School education

What is Education?

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, more profoundly: the imparting of knowledge.

The Highest Education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our lives in harmony with all existence. – Rabindranath Tagore

By Education, I mean an all-round drawing of the best in a child and man in body, mind and spirit. – M.K.Gandhi

Nelson Mandela has called education the “most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” It is the key to eliminating gender inequality, reducing poverty, creating a sustainable planet fostering peace, and to preventing needless deaths and illnesses.

India is also a party to UN Sustainable Development Goals whose Goal 4 aims to deliver quality education for all.

Education is the most important lever for social, economic and political transformation. A well-educated population, equipped with the relevant knowledge, attitudes and skills is essential for economic and social development in the twenty-first century.
Education is the most potent tool for socioeconomic mobility and a key instrument for building an equitable and just society. Education provides skills and competencies for economic well-being.
Education strengthens democracy by imparting to citizens the tools needed to fully participate in the governance process. Education also acts as an integrative force in society, imparting values that foster social cohesion and national identity.

India has made great strides in improving access to quality education, increasing elementary school enrolment and reducing the number of out-of-school children. An estimated 6.1 million children were out of school in 2014 reduced from 13.46 million in 2006.

These achievements have been bolstered by key laws, policies and programs such as the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act (2009), and the National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy (2013).

Right to Education

The 86th Constitutional Amendment, 2002 inserted Article 21A in the Constitution, making the Right to Education a fundamental right. It enforces Education as a Fundamental Right (Article 21A).
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 became operative in the country on 1st April 2010.
Every child between the ages of six to fourteen years shall have the right to free and compulsory elementary education
No child shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses
The Central and the State Governments shall have concurrent responsibility for providing funds for carrying out the provisions of this Act.
The National Commission and State Commission for Protection of Child Rights – bodies are created to adjudicate on RTE disputes.
It focuses on making the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety through a system of child-friendly and child-centred learning.

Achievements of the Right to Education Act,2009

The RTE Act has successfully managed to increase enrolment in the upper primary level (Class 6-8).
Stricter infrastructure norms resulted in improved school infrastructure, especially in rural areas.
More than 3.3 million students secured admission under the 25% quota norm under RTE.
It made education inclusive and accessible nationwide.

What are the challenges of RTE?

1] Infrastructure gap – especially in rural areas and hilly regions.

2] Poor teacher-pupil ratio

3] Lack of quality education: There is no focus on the quality of learning, as shown by multiple ASER reports, thus RTE Act appears to be mostly input oriented.

4] Private schools frequently deny admissions to economically weaker sections. The RTE Act, of 2009 made a provision to mandate unaided schools to keep aside 25% of seats for underprivileged children of society.

5] Five States namely Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim and Telangana have not even issued notification regarding 25% seats for underprivileged children of society under the RTE.

6] The National Commission and State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights – are not functioning adequately.

7] Children below 6 years are not covered under the Act.

8] At the time of admissions, many documents such as birth certificates, BPL certificates, etc. are required. This move seems to have left out orphans from being beneficiaries of the Act.

9] Instead of increasing the standards and outcomes of the public education system in India, it passes the buck to private schools with some respect.

Way Forward:

1] Minority Religious Schools need to be brought under the RTE.

2] More focus on teacher training programs.

3] Quality of education needs to be emphasized over quantity of education.

4] Steps should be taken to make the teaching profession attractive.

5] Society as a whole need to be supportive of education for children without biases.

Challenges in the School Education Sector

High drop-out rate– Out of 100 students, 29 per cent of girls and boys drop out of school before completing the full cycle of elementary education, and often they are the most marginalised children. (SRI-IMRB Surveys)
Around 50 per cent of adolescents do not complete secondary education, while approximately 20 million children not attending pre-school. (Rapid Survey of Children 2013-2014 MWCD)
Half of the primary school-going children – which constitutes nearly 50 million children – not achieving grade-appropriate learning levels. (National Achievement Survey, NCERT 2017)
Children’s school readiness at age 5 has been far below the expected levels.
Visible challenge: Inadequate inputs
Some schools continue to lack adequate infrastructure
Several states still face a severe shortage of teachers
Poor quality of institutional support for teachers’ professional development
The invisible challenge: Children falling behind-A typical Indian school focuses on completing the curriculum and is not structured to provide extra help to children who are not moving ahead at the expected pace or to those who are falling behind (“Low learning trap”).
Quality of Teachers: Lack of well-trained, skilled and knowledgeable teachers who provide the foundation for a high-quality education system.
Learning Outcomes: Only 58 per cent of children enrolled in classes three to five could read a class one text.
Infrastructure deficit: Single-teacher schools, most of them with just a single room, are unable to provide even the basic environment for learning.
Corruption and leakages: The fund transfer is drastically reduced when it reaches the true beneficiaries.
Toilets at government schools are non-functional owing to a lack of water supply.
Lack of Accountability: School Management Committees are largely dysfunctional. Parents are often not aware of their rights and if they are it is difficult for them to make their voice heard.
High drop-out rates: The drop-out rates in schools, especially for girls, is very high.
School closure: Many schools are closed to low student strength, and lack of teachers and infrastructure. The competition posed by private schools is also a major challenge to government schools.

