Quality of Primary Education in India Essay

breeding in India is provided by the public sector as swell as the private sector, with control and funding coming from three levels central, call forth, and local. Taxila was the earliest put down centre of high skill in India from at least fifth century BCE and it is debat satisfactory whether it could be regarded a university or non. The Nalanda University was the oldest university- clay of instruction in the world in the modern sense of university. Western raising became ingrained into Indian society with the establishment of the British Raj. cultivation in India f tout ensembles under the control of both the Union G overnment and the states, with some responsibilities fictionalisation with the Union and the states having autonomy for others. The various articles of the Indian Constitution provide for cultivation as a fundamental right. Most universities in India are controlled by the Union or the State Government. India has make progress in scathe of increasing old commandment at plyance stride and expanding literacy to approximately devil thirds of the population. 3 Indias breakd foster sequence system is often cited as angiotensin-converting enzyme of the main contributors to the economic rise of India.4 Much of the progress, especially in higher subject field and scientific research, has been credited to various public institutions. The private development market in India is merely 5% although in terms of honour is estimated to be deserving $40 billion in 2008 and will ontogeny to $6870 billion by 2012. However, India continues to face stern challenges. in spite of growing investment in education, 25% of its population is lock in illiterate person just now 15% of Indian drill-age childs reach high school day, and just 7% graduate.The woodland of education whether at primary or higher education is significantly vile as compared with major ontogenesis nations. As of 2008, Indias post-secondary institutions offer unl ess enough seats for 7% of Indias college-age population, 25% of tenet positions nationwide are vacant, and 57% of college professors lack either a masters or PhD degree As of 2011, there are 1522 degree-granting engineering colleges in India with an yearly student intake of 582,000, plus 1,244 polytechnics with an annual intake of 265,000.However, these institutions face shortage of faculty and concerns have been raised over the persona of education. 9 In India education system is not based on pure merit, but its based on caste based reservations. In universities/Colleges/Institutions affiliated to federal political sympathies there is minimum 50% of reservations relevant to various castes. At state level it varies. State of Andhra Pradesh has 83. 33% of reservations as on 2012 ,which is highest percentage of reservations in India. So the state is popularly cognize as the state that killed merit. primary feather command SYSTEM IN INDIA The Indian organization lays emphasis to primary education up to the age of xiv old age (referred to as Elementary Education in India. ) The Indian government has overly banned child labour in order to retard that the children do not enter unsafe working conditions. However, both go off education and the ban on child labour are hard-fought to enforce due to economic disparity and social conditions. 80% of all fared schools at the Elementary Stage are government escape or supported, making it the largest provider of education in the Country.pic However, due to shortage of resources and lack of political will, this system suffers from massive gaps including high pupil to teacher ratios, shortage of infrastructure and poor levels of teacher training. Figures released by the Indian government in 2011 show that there were 5,816,673 elementary school teachers in India. As of March 2012 there were 2,127,000 secondary school teachers in India. Education has too been made free for children for 6 to 14 years of age or up to class VIII under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009.There have been several efforts to enhance flavor made by the government. The govern Education Revitalization Programme (DERP) was launched in 1994 with an look at to universalize primary education in India by reforming and vitalizing the actual primary education system. 85% of the DERP was funded by the central government and the remain 15 percent was funded by the state The DERP, which had opened 160000 new schools including 84000 pick education schools delivering alternative education to approximately 3. 5 meg children, was also supported by UNICEF and other inter interior(a) programmes.This primary education object has also shown a high Gross Enrollment Ratio of 9395% for the last three years in some states. of import improvement in staffing and enrollment of girls has also been made as a part of this scheme. The current scheme for universalization of Education for every last(predicate ) is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan which is one of the largest education initiatives in the world. Enrollment has been enhanced, but the levels of flavour remain low. CONCERNS FOR QUALITY reproduction As far as the provision of chafe and coverage is concerned, India nowadays boasts of its educational system existence the second largest in the world.It consists of tightlippedly 610 super acid primary and 185 thousand upper primary schools, about a accommodate million non stiff education centers, about 1. 