Status of Primary Education in India

As I sit alone in the circuit house in Bhawanipatna, today evening, going through the presentation for tomorrows RTE Sensitization Workshop, I am lucky to get hold of an excellent article available on the web, on the status of Primary Education in India, written by Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, and published in the Hindu in February 09. Mentioned below is an extract of the article covering the critical issues in this area.

• According to the ‘EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010’ (UNESCO), India’s rank was 105 among 128 countries. And it continues to figure, along with a bunch of African and one or two Asian countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, in the group of countries with a low educational development index (EDI).
• In 2001 also India ranked 105 among 127 countries. In 2007 India was behind not only countries such as Norway, Japan and Germany that figure at the top, but also several Latin American, African and Asian developing countries. These countries, which are economically poorer than India, include Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Bhutan, Maldives and Cambodia. Only a score of countries such as Madagascar, Laos, Malawi, Burundi, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Niger are behind India. 
• The enrolment ratio in primary education — both gross and net enrolment ratios — has improved over the years. The ‘adjusted’ net enrolment ratio in primary education is 94 per cent in 2007 (this includes children of the relevant age group enrolled in primary or secondary schools), according to the Global Monitoring Report. This figure is much higher than that in Sweden, Switzerland, and many countries that belong to the groups that have high and medium EDI figures.
• But India’s performance with respect to all the other three components of EDI, namely, adult literacy, gender-specific EFA (Education for All) index, and “survival rate” to Grade V, is indeed appalling. The gender index is only 0.84 in India, compared to figures above 0.9 in all countries of high and medium EDI countries (except Zambia); only 66 per cent of adults in India are literate, compared to above 80 per cent in most countries that figure among the high and medium EDI groups. 
• Perhaps the most worrisome of all is the poor survival rate. Only 66 per cent of the children enrolled in Grade I survive to Grade V in India, that is, as much as 34 per cent of the children enrolled in Grade I drop out before reaching Grade V.
•  A 90 to 95 per cent net enrolment ratio will have no meaning if there is also a 34 per cent dropout rate. Rapid progress in net enrolment ratio is possible, but a more important challenge is to ensure that the children enrolled in schools progress through the system to complete the given cycle of schooling and even beyond. 
  
  
• Earlier research has shown that children drop out of school for three kinds of reasons. The first reason given is that schools are not attractive. A second reason involves economic constraints (poverty, direct costs of schooling and child labour) that do not allow continuation in schools. Thirdly, there are reasons including the lack of a tradition of going to or continuing in schools. 
• Unattractive school facilities represent the most important reason that pushes children out of schools. Economic constraints also matter very much, though they matter more for enrolment of children in schools than for their continuation in schools. ‘Other’ reasons are not that important. 
• On an average there are only three classrooms per primary school in India, and there are only three teachers per school. About 14 per cent of the schools have a single classroom each, and single-teacher schools constitute a similar proportion. While the national norm is one teacher for every 40 students in primary schools, 30 per cent of the schools have a ratio above this norm. In some States like Bihar the ratio at the State level is 1:59, where there are 92 students on average per classroom. Only 85 per cent of the schools in the country have drinking water facilities; 37 per cent do not have toilets; only 44 per cent have separate toilet facilities for girls. Hardly one-fourth have electricity connection; only 5.7 per cent have a computer. Hardly half the schools have any medical facilities. About 32 per cent of the primary schools require major or minor repairs to buildings and so on.