Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Saida Siddique would walk, before sunrise, to her job at a nearby factory then toil in the baking heat on a machine manufacturing hair clips until the sun set once again.
“My life is too difficult, my whole body aches from working from morning to night but I am here because I want to provide a better education for my children,” said Mrs Siddique, who lives in Mumbai’s Malvani, one of the largest slums in Asia. She was paid a meagre £0.07 for every kilogram of hair clips she produced.
“It’s no good but we have no choice, the only reason I am staying here in Mumbai is because I am very serious about my children’s education. When I meet the teachers I am always scolding them and telling them to take good care of my children.”
Like many impoverished Indians, Mrs Siddique dreams of providing a good education for her two children, so that they can secure a lucrative job – she hopes they will study pharmacy – and lift her family out of the crippling poverty they endure.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Saida Siddique would walk, before sunrise, to her job at a nearby factory then toil in the baking heat on a machine manufacturing hair clips until the sun set once again.
“My life is too difficult, my whole body aches from working from morning to night but I am here because I want to provide a better education for my children,” said Mrs Siddique, who lives in Mumbai’s Malvani, one of the largest slums in Asia. She was paid a meagre £0.07 for every kilogram of hair clips she produced.
“It’s no good but we have no choice, the only reason I am staying here in Mumbai is because I am very serious about my children’s education. When I meet the teachers I am always scolding them and telling them to take good care of my children.”
Like many impoverished Indians, Mrs Siddique dreams of providing a good education for her two children, so that they can secure a lucrative job – she hopes they will study pharmacy – and lift her family out of the crippling poverty they endure.
To give her children the best chance she paid ₹250 (£2.43) a month, all that her savings would allow after the death of her husband, to send her children to Cosmos School, one of India’s approximately 320,000 low-cost private schools (LCPS).
The popularity of LCPS has skyrocketed over the past couple of decades; the number of students enrolling in public schools falling by 13 million between 2010-2016 whilst the private sector has increased by 17.5 million during the same period.
“Affordable private schools cater for almost 100 million children in India, which is equivalent to the entire education system in most parts of the world,” explains Gaurav Singh, the Founder and CEO of the 321 Education Foundation, an NGO empowering educators in Mumbai and other cities across India.
For many lower-class Indians, the English-medium education provided by LCPS is considered superior to India’s underfunded public sector, which has been repeatedly backed up by raw test scores.
The year-long closure of India’s schools, due to Covid-19, has been devastating for its 270 million students and those from lower-income families have been worst affected, with many unable to afford a smart device as lessons switched online.
As well as the disastrous impact upon the education of the children, the extended school closure has led to thousands of LCPS now facing bankruptcy, unable to collect fees from the millions of parents who, like Mrs Siddique, lost their jobs because of the pandemic.