87 million teachers and 110 million students require in primary classes in the recognized schools (1997-98). As per 1991 numerate estimates there were about 115. 6 million children in primary school going age group in the landed estate2. The latest educational statistics reason a GER of 89. 7 percent for primary classes (81. 2 percent being for girls and 97. 7 percent for boys).3 . The amount of students in primaryclasses in India is larger than the total population of the ne ighboring Bangladesh THE STATE OF QUALITY OF PRIMARY EDUCATION IN INDIA The key concern about education, in all formal educational system, of all clock time, has been its feeling. Every stake holder, direct or indirect, of education is concerned about its quality. Guardians or parents, irrespective of their socio-economic status, want to direct their children with best quality education which would add better value to the degrees their wards turn subject to the budget constraints.But what do we mean by quality education? How this quality is being assessed? What is the status of the quality of education in India? This paper seeks to focus on these issues with respect to the quality of primary education in India. There is no universally accepted definition for quality of education. In education, perception of quality is around students (Mukhopadhyay, 2001). The performance of the students homogeneous examination results, learning achievements, ability to apply learned knowledge in practical life exhibit the quality of an education.For some, Quality of education performer value addition in education (Feigenbaum 1951) uprightness in education (Peters and Waterman 1982) for others, fitness of education outcomes and experience for use (Juran and Gryna 1988). For a society, excellence and value are most appropriate indicators for quality education. A more often than not accepted definition of quality education does not exist and dissimilar end users adopt different criteria for determining the quality of education. In this study we measure the quality of primary education on the basis of student learning achievement (i. e. , ability of read, write and do mathematics).PRIMARY EDUCATION UNIVERSILITY VS QUALITY The universal declaration of human rights (1948) considered primary education as the raw material human right of all people. Accordingly, all nations prioritized universal access to education. The developed and developing countries have attained univer sal or near universal access to primary education. Now the focus is on the quality of student learning. The quality concern is not uniform across the nations. The developing and poor nations are still striving for expansion of educational access. It has been ceremonious that access to education and its quality are not sequentialelements.At the sub-regional meeting of South Asian Ministers in Katmandu in April 2001, quality education was unanimously identified as a priority area. All participants were in agreement that there was an urgency to develop the quality of education to meet the intermediate target and education for all by 2015. Because how well pupil are taught and how much they learn can have a crucial impact on how long they stay in school and how regularly they attend. Further whether parents send their children to school at all is possible to depend on the judgment they make about the quality of teaching and learning.Based on this perception parents decide whether atte nding school is worth the time and cost for their children and for themselves. The World Bank (1997) suggested that the best way to improve access is to improve quality which would make coming to school or staying in school a more attractive option from the thought of parents as well as children. Moreover, efforts to improve quality will tend to increase the efficiency of the public expenditure and will encourage parents to post children education. In the year 1950, when the Constitution of India was adopted, education was recognized as a basic individual right.Directive Principles of State Policy, Article 45, states that the state shall endeavour to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years (The Constitution of India). In line with the commitment of the country to provide elementary education to all children, educational facilities have got stagg eringly expanded during the post independence period, especially in primary stage. The number of primary school in India has increased from 2. 2 lakhs in 1950-51 to intimately 7 lakhs in 2004-05.In addition, there are at shew nearly 3 lakhs non-formal education centres providing primary level education to free children in the age group 9 to 14. This expansion has definitely helped in making primary level education more easily get-at-able to a large section of children. As a result, the illiteracy rate and drop-out rate at school stage have come down. The national literacy rate has increased from 52. 