The city of Hyderabad and Block A

The city of Hyderabad, with a 400-year history, has become well known in education and development literature through the studies of James Tooley, who has written extensively and appreciatively of the low-fee-paying schools that cater to the poor, particularly in the Muslim-dominated parts of the old city (see for example, Tooley and Dixon 2003; Tooley et al. 2007). About 30 per cent of the city’s population is Muslim, with Urdu as its mother tongue. ² From 2003 onwards Tooley conducted a series of studies and surveys through which he claimed to have gathered evidence that private schools for the poor fared better than government ones, even if the private schools were not recognised. Such schools, it is being claimed, produce better value for money than the government schools on account of the market discipline that makes them oriented to meeting parents’ expectations for quality and keeping the wages of teachers low (Tooley 2009).

In 2003, when Tooley began his work in the city, Hyderabad had already disproportionately benefited from about ten years of an IT-savvy chief minister who was able to draw several IT businesses into the city, convey a climate of receptivity to business, corporate houses and the World Bank, and deregulate services such as health and school education (Mooij 2003). The 1993 School Regulation Act ³ deregulated salary fixation for teachers, requiring only that a private unaided school must earmark 50 per cent of its income for staff salary and an additional 15 per cent for the Provident Fund and health insurance. The state already had a booming, successful chain of coaching classes training students for a range of competitive examinations involving science and mathematics, engineering, medicine, and pharmacology, etc. From 1993 onwards, many of these institutions had re-invented themselves as schools. At the time of our survey, the city had several such chain ‘corporate schools’ – which typically admitted students in middle school and combined state board studies with high-intensity study of mathematics and science problem-solving and speed-oriented coaching.

Mandal ‘A’ (Figure 3.1) is known by a busy retail commercial hub nestled in it. A few arterial roads run through the Mandal, connecting the centre of Hyderabad city to an industrial estate, to new development to the north, and to the city of Secunderabad to the north-east. The area includes a range of socio-economic groups from upper middle classes – professional, bureaucrats, and police etc. – to lower middle class, working class and a few slums with migrants from North Telangana. Sections of the population include old residents of the city, Muslim and Dalit-Christian residential areas, and also newer migrant communities from diverse linguistic and regional backgrounds.

Figure 3.1   Sketch of Block A.

Source: rough sketch (not to scale) by author.

Driving through these roads it is difficult to miss the schools and coaching and tuition centres amidst the shops and restaurants, all crowded along the main roads. With their brightly coloured walls and hoardings advertising the school’s name with photographs of their top student ranks from the most recent class X examinations, the schools seem to have positioned themselves so that they can catch the eyes of passers-by, like any shop selling its wares in the marketplace.

Between July and October 2011, 84 schools were identified and surveyed by a group of 12 trained researchers, using tools developed for this purpose. This chapter presents findings from the survey in three parts. In the first part, the schools are introduced. In the second, the ‘education market’ is introduced based on a discussion of the management and the clientele of the schools. The third part discusses quality, drawing on findings pertaining to ‘aims’ and ‘pedagogies’ of these schools.

An introduction to school diversity

Of the 84 schools surveyed (see Table 3.1), 71 were in Mandal A. Additionally, eight schools (including six unrecognised) were in the areas between Mandal A and B and of uncertain jurisdiction, and five were in a large slum area bordering Mandal A.

Conventionally used typology – Government, Aided, Private Unaided Recognised, Private Unaided Unrecognised, and Madrasa – reflects first the ‘ownership’ of the school, i.e. its key management/decision making – government or private/non-government – and second the core financing of the school – government funded or not receiving government funds/supported directly. ⁴ This categorisation is useful for a majority of government purposes around financing and regulation. Literature discussing school quality has tended to follow this categorisation. The main effect of this categorisation is that only funding and regulation emerge as the key (explanatory) variables when comparisons between schools are made. This is convenient for neoliberal institutional theorisation of the school, which approaches school functioning with the assumption that ‘accountability’ and ‘value for money/cost optimisation’ are adequate to explain what schools do or don’t do, what they do well or do poorly and which schools ‘succeed’ or ‘fail’. In what follows, I introduce the 84 schools, drawing attention to additional distinctions that bring to the fore characteristics that give a more differentiated sense of the educational range and types of schools.

