Education in north going south: Study
Despite the steady increase in enrolment of students in primary schools, the quality of education in government schools continues to be poor in the country and remains worst in north India, according to a survey by an NGO.
The survey also revealed that an ever increasing number of parents continue to rely on private schools for their children’s education, 18 months after the Right To Education Act has come into force.
Reading and mathematical skills amongst children were steadily declining in many States, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the NGO, Pratham, released by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal here on Monday.
The all-India figure for the proportion of children in Standard V who were able to read a Standard II level text has dropped to 48.2 per cent in 2011 from 53.7 per cent in 2010. However, such decline in reading skills of primary school students was not visible in the southern States, the report observed.
As for reading skills amongst primary school children, the situation in Gujarat, Punjab and Tamil Nadu were found to be better compared to 2010, the report indicated.
It said that the number of Standard III students able to solve a two digit subtraction problem with borrowing, was found to have climbed down to 29.9 per cent in 2011 from 36.3 per cent in 2010.
This decline in the mathematical skills of students was visible in “almost” every state, except Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where the survey team observed an improvement in the situation, compared to 2010.
The number of enrolments in private schools has gone up from 18.7 per cent in 2006 to 25.6 per cent in 2011 across the country except Bihar.
Kerala and Manipur have more than 60 per cent of children enrolled in private schools. The proportion of aided private schools is high in both states. Between 30 to 60 per cent of children in rural areas of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh were enrolled in private schools, ASER noted.
According to the survey results, the enrolment of students in primary schools reached at 96.7 per cent across the country in 2011.
