as her social background, her geographical location, the cultural traditions practiced
by those around her, the availability of work and so on. Unterhalter and Brighouse (2007) make a
case for a new kind of framework with well-being and agency freedoms at the centre. They put
forward a model which highlights the instrumental, intrinsic and positional value of education. This
follows on from Sen's ideas of freedoms; with instrumental value representing the extent to which
education secures jobs and promotes individual political and social participation, intrinsic value
meaning the benefits that an individual accrues from education beyond the instrumental factors –
such as increased enjoyment of literature, music or improved self-confidence in interactions with
others, and positional value refers to how education has benefitted the individual in relation to
others who have the same level of education but possibly a different background. This concept of
positional value is a vital one when dealing with a country such as India, where we have seen that
inequalities are often overlooked and not sufficiently exposed by current practices of measurement
and such a model seems to offer a more comprehensive view of quality when faced with the
shortcomings of the human capital approach.

Social opportunities could encompass the employment avenues available to an individual after
leaving school, or could include the freedom to pursue a higher education instead of marrying at a
young age. Whether school has an intrinsic effect on these type of social capabilities is often
dependent on exisiting social freedoms and can be limited by conflicts, religious and cultural
traditions, environmental issues etc. According to Sedwal and Kamat (2008), in the case of India's
scheduled-castes and tribes it has been observed that education can also serve to “devalue their
cultures and histories and undermine their sense of self and community identity...(and that) the poor
quality of schooling available to ST children does not prepare them to succeed at higher levels of
 12
education nor to compete for jobs, thereby demoralizing young people”.11 In Sen's view these
educational institutions would obviously be seen as failing in terms of creating social opportunities
and freedoms for these communities as their capabilities have not been enhanced by the process of
education. It may be that these children are able to pass tests or perform numeracy and literacy tasks
successfully, but to see this as a measure of quality would ignore the reality of the situation. Freire
(1970) would argue that the best way to combat this kind of ongoing oppression and
“dehumanisation” would be through an education process whose main aim is to empower these
communities: “In a humanising pedagogy the method ceases to be an instrument by which the
teachers can manipulate the students, because it expresses the consciousness of the student
themselves.” Sen may not agree with Freire’s approach as a rule, but if the means of achieving
increased capabilities involved revolutionising the process of schooling, which in turn led to
improved social opportunities for individuals and communities, he would see it as a positive gain.

Transparency guarantees can be an important part of the institutions where children spend their time
and are often overlooked when thinking about a school's relationship with the community it serves.
From my experience working as a teacher in a village school in India I found that the parents of the
children had little agency when it comes to the functioning of their child's school. Although a
decentralised system exists and each village has a Village Education Committee (VEC) which is
supposed to ensure the involvement of parents and the community in the running of the school, the
reality is often one where the literate and beaurocratised teachers and education officers make the
decisions about spending and resources or how the children will spend their time without any
consultation with the parents or local community. As Atherton and Kingdon (2009) point out,
teachers salaries can be as much as seven times greater than the GDP per capita, giving the teachers
great economic influence and status. This combined with high levels of corruption and low
accountability leave the income-poor community members with little power to be heard. Modelling
transparency at the school and community level could serve to educate future community leaders
about how to be honest in their transactions and could lead to a decrease in corruption and reliance
on those with a higher status to communicate with officials.

Protective security is an intrinsic part of schooling in that children are presumed safe and cared for
(often being provided with nutrition) whilst at school, but can also be seen as a consequence of
schooling. India’s Midday Meal scheme is seen as one of the major factors contributing to increased
enrolment in primary schools, as parents were happy to know that they’re children would be fed at
school. Another example of education leading to an increase in protective security could be
11 Sedwal, M and Kamat, S Education and Social Equity:With a Special Focus on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes in ElementaryEducation CREATE PATHWAYS TO ACCESS, Research Monograph No 19 May 2008.
 13
HIV/AIDS education programmes, which can provide participants with the capability to protect
themselves against the disease. Studies have also revealed a correlation between female literacy and
a reduction in sexual abuse within marriages (Nussbaum 2003). It could also be argued that a school
can be the place where children should learn tolerance and gain an awareness of other groups,
religions and cultures, which would thus create a more peaceful society, less prone to conflict.

Conclusion

The ASER 2008 clearly shows a decline in learning levels across most states in India, suggesting
that an increased emphasis on enrolment and “measurable” inputs has led to a decrease in the
quality of learning across the board. The ASER 2009 data, which was launched on Jan 15th 2009,
shows that the trend is continuing in most cases and provides little scope for optimism. It seems
clear that a human capital approach, focussing primarily on enrolment rates and statistical outputs
has placed a strain on the already fragile quality of education for the majority of Indian citizens. It
would be foolish to dismiss the use of human capital theory in development, and Sen makes it clear
that it is necessary to go beyond the current thinking, rather than to replace it. Studies like ASER
provide extremely useful information about the realities of schools' effectiveness. ASER’s increased
focus on the individual child rather than the institution provides a more sensitive, honest picture of
what they are gaining (or not gaining) from school, which not only gives state and central
governments a useful starting point, but shows the Indian population that the government is willing
to support the publication of realistic, independently-measured data. Despite the limitations of the
human capital approach in dealing with non-economic effects of education and with addressing
inequality, corruption and oppression within the education system, we clearly need to remain aware
of how children are performing in schools and what factors affect their achievement.

Education develops manpower for different levels of the economy. (National Policy on Education,
2.3 1986 as modified in 1992)

Education...refines sensitivities and perceptions that contribute to national cohesion, a scientific

temper and independence of mind and spirit. (National Policy on Education, 2.2 1986 as modified
in 1992)

These excerpts from India’s National Policy on Education highlight in my opinion the
 14
contradictions that punctuate India’s brief history since its independence in 1947. In order to create
a sustainable, thriving democracy, which looks after the interests of the many, rather than the few,
education policy needs to become less focussed on merely creating economic growth and more
interested in improving the freedoms and capabilities of all of its 1.2 billion citizens. To achieve
this, the idea of quality in education must move beyond statistics, inputs and outputs and towards a
dialogue that incorporates the kind of freedoms Amartya Sen (1999) speaks of. However, as we
have seen, the capability approach only offers a broad framework and in order to incorporate this
into the decision-making process means wrestling with new ways of looking at development and
being deeply critical of every decision made. Models such as Unterhalter and Brighouse’s (2007)
may be the first step towards creating a fair and inclusive measurement of EFA and if the
Uttarakhand government were to consider such an approach, the issues such as casteism, gender-
bias, corruption and inaccountability would become more evident. This would, in the long-term
lead to an increase in the freedoms of the individual and the development of a more just and
accountable society.

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