The nine government schools included six primary and three high schools (grades six to ten). Of the five aided schools, three were managed by religious trusts.

There were a total of 48 private recognised schools: ten were high-fee charging, 33 were low-fee charging, three included support from charities along with their fee and one was CSR (corporate social responsibility) funded. There were 20 private unrecognised schools of which two ran on charities, one had a combination of fee and charities, six were high-fee charging, and 11 were low-fee charging. Two madrasas, both unrecognised, were funded fully by religious charity. Of the schools that were run by a combination of fee and charity, two in Mandal A were partially supported by religious missions. Three others (of which two were not recognised) were special schools – dealing with impairments and with learning difficulty.

Fifty-five per cent of schools could be accessed and studied with great ease, accepting us at face value or after seeing our official letters; 19 per cent required an official introduction by the Mandal officers; 15 per cent of schools, even after such an introduction and a great deal of time, were obstructionist and gave us limited access or made access difficult and took up a lot of time and repeated visits; 11 per cent obstructed our entry through various tactics of excuses, delay, rudeness and in a few cases point blank refusal. In the case of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) affiliated schools, the Mandal Education Officers said they were helpless; these elite schools refused to deal with the local education authorities, claiming that their affiliation to the CBSE gave them this immunity.

The schools were unevenly spread over the area of the Mandal – in what seemed to be related to their potential clientele base; 57 per cent of the schools were located in residential areas; 33 per cent in commercial areas; and 7 per cent in slums. The schools along the main road seemed to be vying for attention from passers-by.

The schools were established in the block from the 1930s onwards. The oldest schools in the area were two for girls, established by a Hindu reformist mission in the 1930s with the aim of promoting girls’ education in the memory of the daughter of a founding trustee. Both of these, after Independence, became aided schools. One, however, closed down the previous year, and the other continued under a new related ‘Marwari women’s trust’ that had expanded to vocational training, a pre-university (PU) college for girls, and had recently also established a fee-paying English-medium school for low-income children in the same premises. Between the 1950s and 1970s, most schools in this Mandal were government and government-aided ones. After the 1980s, no new government or government-aided schools were added to the Mandal. Instead there was a rapid expansion of private ones, with as many as 16 from the 1980s and growing at a steady rate, with over ten being added each decade. In the year of our survey as many as seven new schools were added to the Mandal, of which six were ‘high-fee paying’. The emergence of relatively more high-fee-based schools from 2010 onwards was indicative of the new and changing aspirations of the residents of the area.

A few new primary government schools were added in the decade of the 2000s under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Mission (SSA) in the slum areas of the block. A number of low-fee-based private unrecognised schools at the time of the survey were in existence from the 1980s onwards.

Ninety-three per cent of the schools were coeducational. One Madrasa was only for boys and one had segregated classes for boys and girls. The other coed segregated school was also one based on Islamic faith values. The other three girls-only schools were all run by religious missions (two by a convent). In all the coed schools, boys and girls were seated in separate sections of the class. One recognised school and three unrecognised schools catered to children with special needs.

English-medium education was offered in 90 per cent of the schools – 100 per cent of the private recognised schools and 90 per cent of the unrecognised private schools were all English-medium only. Additionally, eight of the nine government schools offered English-medium teaching in addition to Telugu- and Urdu-medium teaching. This was following a recent government policy decision. The teachers told us that admission into the English-medium section was based on parental choice. We found equal class strengths in both English- and Telugu-medium sections of the schools. The teachers told us that there were parents who had decided against English medium as they felt that they may not be able to cope with its needs. Aided schools were required to be only Telugu medium. The management of three of these five aided Telugu-medium schools had also begun an English-medium fee-paying branch. There were only four other schools that were not English medium – all funded by charities. Two of these were Urdu madrasas, one Telugu-medium school was an evening school centre funded by a Christian mission, while another Telugu-medium school was a Shishu Mandir, affiliated to the RSS and funded by a Hindu mission for whom education in the mother tongue was an ideological choice.

