Not many teachers, fewer classrooms: Schools have a long way to go

Though the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2018, shows an improvement in learning levels of primary school children in rural India between 2016 and 2018, there are some critical issues which lie underneath.
 
The findings point towards the scarcity of classrooms and school teachers. The share of schools adhering to the mandated classroom-teacher ratio of 1:1 has deteriorated from 76.2 per cent in 2010 to 72.9 per cent in 2018.
 
The reason, experts said, could be that though the Right to Education Act raised the propensity of families for sending children to school, government schools did not ramp up the number of teachers and infrastructure commensurately. This was evident in the survey: More and more schools having students from different classes — say, Class II and Class III — sit together in one classroom.
 
In 2010, Class II students were seen sitting with those in other classes in about 55 per cent schools. This worsened to 63.4 per cent in 2018. For Class IV students, the proportion of schools educating them together with students from other classes increased from 49 per cent to 58 per cent.
 
This trend seems to have plateaued towards 2018, but it remains a major cause for concern.