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ELEMENTARY

EDUCATION IN INDIA

For ensuring an all-round growth and development of the student’s personality

in all respects.

British days education-1854

In British India, the means of school educations were the vernacular languages while the higher education was granted in English only.

British government started giving funds to indigenous schools in need of help and thus slowly some of the schools became government-aided.

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Pre- Primary - It consists of children of 3-5 years of age

studying in nursery, lower kindergarten and upper

kindergarten. At this stage student is given knowledge

about school life and is taught to read and write some

basic words.

Primary - It includes the age group of children of 6-11

years studying in classes from first to fifth.

Middle - It consists of children studying in classes from

sixth to eighth.

Secondary - it includes students studying in classes ninth

and tenth.

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Higher Secondary - Includes students studying in eleventh

and twelfth classes.

Undergraduate - Here, a student goes through higher

education, which is completed in college.

This course may vary according to the subject pursued by

the student.

For medical student this stage is of four and a half years

plus one year of compulsory internship, while a simple

graduate degree can be attained in three years.

Education Governing Bodies

• The Central Board of Secondary Education

(CBSE)

• The Council of Indian School Certificate

Examination (CISCE)

• The State Government Boards

• The National Open School

• The International School

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Elementary Education

In India now, Elementary education is a fundamental right of

children in the age group of 6- 14 years. India has about

688,000 primary schools and 110,000 secondary schools.

Two third of school going age children of India are enrolled in

schools; but many don't attend schools regularly.

At least half of all students from rural area drop out before

completing school.

The government has following plans to increase the

percentage of elementary education:

'Sarva Siksha Abhiyan’ (SSA), District Primary Education

Program (DPEP), Operation Blackboard, Mid Day Meal have

been successful to great extent.

Interventions incorporated to

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(i) provide pre-school education to ensure school

readiness for all children, and

(ii) reimbursement to private unaided schools for

admission of 25% children from disadvantaged

groups and weaker sections, as also

(iii) provision of textbooks and uniforms to these

children in order to facilitate their participation in

the learning process.

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National Skill Development Mission:

In order to create a pool of skilled personnel in adequate

numbers in line with the employment requirements in

various sectors of the economy, with particular emphasis

on the 20 high growth and high employment sectors, the

Government had set up in 2007 a Skill Development

Mission comprising an agglomeration of programmes and

appropriate structures aimed at enhancing training

opportunities for new entrants to the labour force. The

Mission seeks to train 500 million skilled personnel by

2022.

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India is committed to the goals adopted at the World

Education Forum, Dakar in April 2000. The EFA goals

include, inter alia achieving universal elementary

education , ensuring equitable access to appropriate

learning and life skill programmes for young people and

adults, achieving improvement in adult literacy, achieving

gender equality in education and improving all aspects of

quality of education. India lays emphasis to education up

to the age of fourteen years (referred to as Elementary

Education in India.) 80% of all recognized schools at the

Elementary Stage are government run or supported.

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Universal Elementary Education

•Programme for universalisation of primary education is the

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).

•The overall goals of the SSA are: (i) all children in schools;

(ii) bridging all gender and social category gaps at primary

and upper primary stages of education (iii) universal

retention; and (iv) elementary education of satisfactory

quality.

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The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is intended for the

enlargement and growth mainly in the primary education.

The aim of this flagship program was to attain

universalization of primary schooling at an acceptable level

by 2010. SSA is being implemented in partnership with

State Governments to cover the entire country and address

the needs of 192 million children in 1.2 million habitations.

The present rules of SSA have been modified recently by

putting into practice the “Right of Children to free and

Compulsory Education” which has been enforced from April

1, 2010 onwards.

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Contemplating on the new system which was introduced

Mahatma Gandhi expressed his anguish in following words,

“Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred

years ago, and so is Burma, because the British

administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking

hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They

scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the

root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. British

administrator came out with his program. Every school must

have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well,

there were no such schools at all.” Mahatma disagreed.

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A District Information System for Education (DISE) looks

into several quality related parameters like student-

classroom ratio, teacher-pupil ratio, teachers’ profiles and

examination results.

In addition, Government of India, with the help of NCERT,

has operationalised a quarterly monitoring system in the

form of Quality Monitoring Tools (QMTs) to monitor quality

aspects such as student attendance, teacher availability in

schools, classroom practices, student learning

achievement, academic supervision etc.

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DISE data show that between 2010 and 2014,

total enrollment in government elementary

schools fell by 1.16 crore students while total

enrollment in private school increased by1.85

crore students.

In 2014-15, there were nearly 97,000 government

schools in India with a total enrolment of 20 or

fewer students. Is it true?

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