Government Initiatives for Elementary Education

With the formulation of the National Policy on Education, India initiated a wide range of programs for achieving the goal of UEE through several schematic and Program interventions, such as

PM Poshan in Schools

Mid-day meal scheme has been restructured as “PM Roshan Shakti Nirman” (PM POSHAN).
A centrally sponsored scheme that aims to provide one hot cooked meal in Government and Government aided schools to children studying in Classes I-VIII. Currently, it covers 11.8 crore children studying in 11.20 lakh schools across the country.
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
Mahila Samakhya
Strengthening for providing quality Education in Madrassas (SPQEM)

NOTE: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is implemented as India’s main Program for universalizing elementary education. Its overall goals include universal access and retention, bridging of gender and social category gaps in education and enhancement of learning levels of children.

Nipun Bharat Program

Ministry of Education has launched a National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat), for ensuring that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27.

Samagra Shiksha

Integrated scheme for school education from 2018-19. It envisages school as a continuum from pre-school, primary, upper primary, secondary and senior secondary schools.

Government Initiatives in Secondary Education

Secondary Education is the most significant stage in the educational hierarchy as it prepares students for higher education and the world of work. The policy at present is to make secondary education of good quality available, accessible and affordable to all young persons in the age group of 14-18. At present, the following schemes targeted at the secondary stage (i.e., class IX to XII) are being implemented in the form of Centrally Sponsored Schemes:

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan
Girls Hostel Scheme
National Scheme of Incentives to Girls for Secondary Education
Inclusive Education for the Disabled at the Secondary Stage
Scheme of Vocational Education
National Merit-cum-Means Scholarship Scheme
Scheme for construction and running of Girls’ Hostel for students of secondary and higher secondary schools
Scholarship schemes for Minority students
National Scholarships

The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) promotes educational development both in quantitative and qualitative terms and makes special efforts to remove disparities and equalize educational opportunities for all students. NCERT acknowledges and appreciates educational brilliance in students through the National Talent Search Scheme. It also seeks to applaud artistic distinction through the Chacha Nehru Scholarships – for artistic and innovative excellence. The National Bal Bhawan instituted a system of honouring talented children in different age groups in the year 1995 through the Bal Shree scheme.

Way forward

Ensuring maximum enrollment of children in the 6-14 age group
Each state must publicly declare their learning goals and articulate concretely its plans for achieving higher learning outcomes.
Placing children’s learning outcomes at the centre of the stage (Education: 12th Five-Year Plan).
Increasing inputs, improving infrastructure and “tightening education systems”
Grouping children by ability instead of age/grade
Supporting teachers through regular training and monitoring
Conducting systematic basic assessment
Using the principle of “teaching by level” (as being implemented by many states)
Promoting gender equality through education at an early age
Optimization of technology which should be cost-effective with maximum coverage.
Create a single-window system for infrastructure and mainstream fund-flows: In Bihar, only around 10 per cent of the schools fulfil infrastructure norms.
Implementing bio-metric attendance for teachers and students for every class can help reduce absenteeism.
Facilitates School Management Committee members by fostering democratic accountability. Social audits should also be carried out for effective functioning.
Better pre-service teacher training coupled with transparent and merit-based recruitment
Increase the public spending on education to 6% of GDP as recommended by many committees like the recent TSR Subramaniam committee.
Rajasthan Model of education: where school infra, teachers and students are clubbed to address various issues collectively.
Improve the quality of Mid-day meals; ensure access to the toilet and hygiene.
Increase Digitization of education to allow students to access quality education.

State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in India

The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) released the report on the State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in India. The report prepared by the Institute for Competitiveness highlights the importance of early education years in the overall development of a child.

