Why in news?
Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2017 has been brought out by NGO Pratham.
What is the report on?
- Previous ASERs focused on 6-14 year olds and have reached almost all rural districts to make estimates representative at district, State, and national levels.
- However, ASER 2017 focuses on an older age group i.e. youth who are 14 to 18 years old.
- Also, it was conducted in 28 districts spread across 24 States and generated only district level estimates.
- The survey looks 'Beyond Basics', exploring a wider set of domains beyond foundational reading and arithmetic abilities of youth.
What are the highlights?
- Enrolment - In 14-18 age group, around 14% are not currently enrolled in school or college.
- However, this number varies a lot with age, ranging from around 5% at age 14 to around 30% at age 18.
- The low 5% at age 14 is a positive outcome of the compulsory education for 6-14 years under the RTE.
- The enrolment ratios for boys and girls are almost the same at 14 years.
- However, at 18 years 32% of girls are not enrolled, as against 28% for boys.
- There are also discrete differences among States on the number of youth who are not enrolled in appropriate levels of schooling.
- Knowledge - 14% of rural youth in the age group of 14-18 failed to identify the map of India.
- A worrying 36% of those surveyed did not know that Delhi is the capital of India.
- 60-80% of them cannot even tell the time correctly.
- About 25% of this age group still cannot read basic texts fluently in their own language.
- 53% of all 14 year-olds in the sample can read English sentences.
- More than half in the age group struggle with simple division (3 digit by 1 digit) problems.
- Besides, the report points to a massive digital divide, with poor access to facilities.
- In this again, girls were worse off in terms of access to computers and the Internet.
What does it imply?
- Almost 10% of India's population falls in the 14-18 group.
- Thus the 14% of the un-enrolled population in this translates to a total of 125 million young Indians out of formal education system.
- The enrolment scenario highlights gender discrimination, with the number of girls falling sharply with age.
- India's predominantly youth population is seen as a demographic dividend.
- But the education scenario fall short of capitalising on this factor and deriving an economic dividend.
- As, a large number of Indian youths lack even basic employability.
- Successive studies point to progress in raw enrolment of children in school, with poor achievement on learning outcomes.
What should be done?
- Policy makers must acknowledge that all expenditure on good education is bound to have a multiplier effect on productivity.
- The right to free and compulsory education must be extended to the 14-18 age group as well, beyond the 6 to 14 at present.
- Guaranteed inclusion will empower those in the 14-18 age group and help them acquire finishing education.
- This is so vital for their participation in the workforce, as India lacks trained manpower to boost its manufacturing capabilities.
- Equipping them with the skills, especially job-oriented vocational capabilities is essential.
- Learning deficits highlight the need for pedagogic tools that synchronise knowledge with lived realities.
- Scaling up access to digital facilities by bringing all children under the umbrella of a school, college or training institution is desirable.
Source: The Hindu, Indian Express
