Elementary Education in India

Whenever a discourse on the development of India on all counts is carried on, the knowledgeable people do not miss to refer to its remarkable success in the field of education after a little more than six and a half decades of its independence form the foreign rule. Had India not laid a lot of stress on education, the latent talent of the innumerable individuals would not have come to the fore that had been lying unused due to the coercive measures of an apathetic imperialist power which always though in terms of making money by exploiting all the subjects physically. The British let the Indian masses lying low, because they were used as bonded laborers in the British companies both in India and the countries which ahd been under the British rule. Today, those countries are alone thought to have progressed which have been able to achieve remarkable success with regard to making their citizens able to join hands with the developed world where educations is no more a distant dream. In the developed nations, people are encouraged to better their level of knowledge with either the efforts of the governments or on their own,  as the infrastructure has been provided in an excellent way. India, however, has not been able to come up to the mark in imparting, education to all the citizens despite al the best it could do after ushering in a new era of democratic rule. Its demography and geography – both have passed problem in this regard. Though there are still many countries which cannot provide educations equitably to all their citizens, they are considered backward in spite of the fact that they do not lag behind in resourcefulness materially. Illiteracy is identified as the root cause of a number of deep-rooted social evils, as enlightenment alone can eradicate them. Without education, enlightenment cannot be possible and education is the only means which can address most of the human problems, as it gives the people an opportunity to improve their skills to move in the directions of development. Those who have governed the country after Independence have realized this fact and keeping this in view, the 86^th Amendment in the Indian Constitution was made in 2002. Our country also stepped further in this direction when the Right of Children to Fee and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 was enforced form April 1,2010. This Act was welcomed by all the conscientious people, because it put an end to the decade-long struggle for universalizing the elementary education. It was a historic event, because it was the most significant step towards the empowerment of the common people who were impoverished and illiterate.

            The implementation of the RTE Act, however, has not borne fruits the way it should have done as the ninth Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by the non-Governmental organization PRATHAM has reported. PRATHAM focuses on the status of schooling and basic learning of children in rural India. The report discusses in detail the achievements made by the RTE Act as well as the parameters in which it has failed to make a mark. As ASER gives an account of the site of education starting form the year 2005, it is natural that it covers almost the whole period of the present UPA Government. According to the report, under the UPA Government, school enrolment has improved impressively, as 96 percent of the children in the age group 6-14 had got enrolled in 2013. The report also says that for the last five years, the enrolment of the children belonging to this age group had never gone down and remained consistent at 95-96 percent.  The report calls the performance of the UPA government in getting the children to school very commendable and says that the Government has delivered in this regard. There is no argument in refuting this achievement by the cynics who think that this percentage should have been a 100 percent by now. Besides ASER also calls the job of the UPA Government commendable, as over the years it has also made excellent progress, so far as providing infrastructure to the schools is concerned. The report emphasizes the point that school infrastructure is as much the right of school children as quality textbooks and pedagogy. It has been possible, because the UPA II focused very much on the necessary standards and norms at schools. According to the data that ASER presented in 2014, 76.3 percent shools possess an office-cum-store, 62 percent hava a playground, 56 percent have got a boundary wall, 73 percent have provision for drinking water, 62 percent of the schools have got a usable toilet, 53 percent of them provide girl students a separate, unlocked and usable toilet. The report also takes into account the schools where midday meals were served and it says that 87 percent were serving midday meals when the survey tem visited the schools. The team also found that 40 percent students were using library.