When i got the circular from my daughter's school seeking her Aadhar number, the immediate thought that came to my mind was , why couldn't they adopt a similar method which was adopted by the Election commission, PAHAL the LPG subsidy site.
Apparently there is a huge gap between the above two programs and the schools info. First two are more or less Central govt projects and there is some primary data available, where as the schools coming under state subject education, we have to go through a long process of making this info connected.
However, if it was done the way the central issues were linked with Aadhar, there could have been lot more transparency for the parents. Not that they are providing some confidential information. What i have in mind is simply the following.
Government will first list out all the recognised schools in a designated website, listing out the permissions granted up to which class they can operate, category (Aided, Unaided, partly aided etc), which board (State board/CBSE/ICSE etc) they are authorised to offer, medium of education permitted and location where the school is situated in, The organisation which runs the school (usually trusts if the school is private) etc. After this the school would be provided access to the website to upload their student data.
Schools, on obtaining the access to the govt website, will start uploading the data of their pupils, class, section wise. Since the data will be based on school records it will be more or less accurate. Once this exercise is done, the schools will ask the parents to link the child's Aadhar number in this website. Parents can authenticate the input through a OTP (One Time Password) that will be sent from this site while updating the child's Aadhar number.
Parents will visit the site and select the school, class, section and identify their ward name and input the Aadhar number after getting a OTP. After doing this, it would be easier for the parents to verify the permissions the school has got and whether they got the permissions where their child is studying in specific. There are instances in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, where schools have been operating branches with one single license, a status which can put the child's education in danger if the authorities decide to disallow students of the branches which are not permitted.
This Govt. website can also capture the info and Aadhar number of the teaching staff. It is possible many a Govt. Teacher is teaching in a private school drawing double wages and depriving the Govt. school students of a proper teaching. Particularly it is more likely to happen in rural areas. Even parents can verify this info, if photographs and education qualifications are also listed.
This whole exercise will help bring in transparency in the education system, where parents can verify the schools permissions, staff qualifications. Govt will have total input on the schools admission process, RTE admissions (they could ask the schools to categorise the admissions) even fee structure prescribed to that particular school could be displayed, helping the parents to know whether they are being over charged by the school.
When a student is leaving the school, both transfer certificate (TC) and Marks list can carry the child’s Aadhar number, so that next institute can record the same while admitting the children be it at school level or higher studies. Even for a Banker while disbursing education loans this school record would be handy to know, whether the loan seeker has the required qualifications to pursue the next level of studies.
What i am writing about may not be too far from implementation and could be easily done under Digital India as visualised by the PM.
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