-The Indian Express The dismal picture painted in Pratham’s latest Annual Status of Education Report must provoke policymakers to urgently assess and tackle the crisis in India’s primary school education. Pratham, an NGO, has done stellar work these past years in surveying the Learning Outcomes in schools countrywide. Its 2012 report details a rapid decline in students’ ability to keep up with the syllabus. It has found, for example, that only...

-The Economic Times The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2012) by NGO Pratham shows that the number of Class V students who could not read a Class II level text or solve a simple arithmetic problem has increased. In 2010, 46.3% of kids in this category failed to make the cut and this shot up to 51.8% in 2011 and 53.2% in 2012. US President Barack Obama had warned that America's...

-The Hindustan Times Bhopal: Year 2012 was designated as the year of mathematics in India. However, children in Madhya Pradesh have turned poor in basic arithmetic last year. In 2011, 44.7% children enrolled in Class 5 were able to solve simple two-digit subtraction problems. This proportion declined to one-third (34.1%) in 2012. These, and other similar findings, are the conclusion of Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2012), facilitated by NGO...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...

-The Indian Express The growing influence on policy issues of activists who call themselves “civil society” is a worrying trend and needs to be objectively analysed. Two recent policy pronouncements will illustrate how government seems to be yielding to their pressure. It is well established that absenteeism of teachers and poor quality of outcomes in government schools is the main factor behind the popularity of private schools with poor infrastructure that cater...