The sizes of the schools varied widely, from fewer than 50 students (five schools) to very large schools with 2,000–3,000 students (one school). Twenty per cent of schools that were surveyed had enrolments of fewer than 100 (35 per cent with enrolments of fewer than 150). These small schools are of interest as the small size raises questions about their stability. About 20 per cent of schools in the area had enrolments between 150 and 400. An enrolment of about 400 seemed to be a ‘tipping’ number for stability, giving an average class size of 33 in 12 levels starting from pre-school to class X. Thirty-eight per cent had enrolments of more than 400, with three schools being very large with enrolments of more than 1,500.

Based on the reports of the heads of these schools, their enrolment trends were noted: in 15 per cent the enrolment was growing and the institutions were sought after and well established. Forty-two per cent were steady; 25 per cent were struggling to keep their enrolment intact and to survive with regular fee collection; 14 per cent were shrinking and steadily losing their clientele.

Seventy per cent were neighbourhood schools drawing their catchment from surrounding areas; this included all the low-fee-paying schools. About 15 per cent drew children from a wider area and ran school buses and vans. Eleven per cent of schools, almost all from the high-fee-paying group, drew their clientele from the entire city. One exceptional case was that of a high-fee-paying school whose catchment was largely the neighbourhood and area. This had been established by a reputable and charismatic maths and science teacher who had become very successful and had built up a reputation for the school – it was among the older private schools of the area and had secured the patronage of established professionals living there. The special school and its unrecognised branch centre drew clientele from very far, clearly on account of the exclusive service they provided.

Forty-nine of the 84 schools (58 per cent) had the full range of levels from pre-primary to secondary school. All of the private recognised schools except for three followed this model, with pre-primary also being the key stage for admissions. The three exceptions had only upper primary and secondary (i.e. classes VI to X) and were among the ‘coaching type’ schools with a focus on class X exam results in mathematics and science. The government and aided schools did not have a pre-primary grade and were from class I onwards. Three primary government schools included a pre-primary cohort; this group sat in the corridor and was minded by a teacher funded by an NGO. (This enrolment has not been included in the figures). The government high schools were from grade VI to X. Urdu sections in particular in the government school were multigraded, with only two teachers for classes I to V.

Twenty-eight were classed as ‘small schools’ with an enrolment of fewer than 150. Of these, 17 were low-fee-based, of which seven were recognised and the remaining ten were unrecognised (accounting for 90 per cent of all unrecognised low-fee-based schools). In other words, low-fee-based, unrecognised schools in the area were very small (average enrolment fewer than 100). Twenty-one out of the 29 small schools (with enrolments fewer than 150) were found to be struggling to survive or with shrinking enrolments – this included all 17 small low-fee-based schools. The only small schools that were steady or even growing were the ones that were government funded or which had the support of charities. Aided schools, which had not secured any other source of funding, were struggling and shrinking.

Fifteen of these small schools which were running on fees had children in a range of grades – all the way from PP till secondary school. The class cohorts were not mono-graded; there were not enough students or teachers for this. These schools had multigraded classes: a teacher would be surrounded by students from different grades sitting in groups, who she taught, rather than tutored, by turns.

