Primary education in India

Published on 11 Jan 2025

Concerns regarding primary education in India

• Accessibility issues: Accessibility concerns are high among children belonging to marginal socio-economic profiles.

• Example: Despite the Right to Education Act, there are still approximately 8.1 million children between the ages of 6-13 years who are out of school, according to a report by UNESCO.

• Regional disparities: There is a significant rural-urban divide in access to primary school education due to lack of infrastructure and teachers in rural India.

• Example: A study by NSO revealed that the percentage of children attending pre-primary schools was only 11.4% in rural areas, compared to 27.6% in urban areas.

• Social and cultural barriers: Children from marginalized communities often face discrimination and prejudice, making it difficult for them to access quality education. 

• Example: In 2018, Oxfam India reported that nearly 40% of children from marginalized communities in India were not attending school.

• Gender Inequality: Despite various government initiatives to promote girls' education, gender disparities persist in schools. 

• Example: According to UNESCO's 2020 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, the female literacy rate in India is 70.3%, while the male literacy rate is 84.7%.

• Inadequate funding: The most pressing problem is the unavailability of money or inadequate funding of school education in India. 

• Example: The Samagra Shiksha scheme, which is expected to be the major driver behind reversing learning losses, has registered a mere hike of 0.18%, with the allocation of Rs 37,453 crore in 2023-24.

• Poor Quality of Education: Student’s learning outcomes remain abysmally low indicating low quality of education.

• Example: A 2021 report by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that only 50.3% of class 5 students in government schools could read class 2 level texts.

• Lack of trained and dedicated teachers: There is a substantial shortage of teachers in the system.

• Example: According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2021, around 20% of rural schools in India have only one teacher for all grades, leading to inadequate attention and instruction to students.

• Low rate of induction in pre-primary: As per NFHS-5, Only 13.6% of children aged 5 years attended pre-primary schooling. 

• Poor Salary of Teachers: Teachers at Lower primary levels are underpaid for their effort as the teacher to pupil ratio is high 26.3 as per UDISE+. This leads to a drop in the quality of teaching at school.

• Example: To earn income, teachers start private tuition and students are forced to spend extra money.

• Drop Out: Poor financial background and lack of proper guidance increase the rate of dropouts from education institutes.

• Example: Rate remains above 3% in upper primary level as per UDISE+ data from 2022.

• Lack of Accountability: Dysfunctional school management committees, PTA associations, etc lead to high teacher absenteeism. 

Government Initiatives for Promoting Primary Education in India

• Samagra Shiksha: Overarching program that subsumes the 3 sub-schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and Teacher education. It supports the states and UTs in implementing NEP 2020 and RTE 2009. 

• PM POSHAN: Centrally sponsored scheme of providing one hot cooked meal in government and government aided schools for children of pre-schools and Classes I-VIII.

• NISHTHA: A capacity-building programme for "Improving Quality of School Education through Integrated Teacher Training" to build competencies among all the teachers and school principals at the elementary stage through massive training programmes.

• STARS Program: The Government of India and the World Bank signed a $500 million Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States Program (STARS) to improve the quality and governance of school education in six Indian states - Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan.

• Premium Schools under Central Government: There are 1,740 schools (Kendriya Vidyalayas 1,092, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas 586, and Central Tibetan Schools 62) with an enrolment of about 13 lakh students. 

• Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM): aims at qualitative improvement in Madrasas to enable Muslim children to attain standards of the National education system in formal education subjects.

Digital Initiatives

• Vidyanjali 2.0 Portal to facilitate private donors CSR contributions and volunteering activities for school Development.

• PM e-VIDYA: initiated as part of Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan includes:

• DIKSHA (One Nation, One Digital Platform): for providing quality e-content for school education in States/UTs

• Swayam Prabha TV Channel – One channel earmarked per class from Class 1 to 12

• Extensive Use of Community Radio and CBSE Podcast – Shiksha Vani

• Special E- content for visually and hearing-impaired students on DAISY platform and in sign language on NIOS website

• PRAGYATA: The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) released guidelines on digital education titled PRAGYATA - Schools can hold live online classes for a maximum of 1.5 hours per day for Classes 1-8, and 3 hours per day for Classes 9-12.

Measures Required to Improve the Primary Education in India

• Decentralization and greater local autonomy: Decentralizing school management to local authorities and school boards with parent representation ensures accountability and improves daily functioning. 

• Example: Delegating more powers and responsibilities to PTAs  

• Self Sufficiency in Nutrition: Green Schools with Nutrition farms that can feed its students apart from POSHAN. 

• Example: Kan Sikul Kan Huan (My School, My Farm) Project in Mizoram  

•  Curriculum reform: focusing on comprehension, communication, and independent knowledge access instead of rote learning. 

• Example: Experiential Learning can reap maximum benefit from its ability to extract active participation from every student, which in turn triggers their emotional intelligence and sets them on a path to self-learning.

• Assessment reforms:  Through initiatives like 360-degree Holistic Progress Card, tracking Student Progress for achieving Learning Outcomes. 

• Reducing the Language Barrier: While keeping English as a means of education for international understanding (EIU), it is important to give other Indian languages equal importance.

• Incentivizing creativity and innovation from early ages: Engaging local entrepreneurs as business coaches in schools so that students can become job creators instead of job seekers. 

• Example: Business Blasters Program of Delhi Government giving Rs 2,000 as seed money to Class 11 and 12 students to develop entrepreneurship ideas to be extended to primary schools as well. 

• Digitization across the spectrum: Implementing biometric attendance for teachers and students for every class can help reduce absenteeism.

• Example: Vidya Sameeksha of Gujarat reduced teacher absenteeism by 33% via central monitoring. 

India has made remarkable progress in increasing the primary education enrolment across the nation and the government has also launched many programmes to ensure universal access to primary school, irrespective of gender, region, caste and class divides.

Tags:
Social Justice

Keywords:
Primary education in India ARTICLE 21A right to education education concern regarding primary education quality education

Syllabus:
General Studies Paper 2

Topics:
Social Justice