What is the issue?
Centre must push teacher training, eLearning apart from consolidation of school facilities.
What is the status of school education?
- Over the last four years, both primary and upper primary schools with zero enrolment have increased.
- Zero-enrolment schools in case of upper primary accounted for 0.7% of total schools in 2015-16 as compared to 0.3% in 2012-13.
- But a report states that levels of education in the country have dropped in the last decade in government schools.
- While 56.7% of class V students in government students could read English words in 2007, this dropped to 39.7% in 2016.
- A similar trend is noticed for mathematics and reading ability.
- Many of the schools in India are understaffed or has absent teachers.
How government can address this issues?
- Recently released set of draft guidelines on consolidation of school infrastructure may help remedy the education situation.
- Schools within a particular vicinity could be consolidated in fewer campuses to provide efficient and better quality education.
- Apart from consolidation, it also needs to improve teacher training and inculcate e-learning.
- The government plans to improve school infrastructure on a war footing, like it did for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
- Rationalisation can be a good vehicle to bring in technology-aided learning.
- A study using learning software Mind spark shows that the software improved learning outcomes for the students, and also proved to be cost-efficient than the present set-up.
Source: Financial Express
