I-Day Special | Pandemic-hit children need better education

As we enter the 75th year of Independence, it would be hard to say that India’s progress in education has been exemplary. As is well known, India’s literacy rate at 76 per cent compares poorly with China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, all of which have achieved near total adult literacy levels as a proportion of the population above 15 years. As Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze point out in their book An Uncertain Glory, education should be viewed as public good in its own right, rather than just a driver of economic progress.

Education should instill critical inquiry and rational behaviour in an individual — a sense of ethics, philosophy, reason, rigour and compassion. Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi constructed their ideas around education based on a certain ideal of an average Indian. This approach to education has largely been sacrificed for a more instrumentalist one, with strains of dogma thrown in. The New Education Policy 2020 does not dwell enough on achieving goals of access, quality and employability.

Employability issues

On employability, the 2019 World Development Report titled Changing Nature of Work, observes: “A large share of children entering primary school in 2018 will work in occupations that do not yet exist. Even in low- and middle-income countries, many people are employed in jobs that did not exist three decades ago. India seems to have upped its software skills to ride the AI wave, but it remains a laggard in relation to its EME peers. This, as faculty in top engineering colleges point out, is on account of poor accent on logical thinking and the “basics”.

To create a robust university framework that imparts quality instruction, institutions should be strengthened, where the administration, faculty and students work consensually rather than in a hierarchical way. A university finally thrives on free expression of ideas.

On access

The gross enrolment ratio at the primary, secondary, higher secondary and tertiary level in 2018-19 was 96.1 per cent, 76.9 per cent, 50.1 per cent and 26.3 per cent, respectively (Economic Survey 2019-20). If the NEP wishes to raise the last figure to 50 per cent, as claimed, it must ensure fewer drop-outs at the secondary and higher secondary levels. It is now established that the mid-day meal scheme has raised enrolment at the primary stage in particular, but the economic pressure in poor households to withdraw their children at the higher stage remains a serious problem, more so if it is perceived that schools are not being well run. It is, however, notable that the gender gap in enrolment rates has all but vanished; here, such as free education for a single girl child might have helped.

School teachers, overworked and underpaid, need a better deal. Teachers’ training programmes should be improved upon, with constant revision of teaching techniques, not least the use of technology. The scrimping on education budgets and the treatment of education as revenue expenditure needs a relook.

Pandemic impact

Above all, the government should realise, as studies by Azim Premji Foundation (APF) and Oxfam have brought out, that an alarming number of children between classes 2-6 have lost their literacy and numeracy skills in the wake of Covid. This is nothing short of an education emergency. Online learning has been a disaster, belying former HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar’s assertion in the last Budget session that it had worked out well.

According to APF’s study, conducted this January among over 16,000 children between classes 2 and 6 in 1,137 schools across five States, 92 per cent of children have lost one specific language ability and 82 per cent, a specific mathematical ability. When read along with the annual ASER surveys conducted by Pratham, the findings are truly numbing. Clearly, India’s overall teledensity of 86.25 per cent (60 per cent in rural areas and 136 per cent in urban areas, according to TRAI) has not helped in the final analysis.

The immediate task before the Centre is to acknowledge that online education has impacted 320 million children (according to UNICEF) and focus on making-up for what has been lost. Independent India’s 75th year should be dedicated to securing the future of the young minds.

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