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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Rural India’s reading, maths ability declines-Nitin Mahajan
-Deccan Chronicle

The Annual Status of Education Report 2012 has revealed the standard of school education is not up to the mark in rural India, and claimed over half the children in these areas were at least three grade levels behind in reading and arithmetic abilities.
 
The report, prepared by Unicef backed NGO Pratham, claimed of all Class V students only 46.8 per cent could read a Class II text. Though 2012 was the year of arithmetic in India, only  53.5 per cent Class V students could solve a Class II arithmetic problem.  In government schools the situation is worse. “In government schools the percentage of Class V children able to read a Class II text had fallen from 50.7 to 41.7 in 2012,” the report claimed.
 
For all Class V children, the major decline in reading levels (five percentage points or more) between 2011 and 2012 is seen in Haryana, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala.
 
On arithmetic, the report said in 2010, seven out of 10 (70.9 per cent) Class V children were able to solve simple two-digit subtraction problems with borrowing, but this has declined to six out of 10 (61 per cent) in 2011 and five out of 10 (53.5 per cent) in 2012.
 
Barring Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, every major state  has shown a substantial drop in arithmetic learning levels.
 
The report also revealed that enrolment between 6 and 14 age group in private schools rose from 18.7 per cent in 2006 to 28.3 per cent in 2012 in all states. The report predicted that if the trend continues, by 2018, India may have 50 per cent children attending private schools even in rural areas.
 
Rural students in TN fare poorly
 
The ASER 2012 report that was released in New Delhi on Thursday revealed that in rural Tamil Nadu, 58.5 per cent of class III students were not able to do subtraction even though they recognised numbers from 1 to 99.
 
The report also said that in class III, 16.7 per cent could recognise numbers up to 9 but not more, 16.1 per cent could do subtraction but not division, and 1.3 per cent could do division. It is also interesting to note that in class III, 39.5 per cent were not able to read class I text or higher class, 21.9 per cent read class I text but not class II level text. The report also revealed that 10.8 per cent class III children were not able to even read letters, 19.6 per cent read letters but not more.
 
The report also pointed out a healthy trend of a drop in the number of students taking private tuition. A total of 20.9 per cent of government school students from class I to VIII had attended tuition classes in 2009 but the number dropped to 15 per cent last year whereas the number in private schools dropped from 33.9 (2009) to 27.1 (2012), an overall drop of 4.8 per cent.
 
Tamil Nadu, which is 48 per cent urbanised, reports that in 2010-11, 59.4 per cent of all (urban and rural) children in class I-V attended private schools. Only a third of these were in private schools. ASER 2010 report pointed out the rural private enrolment in classes I to V in the state was 28.5 per cent and is up to 34.8 per cent in 2012.
 
 “Around 80-100 per cent children in classes I to V in urban Tamil Nadu are in private schools and less than a fifth of these are government aided,” the report added.