Beyond the numbers

  VIMALA RAMACHANDRAN writes on a study conducted in a few States
  on rural primary education. Statistics showed a cent per cent enrolment,
  but also a high dropout rate. A sustained effort is, therefore, needed by
  the government and society to ensure literacy at the primary education
  level.
 
        Children demanding a better system of education.

  WHEN asked to carry out a gender and equity assessment of a large
  primary education programme, I did not know where to start. Who gets to
  go to school as opposed to who remains out of school and why? Who
  goes to which primary school (government, alternate or private school)
  and why? Which children are able to complete one level and go on to the
  next? What determines learning achievements and why do so many
  children emerge barely literate even after five years of schooling?

  I ploughed through mountains of statistics and a variety of indices that
  declared that gender gaps and social inequity are closing fast. Enrolment
  data revealed that over 100 per cent children were in school! A wide
  range of schools and centres have emerged in the last ten years to cater
  to a spectrum of out of school children. The decade of the 1990s was
  indeed a period of churning and also a decade when we made
  significant leap in literacy rates.

  The 2001 Census of India revealed that 65.4 per cent people (75.85
  among men and 54.16 among women) are literate, and that for the first
  time the absolute number of illiterates has actually gone down. It
  recorded a decadal jump of 11.8 in the literacy rate among men and
  15.00 among women and hitherto backward regions like Chhattisgarh
  recorded a jump of 24.87 in literacy levels among women, Madhya
  Pradesh 20.93 jump in female literacy and Rajasthan decadal increase
  of 21.47 (M) and 23.09 (F). These figures are truly impressive and no
  doubt we have much to cheer about it. It was more than apparent that
  children contributed a major share to this increase — and the
  government's various primary education programmes, notably the District
  Primary Education Programme (DPEP), had indeed made a difference.

  Exploring the face behind the purdah of statistics, we conducted detailed
  qualitative micro-studies in one panchayat each in Andhra Pradesh,
  Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Haryana.
  What we saw was a mixture of hope and despair. The demand for
  children's education was growing by leaps and bounds — from the
  poorest of the poor to the better off, everyone wanted to send their
  children to school, acknowledging the value of education in the overall
  development of their children. Many of them were also conscious about
  the quality of education. Their despair nevertheless is visible in their
  choice of schools. In the process of coming to terms with the inadequacy
  of the government primary schools, several States have opted for
  alternative and Education Guarantee Scheme schools, while others
  willy-nilly encouraged the rapid growth of private schools. Rural children
  today have to choose between different kinds of schools of varying quality
  and endowments. Physical access to a functioning school, at least on
  the surface, emerged as a non-issue in all the States except
  Chhattisgarh — where dysfunctional government schools continue to
  pose a major barrier.

  However, the worrisome part is an emerging trend whereby children
  belonging to different social backgrounds are attending different kinds of
  schools. In Andhra Pradesh, there is a divide between the government
  primary school (GPS) located in the Dalit basti and the GPS in the
  forward caste hamlet — only SC students attend the former school, while
  the latter has very few SC students. The youth in the SC colony in the
  village categorically stated that even if children from the SC colony try to
  seek admission in the other GPS, they are discouraged and told to attend
  the school in their own colony. A similar divide was observed in Tamil
  Nadu between the GPS and the school run by the Adi-Dravida Welfare
  Board. There were glaring disparities between the infrastructures of the
  two schools. School buses ply to ferry BC and FC children to
  neighbouring private schools.

  The situation in Haryana was perhaps the starkest. While the village had
  a never equal ratio of SC to OBC and forward caste population, more
  than 90 per cent children in the government school are from the SC
  community and more than 90 per cent private school-going children from
  OBC and forward castes. Despite this high number, the proportion of
  forward caste girls is extremely low in all the schools partly because of a
  low sex ratio in the age-specific population of the village. The situation in
  the Karnataka village was marginally different as the government schools
  with much better facilities and enviable pupil teacher ratio have not yet
  been abandoned by children from relatively well-off communities.
  Interestingly, however, the leadership of the village education committee
  is actively promoting the fledgling private school!

