SC students lag behind in schooling

The enrolment of Scheduled Caste students at primary and upper primary level in the city is low as compared to others and need specifically targeted intervention, said the Delhi’s latest Economic Survey on Wednesday.

Sounding alarm bells over a trend of SC students remaining out of schools, the survey said the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in 2010-11 of SC students has fallen to 54.1 per cent at the upper primary level and dropped to 64 and 38.6 per cent at the secondary and senior secondary level respectively.

For all students put together, the GER in 2010-11 at the primary and upper primary level were 127 and 108 respectively.

The survey’s findings come a day before teh presentation of Budget by the Aam Aadmi Party government in the Assembly amid speculation that it is going to double the allocation for education in its maiden budget.

The allocation for the education sector may be the highest in almost two decades.
The government may look to set up 500 new schools with special focus on secondary and senior secondary institutions, 20 new colleges and up to a Rs 10 lakh loan for students.
The city had 5,798 schools in 2014-15 with 1,39,480 teachers and a student-teacher ratio of 32.

A total of 44.13 students enrolled in 2014-15 from pre-primary to senior secondary level, the survey said.

It said Delhi is very close to attaining the universal literacy rate among youth with a gender parity of 1 – meaning equal number of men and women,

Poverty

Poverty in Delhi came down to around 10 per cent of the total population in 2011 from over 14 per cent a year ago, today (Wednesday). There were 23.3 lakh people living below poverty line (BPL) in 2009-10 while the number decreased to 16.96 lakh in 2011-12.
In social security and welfare sector around 95 integrated child development services (ICDS) with a network of 10,897 anganwadi centres took care of 14.58 lakh pregnant and lactating women and children up to the age of six years.About 3.32 lakh senior citizens were provided monthly old age pension during 2014-15.

Transport

The city’s vehicular population is showing no signs of decline as registration of new vehicles saw an over six per cent increase with a total of 88.27 lakh vehicles in comparison to last year, the survey said.

There were 27,90,566 cars and jeeps in the city during 2014-15 while in 2013-14, the vehicular population was 82.58 lakh.

“The total number of motor vehicles on road in Delhi as on March 31, 2015 touched 88.27 lakh, showing an increase of 6.4 per cent over previous year,” the survey said.

The survey also stated that average ridership of Delhi Metro was approximately 24 lakh per day during 2014-15. The road network of Delhi has also increased from 32,131 lane km in 2007-08 to 33,198 lane km in 2014-15.