Rural education: Darkness before dawn

The Pratham report on the state of learning in rural areas shows that enrolment rates are rapidly rising, thanks to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, but the quality of learning has actually got worse. Only 41 per cent of students between Grade 1 and 8 could read simple stories in 2008, versus 43.6 per cent in 2005; only 27.9 per cent children across grades could do simple division sums in 2008, compared to 30.9 per cent in 2005. At a discussion on this at the 19th Skoch Summit in the capital, Planning Commission Principal Advisor Bhaskar Chatterjee said this was not something to get too worried about. He said this was basically a J-curve situation — things looked like they were getting worse before they actually got better. And lest those in the audience thought he was just pulling a fast one, he said the first plank of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan was enrolling students and reducing not-in-school rates; as this got achieved, the student-teacher ratio went out of kilter and this is what caused the learning levels to fall. Now that enrolments have taken place, he said, the number of teachers would also go up, as would learning levels.