The education market: school management and their clientele

The government schools in the Mandal were all under the District Education Officer (DEO) of Hyderabad and managed by the systems of the DEO. On a day-to-day basis they were under the supervision of the Block Education Officer, who had an office in the campus of one of the government schools of the block. Each school had a headmistress (HM; primary school) or principal (high school) who was appointed to this post, or the acting HM who was from among the senior most teachers of the school. All other recognised schools that were not directly under the Department of Education were required legally to be under the management of a trust or society with education in its mandate. This included the aided institutions and the fee- or non-fee-paying institutions. However, in reality many schools were not managed by collectives of trustees or office bearers, but by individuals or families. Some were created by and managed in the style of ‘corporates’. Schools were legally required to be ‘not-for-profit’, but understandably for all schools, finances were important. Fee-based schools had to be more concerned about fixing the level of the fee as well as ensuring the regularity of monthly collection as the fee was the only source to finance various expenses of the school. For non-fee-based schools also, managing with the available resources was a concern, because the loss of all clientele would lead to closure of the institution – an undesirable eventuality for those whose livelihoods depended on it. However, in addition to finances, there were other considerations that were also found to inform each institution’s educational ideals and the design of its offerings and provisions – i.e. its unique academic identity and the qualities of the education it offered.

Managements

In addition to the Department of Education, ten distinctive types of private management forms were identified which were found to be useful in understanding aspects of the financing, academic identity, and education qualities of schools (Table 3.2). Each of these management forms represented a distinct education ideology – defining their purpose in being in education and their educational imagination and their intentions. Inherent was also an imagination of their clientele – as representing either a particular community (socio-economic (‘poor’ and in need of charity) and/or religion) which they wished to serve and/or a particular economic group defined by the amount and regularity with which they would be able to pay a fee.

The 12 corporate management schools in the Mandal were all branches of statewide chains (in two cases nationwide), and were known for competitive examination coaching. Corporate management was characterised by hierarchical control in matters such as teacher appointments, curriculum, textbook selection, assessment and reporting, and even daily lesson plans, across all branches from the central control office. New corporate schools were professionally run, while old corporate schools used family to extend and keep control of finances, fee collection, and parent relations. There were three such family-based corporates in the block. The professionally managed groups had refined their ‘product’ beyond engineering competitive exams towards higher-level aspirations in the competitive coaching space – oriented to very high-stakes competitive examinations such as the IIT entrance, private ‘Olympiads’, and a global competitive world. These institutions used IT in their management more intensively.

Family trust-run schools were among the oldest in the area. Some of these institutions had been started by individuals with close involvement in the national movement and who regarded education as important in developing their communities – Muslim, Hindu, and Dalit-Christian. They had been active in local politics, and began these institutions at a time when there were few schools in the area. Two family trust schools were relatively new and established in the 1980s, and both had grown into successful large schools, one of which was CBSE affiliated and had a strong Hindutva character. Most of these older family trust schools were now managed by the second generation of the families and also included some family members who had qualified as teachers and were active in teaching and managing the schools as head. If not, the families kept direct control of the school through their presence on a daily basis.

Fifty per cent of all schools (61 per cent of all fee-based) were started as entrepreneurial ventures. Almost all of the entrepreneurial schools were low-fee-based. Nineteen (i.e. 23 per cent of all schools) were by teacher-entrepreneurs. Typically they had started their career as teachers in the same local area and had decided to set up their own school. They frequently cited the desire ‘not to work for someone else and to be independent’ as the key motivation for this move. Eight of these teachers had established their reputation as maths and science tutors at the time they took this leap. Having an established tuition clientele seems to have given them the confidence that they could run their own establishment. Four of these teacher-entrepreneurs were women who had decided to establish their own school so that they could run it according to their education ideals. Eight of the schools started by teachers were stable, having achieved a size of 400 pupils or more.

Schools that had been established by tuition teachers and business-entrepreneurs tended to cater to the lowest socio-economic groups (mostly groups 4 and 5). Such schools tended to be very small and were run like home tutorials. Seventeen such schools were started as businesses by entrepreneurs, including three women. Most opted for the school business on the advice of family and friends, thinking it would be easy for them to establish and run, and because they had an apartment or house as an initial investment. One had seen an advertisement for a school for sale in the newspaper and had decided to buy it. There were at least seven such cases of the school registration and recognition having been bought by the current management. A few entrepreneurs held more than one school registration, but ran only one school, leading to anomalies between the DISE record and reality on the ground. In the low-fee-charging group, 19 were managed by families – husband-and-wife teams who had to run the school like a family enterprise in order to manage funds and make ends meet. They struggled as they could not raise the fee too much and at the same time had to collect it regularly from parents. Some reported that when parents could not afford the fee any more, they simply stopped sending their child to the school and sought admission elsewhere.

