There is no doubt that the Indian education system needs a major overhaul to safeguard its growth and competence level in the global education arena. With the current population of 1.25 billion there is no doubt that there is talent etched in today’s younger generation, but the bigger question is, is Indian education well equipped to nurture the talent? Is it time to focus on quality rather than quantity?

The government has taken measures to implement the Right to Education bill extensively. At the golden jubilee celebration for a chain of government schools, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remarked over the quality of education offered in the schools, saying that the standard of teachers and teaching is not up to the mark.

IDFC is an infrastructure finance-firm that presents recommendations on different themes, to India’s Prime Minister. According to IDFC report, there has been a steady rise in the number of schools in the country, touching 1.36 million in 2011. There is a steady decrease in the dropout rate, which has reduced from 69% in 2003 to 49% in 2011.According to the Right to Education Act; education is free and compulsory to all children between the ages of 6 and 14 with a reservation of 25% of seats in all schools for underprivileged children. However, according to the report, primary schools are short of more than one million teachers, and the currently available teachers lack training due to the shortage of teacher training institutes. These institutes are commonly located in urban areas and are not accessible to those from rural segments.

The proof that Right to Education act introduced in the year 2009 is evident from the report submitted by Pratham, a non-profit organization. It states that with the exception of 3.5% children in rural India, primary and secondary school children between the age group of 6-14 years are getting educated. But the situation at the primary level seems to be worse. In 2010, 54% of ten-year-old could read a class-two level text, which were meant for seven-year-olds, in 2012 the number slid to 47%.The problem with government aided schools is that the teachers have to wait for their superiors to issue orders for them to do the work.

The north-south divide is evident in enrollment levels too. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous region, 6.4% of children aged between 6 and 14 did not attend school. In Tamil Nadu the figure was only 0.6%.

Article Posted By : prajwal316  On March 17, 2013lView All Articles

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http://www.veethi.com/articles/reconstructing-the-educational-paradigm-article-1765.htm

Keywords :
education , government