Quality does matter

I was going to Miyapur from KPHB, Hyderabad to bring my car from service station.  I took share auto, I saw a poor kid with 10Kg school bag travelling with me. Somehow I was very impressed with him and started chatting with him. From my discussion I found that he is poor, studying 5th class in a school 10KM away from his home. Every day he travels via share autos (as he cannot afford a school bus) and crosses the Mumbai highway twice to go to school. I also understood that his parents though they are illiterates they are committed for education for their children, I think is a good sign for the country.

I got feeling that these kind of kid will do wonder in future. Again out of curiosity I asked him about how it is going in the school. He is happy to go and come back every day, has some good company to play and talk etc. But to my surprise he cannot read simple Telugu /English words like name plates of buses, Names of the shops etc. He cannot do basic Math like if 5 autos crosses in 1 hour how many will cross in 5 hours, not very sure about tables after 10 etc. He gets beaten by the teachers often but he never minds it as his parents are crueler.

I started worrying about the kid and his future say if he is going to spend 5 more years to realize that the education he is going through is not sufficient to have his living and also waste of time.  For all practical purposes only 10th class will detain you from progressing to next class if you don’t have the knowledge. I see in the news paper that SSC pass percentage has gone up from 70% to 80%, I got a doubt that is this kid an exception? I have searched in the internet to see how India is doing in primary education.

These are the figures:

According to the recent ‘Annual Status of Education Report', while elementary school enrolment levels in India's villages are high across the country, there is a lot of scope for improvement in school facilities. Most urgent is that attention needs to be paid to the learning component at government schools. While more than 90% of Indian children in rural areas may be attending primary school, nearly half of them cannot read simple sentences or do simple math, according to a recent nationwide survey conducted in 485 rural districts across 28 of India's 35 states and union territories. Despite the government's concerted efforts, 1.4 crore village children still remain out of school.

The survey shows that while 93.4% of the 332,971 children interviewed in 191,057 households in 9,521 villages across the country were enrolled in school, attendance rates did not match up, and the quality of education they receive did not give them an edge over the millions of Indian children in villages who do not go to school.

The survey measured the schools' success in imparting the three 'R's (reading, writing and arithmetic -- considered the fundamentals of formal learning), along with enrolment and attendance rates, to draw the government's attention to the promise of making education a fundamental right of the Indian child.

The data for ASER 2005 was collected in November- December 2005 -- 20 randomly selected villages were surveyed in each participating district. In each village, the ASER team visited 20 randomly selected households and interacted with all children (in the age-group 6 to 14).

This survey clearly indicates the standards of primary schools in extremely low in rural areas. If 90% children are below the expected level, this problem will be compounded in secondary and higher secondary education also. Very less % of student that are not par with primary education can change the situation in secondary school and a new set of students among who are at decent level will join them as well.


So many initiative were taken to provide education for children like Sarwa Sikha Abiyan, Anganwadi, Mid day meal program, building infrastructure like school buildings, benches, blackboards, Computers (?) but nobody is accountable (or at least even worried about) how many are getting benefited out of it?

What I am saying is after some poor student our of his difficulties able to read up to SSC and he is not able to read a news paper or do his own accounting, what is that he has done for  10 years spending 8 hours every day? If he/she would have joined as child laborer in Tea stall/ House maid/ leather shop etc may be he would have find a way to live by 10 years. See, the kid never understands the value of education but society, we, Govt and others only advocates the importance (and we should) and join them into schools.

My question in aren’t we cheating him? Don’t you think this the biggest problem India is facing right now, as we are talking about the fundamental right and the future of more than 300 million (150 million in primary schools and others) students of this country?