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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

‘Six per cent girls in rural India still out of school'

About 6 per cent of girls in the 11-14 age group in rural India are still out of school, according to findings of the Annual Status of Education Report-2010 facilitated by the non-government organisation Pratham. This percentage is lesser than the 2009 figure of 6.8 per cent.

The report, which is the largest annual survey of children in rural India, was released by Vice-President Hamid Ansari here. Mr. Ansari said that while the imperative for ensuring access to elementary education is well understood, the “quality agenda” has still not been accorded the same priority.

“We have neither an inbuilt evaluation culture nor adequate trained human resources with technical knowledge and field experience to check and monitor outcomes,” the Vice-President said, adding that the issue of quality in relation to education would have to be examined.

Efforts to expand enrolment must be accompanied by attempts to enhance education quality while public policy should focus on quality improvement in teacher training and development of curricular materials, Mr. Ansari said.

The ASER-2010 report was complied by reaching 522 districts, more than 14,000 villages, 300,000 households and about 700,000 children. The report found that 96.5 per cent in the 6-14 age group in rural India are enrolled in school. While 71.1 per cent are enrolled in government schools, 24.3 per cent are in private schools.

In Bihar the percentage of out-of-school girls and boys in all age groups has been declining steadily since 2005. In 2010, 4.4 and 4.6 per cent of boys and girls respectively were out of school in Bihar. The enrolment in private schools in rural India has increased from 21.8 per cent in 2009 to 24.3 per cent in 2010. Private school enrolment has increased in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Punjab. The proportion of private enrolment remained low in Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa and Tripura.

The report found that nationally the percentage of five-year-olds enrolled in schools increased to 62.8 per cent in 2010. The maximum increase was recorded in Karnataka. Nationally, there is not much change in reading ability. “Even after five years in school, close to half of all children are not even at the level expected of them after two years in school,” the report said. However, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal had shown some progress.

There is also a decrease in children's ability to do simple mathematics. The proportion of Class I children who recognised numbers from 1 to 9 declined from 69.3 per cent in 2009 to 65.8 per cent in 2010. In contrast, Punjab's performance in basic arithmetic has improved over the last few years. According to the report, middle school children are weak in everyday calculations as well.

A lesser number of children enrolled in private schools up to Class VIII are taking tuitions. But in States such as Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa where private school enrolment is less, the number of students enrolled in Class V in government schools and taking tuition classes is high.

With regard to compliance with the Right to Education Act, the ASER report found that over 60 per cent of 13,000 school visited satisfied infrastructure norms required by the RTE Act. “However, more than half of these schools will need more teachers. A third will need more classrooms,” the report said.

Attendance of teachers in primary schools has been falling since 2007 while children's attendance in rural India as a whole showed no change over the 2007-2010 period though there is considerable variation across States.