The Index includes 5 pillars comprising 41 indicators. The five pillars are:

Educational Infrastructure
Access to education
Basic Health
Learning outcomes
Governance

Key Highlights
Some states may serve as role models for others in certain aspects, but they too need to learn from other states while addressing their challenges. This holds true not only for high performers but also for low-performing states. For instance, while Kerala has the best performance in the small state, it can also learn from some lower-scoring regions, such as Andhra Pradesh (38.50), which outperforms Kerala (36.55) with respect to access to education.

States have performed particularly worse in the Governance pillar because over half of the states have a score that is below the national average, i.e., 28.05, the lowest across all pillars. These pillar-wise analyses help states assess the state of the budgetary measures and steps needed to improve the state of education and identify existing gaps that obstruct their growth.

The issue of Access to Education is one that demands prompt action on the part of the States. The performance of Large States such as Rajasthan (25.67), Gujarat (22.28), and Bihar (18.23) is noticeably below average. Whereas the Northeastern states have the highest scores because of their superior performance.

Foundational Literacy and Numeracy

Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) refers to basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. It is the ability to read and understand a basic text and perform simple mathematical calculations by the end of grade 3. Strong literacy and numeracy help children to learn, experiment, reason and create, to be active and informed citizens, and to contribute socially, culturally and economically. National Education Policy (2020) accords the highest importance to the achievement of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy.

Challenges in the achievement of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Lack of Early childcare and education: Over 85% of a child’s cumulative brain development occurs prior to the age of 6. Presently, quality ECCE is not available to crores of young children, particularly children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Poor status of Anganwadis: The Anganwadi workers (AWW) are overworked, with duties and responsibilities that centre around her being a teacher, a nurse and a social service provider. AWW is not equipped with the necessary tools to be able to engage children in learning experiences.

Nutritional deficiencies among children: The relationship between nutrition, health and learning is undeniably strong. But, as per GHI 2020, India has the highest child-wasting rate (17.3%) of all the countries.

Inadequate budget: The National Education Policy of 1968 recommended that India spend 6% of its GDP on education. However, even today, as per the Economic Survey (2019–20), India 20), India spends only 3.1% of its GDP on education.

Inadequate infrastructure: Though RTE Act (2009) mandated basic infrastructure in schools like toilets, safe drinking water, playground etc, data shows that the basics are yet to be ensured in all the schools.

Low pupil-to-teacher ratio: As per the Right to Education Act (RTE, 2009) the desired Teacher Pupil ratio (TPR) has been set to 1:35. But, according to NEUPA report, around 42% of government elementary schools have only one or two teachers for all the elementary grades.

Poor pedagogic skills: Linguistic issues: The medium of instruction is often different from the mother tongue of children. It negatively impacts the child’s motivation to engage in classroom processes.

Way forward

Increase budget allocation, with focused investment in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy.

Alignment of synergies between MWCD and MoE.

Since nutrition and education are both equally important and require significant time and effort, it may be worthwhile to consider having two AWWs per Anganwadi.

Provision of Primary education in the Mother tongue.

Ensure minimum instruction time in schools and learning at home. The Right to Education Act (2009) requires that children from grades I-V spend 200 days involving 800 instruction hours in school. Currently, different states are seen allocating different amounts of time for literacy instruction, which ranges from 35 min in some states to about 90 minutes in some others. There needs to be a standard block of time across all the states.

Nipun Bharat Program

The following outcomes have been envisaged from the implementation of the goals and objectives of the NIPUN Bharat Mission:

Foundational skills enable to keep children in class thereby reducing dropouts and improve the transition rate from primary to upper primary and secondary stages.

Activity-based learning and a conducive learning environment will improve the quality of education.

Innovative pedagogies such as toy-based and experiential learning will be used in classroom transactions thereby making learning a joyful and engaging activity.

Intensive capacity building of teachers will make them empowered and provide greater autonomy in choosing the pedagogy.

Holistic development of the child by focusing on different domains of development like physical and motor development, socio-emotional development, literacy and numeracy development, cognitive development, life skills etc. which are interrelated and interdependent, which will be reflected in a Holistic Progress Card.

Children achieve steeper learning trajectories which may have positive impacts on later life outcomes and employment.

Since almost every child attends early grades, therefore, focus at that stage will also benefit the socio-economic disadvantageous group thus ensuring access to equitable and inclusive quality education.

Conclusion

It is urgent that we face our realities squarely to fulfil children’s hopes for the coming school year and enable India to reach its national goals for growth and equity.