Improving, but not by much

The findings of the NGO Pratham's latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for rural India are along the expected, even if still disturbing, lines. On the face of it, there is a big improvement when it comes to the proportion of children going to school, in teachers teaching, students attending classes, and in schools with drinking water and other facilities. Yet, when it comes to the overall level of learning, the picture remains bleak. Thus, while 6.6 per cent of those in the 6-14 age group were found to be out of school by the Pratham ASER survey in 2006, the figure was down to 4.2 per cent by 2007. Similarly, the proportion of teachers present in schools jumped from 38 per cent to 54 per cent in the two-year span of 2005-07; the proportion of schools with mid-day meals being served rose from 75 per cent to 92 per cent, the number with toilets rose from 56 per cent to 67 per cent, and the attendance of children rose from 60 per cent to 68 per cent in the two-year period.

All of these are encouraging changes and show that the central government's programmes on mid-day meals and school facilities (through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) are working, and that the states are putting up a pretty good performance as well. Even the drop-out ratios are not as bad as they might be, since 80 per cent of children seem to stay in school till the age of 15-16 (by which time they should be at matriculation stage). The problem is that the education they have got till then does not measure up to what is required to make them employable in jobs that require more than just a functional level of literacy. The ASER results, though better marginally than in the past, confirm this picture. So, over 40 per cent of those in Class V cannot read the textbooks meant for children three grades below them, and around 60 per cent cannot do a simple division exercise.

Not surprisingly, the ASER numbers report an increase in the proportion of children opting for private schooling and coaching "" the number rising marginally from 18.7 per cent of the total in 2006 to 19.3 in 2007 in the 6-14 age group; in the older 15-16 group, the change was sharper and rose from 18 per cent to 25 per cent. The problem is that, with the variations in individual states so high, there is a shadow of doubt on the numbers "" in Punjab, for instance, the data show the proportion going to private schools in the 6-14 age group has fallen from 41.5 per cent in 2006 to 31.8 per cent in 2007; for Haryana, the fall is from 43.1 per cent to 36 per cent. The ASER results show the expected, namely that children in private schools do better than those in government schools. But since there is no information on the incomes/education of their parents, it is difficult to come to any firm conclusion on whether the better results produced by private schools are linked in any way to family backgrounds, including especially income levels and the parents' level of education. Indeed, one of the paradoxes is that West Bengal, with just 4.3 per cent of children in private schools, scores better than Punjab and Haryana, which have more private schooling. Perhaps this is a result of cultural preferences with regard to education, but that only underlines the point that more information is needed for formulating well-founded policy choices.