A total of 28 schools in the Mandal had distinctive religious affiliations and to varying degrees incorporated religious instruction directly into the curriculum. At the very least they included religious prayers at assembly and had displays of religious symbols prominent in the school. These included Christian, Islamic, and Hindu religions.

Twelve of these schools had religious purposes and ideals. These institutions drew from religion and connection. For 11 of these their own religious community was their primary focus. Only one Christian charity served the poorest of the poor working children through an evening school. Five institutions were directly under a religious mission – a Christian convent, mosque (madrasa), and the RSS (Saraswati Shishu Mandir); these institutions had a religious purpose and offered religious instruction along with formal schooling. One of the two madrasas provided only religious instruction. The teachers of the madrasa schools, the charity school, and the Shishu Mandir (all very small unrecognised ones) were inspired by their religious ideology to work for the local poorest of the poor of their community. The two Christian convent schools had minority status. Six schools were run by religious trusts. These aimed to offer modern schooling, but drawing on and informed by faith – Hindu and Islamic – in their educational ideals. These institutions were thus deeply committed to serving their religious constituency and community through education. Religion was also evident in as many as 16 of the entrepreneur-run schools: four had a Christian affiliation, five had Islamic affiliation, and one was linked to a gurudwara. Six had Hindu affiliation: in two, students were even expected to participate in pujas that were held in the school, and one of them actively discouraged Muslim parents from admitting their wards to his school, saying that this enabled him to appeal to Hindu parents.

There was a professionally run non-fee-paying school run by a CSR-funded trust with a non-religious approach to working with the poorest of the poor. This school had many branches all over the city. There were two ‘NGO’ special schools – so designated as it was a specialised expert group offering education to children with a disability. These schools were run by an expert who raised funds and research grants from numerous sources and involved parents of the children and volunteers in running the school.

As can be seen from the above description, the niche occupied by the school was a combination of considerations of relevance to a particular clientele group (its needs and aspirations) and extent of dependency on fee, in turn leading an assessment of ability to pay, and being able to pay regularly. To convey relevance and desirability, a range of considerations were invoked or cultivated involving school financing and client–vendor relationship management: being English medium; being a known successful neighbourhood tutor with a reputation; being an institution with an association with a religion; offering maths and science competitive exam preparation; offering special education; or serving to enable children to pass.

Quality

As noted in the introduction to the chapter, quality has been taken as a ‘master concept’ involving six dimensions. The literature has largely discussed the dimensions of provisioning, outcomes, and accountability for the schools catering to Groups 4 and 5. In this last section, I discuss diversity in school ‘quality’ in relation to two of the quality dimensions: educational aims and pedagogy. Examining aims and how they vary across schools invites attention to the relationship between quality, clientele type, management form and school finances for survival and profitability in explaining this variation, and in reflecting on the consequences of the variation. Pedagogy involves looking at how institutions shape teachers and their practices through interpretation of educations aims and the expectations and assumptions schools have regarding home support for schooling.

Conclusion

The heterogeneity and diversity of schools in Hyderabad city seems to be developing on account of both features of the state system as well as the market – indeed, on account of the complementary action of the two sectors. The 1970s to the 1980s was a turning point, with the cessation of state investment to open government schools or new aided schools and the beginning of the growth of private schools. Today there is heterogeneity and diversity seen in the schools, but this maps closely onto the socially stratified character of Indian society; the market has grown around class and community stratification; added to which we see a new strata – children with disabilities (impairments or learning difficulties) and ‘dullers’ (i.e. ‘lower’ intelligence). Clientele stratification is suggestive of an inherent segregation taking place in school selection along class and community lines, as well as exclusion of children with special needs, separating them into a class of their own. (This study was conducted before the RTE 25 per cent clause was operationalised in Telangana schools and it would be of interest to see whether in future this homogeneity is disrupted.) English medium is the default language option and opportunities for education in the mother tongue (Telugu and Urdu) are severely limited and only for the poorest of the poor, in either government or charitable settings.

