Indicus Analytics: It's elementary

Universalisation of elementary education is a constitutional provision, a national commitment in India. Over the years, the government has made several efforts to improve access to education for all children, provide infrastructure facilities in schools and teaching learning materials in classrooms to facilitate meaningful curriculum transaction. Despite these numerous programmes, a detailed survey on school facilities, that is, District Information System on Education (DISE), presents a somewhat dismal picture of the school facilities in India.

The data reveal that accessibility remains a serious concern since there are merely three primary and 1.5 upper-primary schools per 10 square kilometre. Further, the percentage of schools with basic provisions like toilet facilities and electricity connection is exceedingly low. Merely 27 per cent of schools in the country have electricity connections and only 58 per cent of schools have separate toilets for girls. The prerequisite for quality education is adequacy of teachers. A comparison with China shows that the pupil teacher ratio (PTR) in 2008 was 17:1 compared to 34:1 in India. Although, there has been a steady improvement in PTR in India from 47:1 in 1995 to 34:1 in 2008, it remains far behind international standards.The Right to Education Act 2009 (RTE) mandates a PTR of 30:1 in order to ensure that children learn better in classrooms — there is a wide disparity across states in this indicator. In nine states PTR was higher than the prescribed norm in 2009-10 with Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand leading with more than 40 children per teacher. Eight states are close to China’s PTR – most of them are small states – Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Sikkim, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya and Puducherry

For states where average PTR is much above the norm, it will take immense resources to get schools on track — 87.67 per cent of primary schools in Bihar have PTRs exceeding 30. In eight states, more than 50 per cent of the primary schools exceed the PTR norm — Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and also, interestingly, Delhi, whose average PTR is 28. In nine states more than a third of the primary schools have PTRs higher than 30 — Daman & Diu, Orissa, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh. Except for Assam, the north-eastern states perform well on this indicator, while Andhra Pradesh and Kerala are the best performers in the south.

The wide divergence in PTR across the country only demonstrates the existing inequality in India on yet another front. In addition to PTR, the RTE mandates other norms for facilities — library, playground, safe drinking water, separate toilets for girls and boys and so on. Most of the schools are lagging on all these fronts. While statistics are being collated for coverage of these norms, much remains to be achieved in outcome, actual learning and meaningful schooling.