21 per cent in 1991 to 64. 84 per cent in 2001. The drop-out rate has also declined from 64. 9 per cent in 1960-61 to 29 per cent in 2004-2005.Although the literacyrates for both males and females have increased, the latter still continues to lag behind the former. However, there has been a narrowing of the male-female gap in literacy from 24. 8 percentage lead in 1991 to 21. 7 perc entage point in 2001(Selected educational Statistics 2004-05). Primary education is the first stage of formal education. The main objective of quality primary education is to inculcate basic knowledge about reading, writing and arithmetic among the children. It is expected that afterwards the happy completion of the primary level of education, a pupil should be able to read, write, and solve simple arithmetic problem.A study conducted by the Teamlease run has revealed a very disappointing scenario of primary education in India. The study was conducted in primary schools in all the States of India (excluding Union Territories, Mizoram, Sikkim) to measure the learning achievement (quality) of students in language and mathematics. This study found that in India after completion of primary level education, 11 per cent student were not able to recognize anything, 14. 1 per cent can recognize besides letters, 14. 9 per cent can read a word, 17 per cent can read a paragraph of a floor ing and only 42. 8 per cent can read the complete story (Table 1). naturalise Children who can read-standard-wise (IV) (in per cent) State Nothing Letters Word One-Para of the Complete story story Andhra Pradesh 8. 8 10. 5 15. 6 17. 7 47. 35 Arunachal Pradesh 7. 2 13. 5 21. 6 13. 3 44. 4 Assam 10. 8 15. 5 20. 2 21. 2 32. 3 Bihar 14. 9 15. 2 12. 8 14. 8 42. 3 Goa 6 6. 1 12. 9 24. 2 56. 2 Gujarat 7. 2 12. 4 18. 9 18. 6 42. 9 Haryana 8. 5 12. 1 12. 7 16. 1 50. 7 Himachal Pradesh 3. 5 14. 9 11. 8 14. 5 55. 35 Jammu & Kashmir 3. 4 10. 2 26. 5 20. 8 39. 1 Karnataka 5. 4 12. 1 17. 7 19. 0 45.9 Kerala 3. 2 3. 7 10. 7 11. 3 71. 1 Madhya Pradesh 15. 7 15. 3 15. 5 17. 1 36. 5 Maharashtra 7 12. 1 13. 0 17. 4 50. 45 Manipur 10. 6 10. 7 18. 7 15. 7 44. 4 Meghalaya 9 8. 9 22. 0 8. 9 59. 5 Nagaland 3. 1 16. 5 21. 7 255. 6 33. 2 Orissa 12. 4 15. 0 13. 5 15. 05 44. 2 Punjab 8. 9 15. 3 15. 1 17. 85 42. 8 Rajasthan 15. 8 13. 2 12. 7 14. 95 43. 6 Tamil Nadu 10. 3 11. 4 17. 5 17 . 3 43. 6 Tripura 1. 0 7. 3 11. 7 16. 8 63. 4 Utter Pradesh 16. 8 19. 2 14. 6 14. 8 34. 6 West Bengal 4. 3 12. 3 13. 8 24. 6 44. 9 Chhattisgarh 7.3 16. 0 15. 0 15. 5 46. 4 Jharkhand 13. 8 16. 9 15. 5 15. 4 38. 5 Uttaranchal 6. 8 13. 0 11. 2 13. 3 55. 7 All India 11. 0 14. 1 14. 9 17. 0 42. 8 root word India Labour Report 2007 The condition of students learning achievement (quality) is extremely poor in mathematics compare to language. This study found that after the lucky completion of the primary level education, 18. 6 per cent children could not recognize the numbers, 26. 7 per cent children can recognize the numbers but not able to do addition or subtraction, 23. 9 per cent children only can do subtraction, and only 30.7 per cent children can do addition, subtraction as well as division. Table 2 contains information relating to mathematical learning achievement (quality) in all Indian states. amend QUALITY OF PRIMARY EDUCATION For improving quality, the concerned auth orities pick up to emphasis on the following issues,Early childhood education is extremely all-important(prenominal) and must be universalized. Aelevant curriculum. Accurate assessment of learning outcomes. Participatory worry of education system. Engaging local communities,. Using ICT in teaching learning process Training of teachers and administrators of ICT.,District Institute of Education and Training (DIETs) and State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) select to be more strengthened and change structural changes. ,Establishment of a National Primary Education Assessment system like National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) for Higher education. ,Strengthening the teacher training institution. put right in examination system. Proficiency in English is widely perceive as an important avenue for employment and upward knowledge, which also greatly facilitates the pursuit of higher education.English should be incorporated into the curriculum of pr imary schools as a language subject. CONCLUSION It appears from the empirical study that quality of primary education has been compromised for its universality in India. Operation Black Board, District Primary Education Project, National Literacy Programme, Sarvha Shiksha Abhiyanall aim at universalizing. It is time that the nation pays heed to the quality dimension. As it has already been pointed out, quality indirectly helps in making the quantity. As a result, quality improvement programmes need to be devised for all levelsnational, state and district.