Unit 5- PHYSICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC ACCESS TO

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE

Dr. Gaurav Sikka

Assistant Professor

University Deptt. Of Geography,

L.N. Mithila University, Darbhanga

Email: gauravsikkageo@gmail.com

Introduction

• Education – a powerful instrument for overcominginequalities, promoting human development andaccelerating socio-economic transformation.

• Education in India is the joint responsibility of the centraland state governments, and educational rights are providedfor within the Constitution.

• RTE-Right to Education Act, 2009 provision of free andcompulsory education for 6-14 years of age in India underArticle 21 A

• Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) is the educationgoalIt aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable qualityeducation and promote lifelong learning opportunities forall.”

Growth of Elementary EducationThree factors in the growth trajectory of elementary education in the country:

• The first factor is the increased direct involvement of the centralgovernment in strengthening infrastructure and delivery of elementaryeducation. This is important as historically the state governments havehad almost complete responsibility for producing and delivering publicelementary education. State governments, of course, continue toprovide a major share of recurring financial expenditure, but theproactive manner in which the Government of India has actedfollowing the adoption of the National Policy on Education 1986stands out as a landmark innovation in educational policy. Thischanged centre-state framework of action has made the centralgovernment the prime mover in designing and implementingdevelopment initiatives in elementary education in many states,although the situation is not uniform across the country. Thisrelationship has become further reshaped as external aid agencieshave also claimed an important place in the partnership frameworkinvolving the central as well as state governments.

Growth of Elementary Education• Coupled with this enhanced initiative from the central government

is the adoption of the district level as the base for planningdevelopment inputs for elementary education, and the concurrentmove to decentralize governance by empowering local self-governance mechanisms through panchayati raj (local self-government) institutions. This second factor has added a newdimension to the multi-layered planning and implementationframework and created a new dynamic at the grassroots level.

• The third factor that has begun to significantly reshape theelementary education scene in India in recent years is the massivesocial mobilization drive. This has been encouraged over the last10-15 years within the elementary education sector, under theauspices of the SSA, RTE. This has resulted in increased demand forelementary education.

Status of Elementary Education India•Overall enrollment (age 6-14): For more than ten years, since 2007, the enrollment of children for the age group 6 to 14 has been above 95%. The proportion of children (age 6-14) who are not enrolled in school is falling and stands at 2.8% in 2018.

• Girls out of school: In 2006, the all India proportion of girls in the age group 11 to 14 who were out of school stood at 10.3%. •In 2018, the overall proportion of girls in the 11 to 14 age group out of school has fallen to 4.1%. This figure is more than 5% in only 4 states. Further, ten years ago in 2008, nationally, more than 20% of girls in the 15 to 16 age group were not enrolled in school. In 2018, this figure has decreased to 13.5%.

•Source: ASER, 2018

Source: ASER, 2018ASER 2018 reached 596 districts in rural India. A

total of 354,944 households and 546,527 children in the age group 3 to 16 were surveyed.

Other issuesTeacher and student attendance

• At the all India level, average teacher attendancehas hovered at around 85% and average studentattendance at around 72% for the past severalyears in both primary and upper primary schools.

• However, states exhibit very different patterns ofattendance. States with student attendance of90% or more in primary schools in 2018 wereKarnataka and Tamil Nadu. Those with teacherattendance of 90% or more in 2018 wereJharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.

School facilities • The fraction of schools with usable girls' toilets doubled, reaching 66.4%

in 2018.• The proportion of schools with boundary walls increased by 13.4

percentage points, standing at 64.4% in 2018.• The percentage of schools with a kitchen shed increased to 91%, and the

proportion of schools with books other than textbooks available increasedto 74.2%

• However, the national averages hide major variations across states.Deficiencies are particularly marked in Jammu and Kashmir and most ofthe north-eastern states. In these states, less than 50% of schools hadprovision for drinking water or girls' toilets available in 2018. With theexception of Assam, majority of schools in states in the north-east did nothave library books available for students in 2018. While elsewhere in thecountry the mid-day meal was served on the day of the visit in well over80% of schools, this proportion was less than 50% in many states in thisregion.

• A playground was accessible in more than 90% of schools in HimachalPradesh, Haryana, and Maharashtra. But more than a quarter of allschools in Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Odisha, and Jharkhand did not haveaccess to a playground.

Social disparity in elementary education

• The socio-economic background of children acts as adeterminant for access to schools, which differ in termsof resources and quality. There are many well-equipped private schools, mainly located in cities,catering to the elite strata and there has been a steadyincrease in enrolment in these schools. These schoolsenhance gender and social inequality, as only 20%SC/ST children were enrolled in private schools at theprimary level and their proportion was only 14% at theupper primary level in the year of 2005-06.5 Thisinequality is also revealed in the literacy rate of SC andST for male and female populations when compared toall-India average.

Literacy Rate, 2011

75.268.55

82.44

56.549.35

65.4666.158.96

74.04

Scheduled Caste Scheduled Tribe India

Male Female Total

Source: Census of India, Office of Registrar General, India.

• Lack of parental care and attention negativelyimpacts not only their education but also theirhealth, nutritional level, physical growth,emotional and cognitive development as theseare interlinked. A large number of these children,though enrolled in school, fail to attend regularly,resulting in their poor learning attainment.

• There are many schools with a high number ofpara-teachers and devoid of basic facilities likedrinking water and toilets, located mainly inhabitations of disadvantaged groups. The policyof recruitment of para-teachers on a contractbasis and at low salary further exacerbatesinequity.

• As Subrahmanian observes, ‘The haste to achieve "education for all" has beeninterpreted in policy terms as a race of numbers, rather than a shift towards thecreation of the kind of education system that can embrace diverse groups andacknowledge and address economic constraints that limit educationparticipation.’ As revealed by recent estimates, while at the primary levelenrolment of SC and ST children accounts for 20% and 11% respectively to totalenrolment, it reduces to 18% and 9% respectively at the upper primary level.Further, the dropout rate is disproportionately high among scheduled tribes with34% and 58% at primary and upper primary levels. It is also high among scheduledcaste children. In this context, it is worthwhile to examine the access andparticipation behaviour of children from different social contexts.

Sources: R. Subrahmanian, ‘Right to Education: Opportunities andChallenges’, Contemporary Education Dialogue 1(1), 2003, pp. 76-96

• NUEPA, Elementary Education in India: Progress Towards UEE, Flash Statistics.National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, 2012http://dise.in/Downloads/Publications/Publications%202010-11/Flash%20Statistics-2010-11.pdf

• NUEPA, 2012 http://dise.in/Downloads/Publications/Publications%202010-11/Flash%20Statistics-2010-11.pdf

HEALTHCARE

Coming Soon!