What is the issue?
Despite the improvements in the educational condition, there are problems that still persist, especially in rural India.
What is the current scenario?
- As late as 2001, only a little over 25% of all rural 18-year-olds were attending schools.
- The rest dropped out earlier.
- By 2016, the share of 18-year-olds in schools and colleges had gone up to 70%.
- Girls have closed the gap with boys in rural areas.
- At age 14, 94% of girls and 95% of boys are enrolled in school.
- By age 18, 68% of girls and 72% of boys are still in school.
What are the downsides?
- The quality of education in rural schools is dismal.
- Among 14-18-year-olds, only 43% could solve a class IV mathematics problem.
- This proportion was roughly the same among 14-year-olds as among 18-year-olds.
- This shows that the problem of low learning outcomes was not resolved by remaining in school.
- Only 40% of 18-year-olds could take 10% off a given number.
- Most could not locate their state on a map of India.
- 27% of 14-year-olds, and 21% of 18-year-olds could not read a class II textbook in the regional language, and more than 40% in each age group could not read a simple sentence in English.
How will this affect the society?
- The belief has gained ground in rural India that education will be the road out their livelihood.
- Most of the students are first-generation learners.
- Soon this younger generation will be graduating from high schools and colleges and then they will find that there are very few good jobs.
- This might kindle reaction against education.
What should be done?
- Raising the quality of education in rural schools is essential.
- Privatizing the government system is not a viable solution.
- The market for education performs poorly in situations where information flows are sparse and competition is limited or non-existent.
- The essential problem is one of a broken governance system.
- There are few rewards for being a good teacher and few punishments for being a careless one.
- A system should be put in place, where teachers are innovative in the classroom and parents are involved as co-decision-makers.
Source: Livemint
