Education: India needs reality check

The value of education cannot be overstated, especially for a developing country which needs to build anew. This sector is no less crucial to our well-being than agriculture, industry or power, and hence it is necessary to give ourselves a reality check, as the recently released Annual Status of Education Survey 2012, initiated by the NGO Pratham, has done.

As we know, there are greater chances that an educated individual will be more cultured, better able to cope with the complexities of life, and also make a greater contribution to society, than someone not fortunate enough to have been educated. But it is not a matter of enriching the individual alone. A modern or a modernising economy competing in the global market place cannot permit itself to be deprived of education. Former US President Bill Clinton once even called education a factor for national security, and he was right.
In 10 years 70 per cent of India will be in the working age group. A work force with the necessary literacy, occupational skills and educational attainments can take the country out of poverty in the space of a single generation, and it is to this end that we need to bend ourselves. This national aspiration is reflected in much higher national outlays than before in the 12th Plan (2012-17), with the right to education programme receiving a nearly 22 per cent higher budget allocation than the previous year (totalling `25,500 crore), and the government deciding to open 6,000 model schools at the block level throughout India. But look at the problem and the poor execution, to which ASER draws our attention.
About 25 per cent of the population is illiterate, only 15 per cent reaches high school, and a bare seven per cent makes it to the graduate level. This must change. But the ASER data — which studied six lakh children in 3.3 lakh households in more than 16,000 villages across 567 districts — suggests that half the children of the Class 5 level can barely cope with basic language and arithmetic skills fit for Class 2. This speaks of a serious crisis in the quality of the effort. Worse, the survey says primary school outcomes have worsened since 2010 when the RTE was introduced.
This is likely to be a coincidence and not a causative factor, although Pratham believes that RTE’s stress on continuous comprehensive evaluation (CCE) and skipping examinations could be a reason. In any case, the issue needs very serious attention. The happy part of the story is that 96 per cent Indians are now enrolled in schools, thanks to RTE. We must ensure they stick there and go on to higher classes.