The report put forth by Pratham, an educational NGO, has given good insight into the way our kids in rural India are taking shape. The report has stats about the child’s reading, comprehension, mathematical skills from 1st class onwards. It provides a state wise statistics on the above mentioned parameters. It is for us to decide and take actions where we think that the progress is not as what is being thought of.
Our View: For the analysis of the report it is important to understand the parameters on which we want to measure our education system. Thus we should first compare the parameters that were set by our policy makers and see it in light of our understanding of issue that, are those parameters acceptable, with due consideration for the currently hovering high priority items for child education in rural India. Now, if government has set forth an agenda to increase English literacy in primary schools and the funds are being diverted for such measures then we should become cautious and alarmed. Also if they have set a particular level for students to reach and they are not reaching that, then there is an issue.
2nd level of thought is if the curriculum and educational target set by government is acceptable? If not then those need to be targeted. But one thing is very clear that if one state has say 80% of students being able to perform a task and other states are not then there is a scope of improvement for all the rest, only if you consider that parameter to be genuinely of any value.
Important to note that we should give focus to both regional as well as foreign language, today it is English tomorrow it might change to Chinese, who knows, but that is only to be able to communicate effectively to exchange views for business and education etc. Remember any language is just a medium to communicate with the other person.
Another point to look is the ability of students to recognise numbers between 1 and 9 or 11 or 99 etc. This is what no one will argue and accept it to be at the level it is. Consider a child going in a good school in a city or town and would he be at the same level as our rural India is? No way we can not and should not let that happen.
Government has put in a lot of money into this, an additional cess of 0.2%, where is the money going? Are they just building the buildings where it is easy for our ‘babus’ and officers to get some commission out into their pocket or is it that we do not have proper way to get teachers for such schools? I have had personal experience of going to schools in rural area of UP and to my surprise government had allocated good amount of money into building, books, meals to get students into the schools but only problem was that we found only a sparse strength of teachers in school. The reason was the implementation and administration. Though government had kept teachers on roll but they do not turn up. They are not being made responsible and the ‘babus’ involved are party to this. Why will they not, they get their cut at the end of the month.
Also the teachers those who are present are not capable to teach all the classes and thus this also needs reform. We have made a lot of primary schools but have not addressed the issue of teachers and their training, curriculum, and on lot many areas. Education can not work if we first build the school buildings for 2 to 3 decades and then start focusing on teachers at a later stage. We need to target both these things at the same time.
This is the problem which has gripped us in many areas of our progress and it is now affecting our child’s future. We know the reason but we do not do anything about it as many a times we have also been involved or at least been an observer from outside but never bothered to act.