Reality of Education in India: UNICEF

The landmark passing of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 marks a historic moment for the children of India.  For the first time in India’s history, children will be guaranteed their right to quality elementary education by the state with the help of families and communities.

Few countries in the world have such a national provision to ensure child-centered, child-friendly education to help all children develop to their fullest potential. There were an estimated eight million six to 14-year-olds in India out-of-school in 2009.

The world cannot reach its goal to have every child complete primary school by 2015 without India.
India’s education system over the past few decades has made significant progress. According to India’s Education For All Mid Decade Assessment, in just five years between 2000 and 2005, India increased primary school enrolment overall by 13.7 per cent and by 19.8 per cent for girls, reaching close to universal enrolment in Grade 1.

Even with these commendable efforts, one in four children left school before reaching Grade 5 and almost half before reaching Grade 8 in 2005. Learning assessments show the children who do remain in school are not learning the basics of literacy and numeracy or the additional skills necessary for their overall development. 
Fast Facts

Out-of-School Children: The number of out-of-school children has declined from 25 million in 2003 to 8.1 million in mid–2009. The most significant improvements have been in Bihar, Jharkhand, Manipur and Chhattisgarh. The percentage of out-of-school children in highly populated states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar remains a cause of concern.
Social Inclusion: Although there have been significant improvements in the proportion of children from socially disadvantaged groups in school, persistence gaps remain. Girls are still less likely to enroll in school than boys; in 2005, for upper primary school (Grades 6-8) girls’ enrolment was still 8.8 points lower than boys, for Scheduled Tribes (ST) the gender gap was 12.6 points and 16 points for Scheduled Castes (SC). 

In addition, ST and SC children are less likely to access their right to 8 years of schooling; the drop-out rate for ST children being 62.9% and 55.2% for SC children compared to a national average of 48.8% leaving school before completing Grade 8. 
Teachers: Children have the right to have at least 1 qualified and trained teacher for every 30 pupils. Currently, the national average is about 1 teacher to every 34 students, but in states such as Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal 1 teacher works with more than 60 students. 

Approximately 1.2 million additional teachers need to be recruited to fill this gap. Currently, about 1 in 5 primary school teachers do not have the requisite minimum academic qualification to ensure children’s right to quality learning.

Sanitation: 84 out of 100 schools have drinking water facilities overall in India. But nearly half the schools in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya do not. Sixty-five out of 100 schools have common toilets in India; however only one out of four schools in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Orissa and Rajasthan have this facility.

Fifty-four out of 100 schools have separate toilets for girls. On average, only one in nine schools in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur have separate toilets and one in four schools in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Orissa.
Key Issues
The RTE Act will be in force from 1 April. Draft Model Rules have been shared with states, which are required to formulate their state rules and have them notified as early as possible.

RTE provides a ripe platform to reach the unreached, with specific provisions for disadvantaged groups, such as child labourers, migrant children, children with special needs, or those who have a “disadvantage owing to social, cultural economical, geographical, linguistic, gender or such other factor.”

RTE focuses on the quality of teaching and learning, which requires accelerated efforts and substantial reforms. 
Creative and sustained initiatives are crucial to train more than one million new and untrained teachers within the next five years and to reinforce the skills of existing teachers to ensure child-friendly education.

Bringing eight million out-of-school children into classes at the age appropriate level with the support to stay in school and succeed poses a major challenge. Substantial efforts are essential to eliminate disparities and ensure quality with equity. For example, investing in preschool is a key strategy.
Families and communities also have a large role to play to ensure child-friendly education for each and every one of the estimated 190 million girls and boys in India who should be in elementary school today.

School Management Committees, made up of parents, local authorities, teachers and children themselves, will need support to form School Development Plans and monitoring. The inclusion of 50 per cent women and parents of children from disadvantaged groups in these committees should help overcome past disparities.

Another Brick in the Wall...!!!

Like the Pink Floyd song “Another Brick In The Wall”  the Indian education system produces graduates who are almost similar in their skills and thought processes. There are several problems that affect the system including the proper and strict enforcement of compulsory education (The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE), which was passed by the Indian parliament on 4 August 2009, describes the modalities of the provision of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the act came into force on 1 April 2010, complete one year and 2011- Literacy Rate =74%), the lack of the reach of good education and the expectations of the students from education.

In India everybody wants to become an engineer or a doctor sometimes the decision is made by them and sometimes the decision is made for them. A decision made by an impressionable teenager would more often than not be something that would look cool in the eyes of his peers and elders. This leads to the rush for admission to several engineering colleges in the country. And having chosen engineering as their profession these teenagers also have to select the stream to specialize in – again the choice is made with job prospects and coolness factor in mind and this leads to a glut of software and electrical engineers while traditional streams like civil and mechanical suffer. Throughout this process very little thought actually goes into deciding if the young man actually likes any of what he is doing.

Before this farce of engineering college is another tedious period through school. In most of the schools, students are forced and pressurized into memorizing every last bit of detail in the books so that the schools can continue advertising their 100% success rate and attract more students. Most of the students who graduate from schools have little or no knowledge what they actually learn. Alternatives like Sports and Cultural activities are given very little attention. The students are conditioned to believe that they matter very little leaving us with a nation of talented people not pursuing their interests.

The other serious issue is the reach of our education program – providing quality education to the masses. Only when this happens can the Bharat out there be connected to the India we all know. Actual enforcement of the compulsory education is very low leading to several kids missing out on education year on year which gives no way to climb out of their poverty. Even those kids who manage to go to school don’t get a good education as the teachers at the government schools do not take much interest in the actual education that happens in the class.

How can we solve this? a large-scale revamping of our primary education is in class. To provide a wholesome education that includes sports, cultural and scholarly aspects should be designed. The government should promote inter-school activities on a nationwide scale so that these extracurricular activities get due importance. Apart from this we can leverage our Internet and Communication Technologies(ICT) to deliver quality education to the rural areas and the rural government agencies should be made responsible for ensuring that the compulsory education is actually enforced in the last mile. The arts and sciences should be promoted on an equal scale to engineering and medicine so that people realize the importance of these streams too.

How would this help our society? Education is the primary tool with which anyone can access the employment opportunities and personal betterment. It is the solution to the age old caste and religious divisions that exist between various groups in the country. An educated person and someone who contributes economically to the society would only add to the society as a whole.

Praveen Kumar Desabandu