Schools for the poor run by entrepreneurs and unstable small schools are mostly ‘shrinking’, raising questions regarding their stability. Pedagogic cultures in these schools are ‘domesticating’ or ‘drill’ based. Relationships with the home on the whole are tense and combative, with the schools having to balance keeping an upper hand over the parents and extracting fees with not losing their clientele. Those that are able to set aside such considerations are the ones that have a community religious affiliation with their clientele. Teacher–entrepreneur-run schools have less rote-based pedagogies, and although they are textbook cultures, these enable thinking and have expectations of concept development. While there are several schools for the poor which rely on shaming students – domesticating them or treating them as immoral – there also seems to be a widespread desire and parental investment in the ones that put students through a difficult regimen to prepare them for competitive examinations. These schools seem to be more desirable. On the whole, there seems to be an invisible segregation operating in which the more competent students, or at least those who can cope with the regimen, are put into high-pressure schools while the less competent ones – the dullers – are sent to the schools that will coach them sufficiently to pass examinations. The poorest of the poor are served by charitable institutions. These, along with some of the aided schools and government school teachers, also espouse pedagogies that promote autonomy, thinking, and student confidence, all practised in the mother tongue.

This diversity of school types suggests the variables in the production of education quality in these institutions: aims which are derived from the socio-economic and community identity of the clientele, school financing and the type of management. There are multiple niches in the market ecosystem that these schools occupy. It is these considerations rather than ‘private vs aided vs government’ or ‘recognised vs unrecognised’ that provide us with a greater insight into the educational purposes and activities of these schools. Within any given bracket, being recognised vs being ‘unrecognised’ per se does not help distinguish any aspect of education quality between schools. However, it is instructive that such ‘unrecognised’ schools are found either at the ‘top end’ or the ‘bottom end’; both these groups seem unconcerned about and are immune to the effects of the state or its need and ability to regulate.

The types of non-state interests in starting schools has evolved over the decades. Largely community-oriented initiatives until the 1970s gave way to entrepreneurship from the 1980s onwards. However, even in this group we see differences of quality even in the single dimension of educational aims – between schools established by teacher–entrepreneurs and business entrepreneurs. Given how many of these schools are small and struggling, not only their quality, but also their institutional formation and stability cannot be ignored as issues when questions of their ability to serve the needs of the poor are debated. Moreover, in addition to the level or quantum of the fee charged, the ability to collect fees regularly is a major concern for these institutions, leading to their tense relationships with parents and having to resort to shaming children as a way of ‘disciplining’ parents. Fee collection tensions are mitigated usually on account of the simultaneous operation of charitable and communitarian considerations.

Religiously motivated trusts and institutions figure dominantly in the ‘private’ schools space. Also, it is instructive to note that the poorest of the poor may not be getting served by the government institutions!

Contrary to common perception, all government schools do not have apathetic cultures, nor are all low fee-paying private schools hives of industrious effort. The diversity of institutional forms and qualities can be understood only by unpacking the categories of ‘private’ and ‘government’ to reveal the nature of their management/leadership, their reasons for being in the business of running schools, their educational aims, and the core finances of their operations. The school ethos evolves in relation to these considerations within the specific niche that it occupies and creates for itself, in the market ecosystem. Pedagogic cultures are determined at the institutional level even though they are realised through the practice of individual teachers. The stratification of school quality as manifested in its pedagogic form and educational aim is suggestive of the role of schools in the stratification of the formation of consciousness and agency (Bernstein 1977). The stratification between rather than within schools also provides conditions for the pedagogic messaging to be more intense, and minimises the opportunity for children to be exposed to different messaging. Surely this will have a cost for the society in which children grow up without having made friends or having been in the company of people who are different from them.