  Madhya Pradesh presents different dynamics — the Education
  Guarantee Scheme (EGS) schools cater to children from the tribal
  community and two well-endowed government primary schools — one
  for boys and one for girls — cater to the locally dominant Kurmi
  community (OBC). In the absence of tangible evidence regarding the
  "performance" of the different schools, the people we spoke to said that
  the government primary school with several rooms and many teachers
  was definitely "better" than the two room and multi grade EGS school.
  Chhattisgarh, which was till recently a part of Madhya Pradesh, has
  turned the logic of EGS on its head — it caters to relatively forward
  sub-groups of the tribal community and the OBC. The dysfunctional GPS
  has been transformed into the preserve of the poor tribal population.

 
     Primary school drop-outs barely know how to read and write.

  It is indeed ironic that the emergence of different types of schools in rural
  India has reinforced existing social divides — leading to discernable
  hierarchies of access. Unfortunately official statistics do not capture
  these trends as they essentially collect information from government
  schools. Even this information is disaggregated either by general
  category, SC and ST or by boys and girls — and not by gender in each
  social category — thereby making it impossible to analyse emerging
  trends with respect to school participation.

  We came across "invisible" children — Jeetagallu in Andhra Pradesh
  and Pali in Haryana — bonded to work with an employer. In Chhattisgarh
  we saw young boys grazing cattle and girls working in the fields — they
  were formally enrolled in the local government primary school. In
  Haryana they were enrolled in a local Alternative School — which barely
  functioned. These are working children who have either dropped out of
  school or have never been there! While Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
  have intensified efforts to identify working children and help then get back
  to school through transitional bridge courses, the educational needs of
  out of school children is yet to be addressed in other States.

  Another Pandora's box opened as we stepped into classrooms. While
  glaring caste or gender discrimination was not evident, there was a clear
  bias in favour of the better-dressed and better performers. While
  acknowledging that it is the very poor who come to government schools
  teachers had little understanding or appreciation of the family
  circumstances and the learning needs of first generation learners who
  get little academic support from home. They were also dismissive about
  the work burden of children — especially girls. Prolonged periods of
  absence were explained as either a lack of interest in education or
  labelling particular children or groups of children as being low
  performers or bad students. The teachers made no effort to reach out to
  children from disadvantaged groups; they focussed only on the bright
  students. As a result a large number of children were irregular, took little
  interest in school and eventually dropped out — barely literate!

  The overwhelming impression we gathered in the six panchayats was
  that parents recognise the value of primary education and
  notwithstanding their economic situation, are eager to send their children
  to school. In the more educationally backward areas of the country,
  availability of a functional primary school of reasonable / comparable
  quality remains a problem. If children do manage to go to a primary
  school, a significant number drop out at the primary stage — with an
  overwhelming number of girls dropping out at the penultimate stage i.e.,
  class IV or V as the case may be. Many of them barely learn to read and
  write. For those who want to continue beyond the primary stage,
  accessibility to and availability of post-primary education remains a
  problem.

  The rich have already walked away from government schools in urban
  areas and all indications are that rural India is not far behind (with
  notable exceptions like Himachal Pradesh). The District Primary
  Education Programme launched by the government with significant
  external aid has certainly made a beginning, the question now is whether
  we — as a nation — have the courage to do serious introspection. Five
  years of primary education is insufficient to ensure significant value
  addition and in many cases even retention of basic literacy and
  numeracy, particularly for groups who have historically been denied
  education. Eight years of basic education is essential and needs to be
  recognised as the bare minimum and taken on as a non-negotiable. We
  cannot even come close to realising the implications of the 93rd
  constitutional amendment (recognising education as a fundamental right
  of every child) unless we are honest with ourselves.

  There are no shortcuts or magic formulae to address fundamental
  problems of access, equity and gender inequality on the one had and
  quality, content and relevance one the other. If education has to become
  an integral part of people's survival and their fight for a life of dignity and
  self-respect — then we as a nation have to start the churning from within.
  Different components like access, quality, teacher <15,0m,,0>attitudes
  and pedagogic renewal have to be addressed simultaneously, ensuring
  confluence and synergy.

  An integrated approach is necessary for meaningful change and
  lasting/sustainable impact. Playing with numbers and showing the world
  that we have indeed cracked the primary education problem helps no
  one — if anything it is a self-deluding and self-defeating exercise.