Learning from the classroom

Govt schools need to focus on quality

Over the past decade, successive governments have taken pride in the fact that growing numbers of children in rural India are being enrolled in schools and, what is more, staying there for longer periods of time.  In a country as large and geographically varied as India, this is no mean achievement. The disheartening factor is that no government has chosen to build on this initiative in a meaningful manner. The unintended consequence of this “quantitative” focus has been to downplay the “qualitative” element, as the latest Annual State of Education (Rural) or ASER report shows. ASER surveyors visited some 37,000