Education
outcomes, as measured by abilities in reading, writing and doing maths,
have deteriorated among children between the ages of six and 14.
Last week the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)
published by the non-profit Pratham Education Foundation reported some
disturbing findings about the state of education in rural India, which
still accounts for little under 70% of India’s population of 1.2
billion.
The findings essentially told us two things. The good news is that
enrolment in elementary education is almost 100%. The bad news is that
the education outcomes, as measured by abilities in reading, writing and
doing maths, have deteriorated among children between the ages of six
and 14.
The bottom line is that India has a crisis of learning.
This obviously has grave implications for the future of an economy that
was looking to harvest its demographic dividend, leave alone the
circumstances of a social crisis being created by generating an army of
semi-literate people unable to take advantage of the new economy.
Unfortunately, the issue failed to get sufficient
traction either in the media or among the leading political contenders
for power in the next general election. This could either be due either
to the preoccupation with the likely political ascendance of Congress
party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and the tragic saga involving Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, or due to the perception that there is no immediacy about the concern.
Regardless, it will be a cardinal blunder to overlook
this shocking revelation, either for the outgoing administration or the
incoming one that will take charge in May. Both qualitatively and
numerically—Census 2011 reports that 73% of the 233.5 million children
in the country between the ages of six and 14 live in rural India—the
story is staggering.
Yes, it is a structural flaw in the country’s strategic
planning that it has carried since independence, but the Congress-led
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has to share a bulk of the blame
because they had made the right to education one of their missions and
had also garnered sizeable funds by levying an education tax. So it is
legitimate to ask what the government did to correct this trend,
especially since the Congress continues to claim, through elaborate
television advertisements and in the just-concluded session of the All
India Congress Committee, that its 10 years at the helm has led to a
transformation of the country. It is not enough to focus on the
positives (yes, there are many). And this is why:
* Nationally, the proportion of children in grade three
able to read at least a paragraph of grade one is still abysmally low.
In 2013, only two out of five children could achieve this standard.
* Similarly, the proportion of children in the fifth
grade at the all-India level who could read a second grade text remained
unchanged at the level of 47%. It has decreased every year from 52.8%
in 2009.
* Nationally, the proportion of all children in the fifth
grade who could solve a three-digit by one-digit division problem was
25.6%, or just above one in four children could do basic math.
What the ASER study also confirms, which we know
anecdotally, is that people of this country motivated by their
aspirations are willing to eke out that extra bit from even their
limited incomes to pay for either admitting their children in private
schools or arranging for private tuition. (An aside that they know their
priorities very well.)
According to the study, nationally the proportion of
children in first to fifth grade with some form of private input was
45.6% in 2013. And yes the less well-off too are willing to pay. At the
all-India level, 25.2% of children living in pucca houses went to tuition classes and the proportion, not very different, was 23.2% for those children living in so-called kutcha houses.
In the age group 6 to 14, private school enrolment
increased from 18.7% in 2006 to 29% in 2013. There are wide variations
across the country. In Manipur and Kerala, more than two-thirds of all
children in this age group were enrolled in private schools, while the
proportion was less than 10% in Tripura, West Bengal and Bihar.
Similarly, the proportion of children in grades one to
five who took private tuition classes was 22.6%, while it was 26.1% for
grades six to eight. Like with private schooling, the incidence of
private tuition varied across states with more than 60% children in
Tripura and West Bengal availing of it, while the proportion was less
than 5% in Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.
What the ASER study tells us is that this privatization
of education in the country has helped, but not to the desirable degree.
Yes, there is a difference between the quality of education offered by
private institutions and that by government schools in rural India, but
it is a gap that is seen to be made up through the input of private
tuition. Given that the overall quality of education, as evident in the
ability to read and do math is so low, this outcome is a double whammy
for parents opting for private education. Not only do they pay for it,
but they have to also make do with poor quality.
In the final analysis, it is clear that the country is
afflicted by a learning crisis. The only silver lining is that the
situation can be corrected with minimal interventions. But for that the
heart should be willing and the first step is to admit to the problem.
Pratham has demonstrated with its work that improving outcomes don’t
need more resources. Instead, as a section in the 2013 report states:
“We don’t need more allocations, what we need is more effective use of
the allocations we already have.”
Are politicians listening?
