James Lamont
FINANCIAL TIMES
August 26, 2011 ET
Standards of primary education in India are as bad as in Papua New
Guinea and crisis-torn Afghanistan and Yemen, according to a team of
economists.
In a study of schools in the country’s most populous states the Indian
economists found that fast-paced economic growth had failed to improve
basic educational standards over the past 15 years. Their report showed
some children in the Hindi-speaking northern belt were unable to read
after three years of schooling.
“When the investigators arrived, half of the government schools were
still devoid of any teaching activity,” the report said. “In a
functioning democracy this would be a major national concern.
“Yet little notice has been taken in the corridors of power.”
According to Jean Drèze, one of the report’s researchers and a
prominent Indian policymaker, India now finds itself in an
adult-literacy peer group that includes Afghanistan,
Papua New Guinea and Yemen.
The ratio of students to teachers in Indian primary schools was three
times higher than in China, with a typical class in Bihar, one of the
poorest states, having as many as 92 pupils.
“After 20 years of meteoric economic growth, there’s been so little
improvement in terms of the living standards of the people,” Mr Drèze
said. “There’s a very serious crisis. We have to wake up to the fact
that we are relying too heavily on economic growth.”
There are 5.5m teachers in India, but at least 1.2m more are required.
“The reason there aren’t any teachers in school is because states have
not recruited them for many years,” said Kapil Sibal, minister of human
resources development.
The report’s authors said it had taken years to analyse and verify data
collected in states including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar. One team member, A.K. Shiva Kumar, said he and his
colleagues had reviewed educational data for the 2009-2010 year and
found them to be “identical” to those
of 2006.
The UN Development Programme’s human development report for 2010 said
Indians received just 4.4 years of schooling on average, compared with
7.5 years for China’s citizens. Sri Lanka outscores both with 8.2 years
of schooling and is on a par with China’s 99 per cent literacy rate for
young female adults.
Meera Samson, a researcher at the Delhi-based Collaborative Research
and Dissemination and co-author of the report, said headteachers had
not been appointed at 20 per cent of the schools surveyed. At another
12 per cent of schools, only one teacher had been offered a position.
India’s parliament passed Right to Education legislation last year
requiring the government to provide universal education.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011
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