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A survey on infrastructure in elementary education in India, carried out by the National Institute of Education Planning and Administration, found that 13,857 schools in Madhya Pradesh have not even a school building
Two decades after the launch of a nationwide initiative to ensure that government-run schools have more classrooms and teachers, over 100,000, or nearly 10% of the country's elementary schools, have only one classroom, according to a recent survey. Worse, nearly 42,000 of government schools across the country function without a building. The states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh fare worst in this regard.
The survey on infrastructure in elementary education in India, carried out by the National Institute of Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), found that Madhya Pradesh has 13,857 schools with no school building, followed by Rajasthan (5,444) and Andhra Pradesh (5,344). Chhattisgarh, which has 4,603 schools without a building, followed by Bihar (1,232) and Uttar Pradesh (1,112) make up the top five. The total number of schools without buildings in these states was 35,449 in 2004 and 62,996 in 2003, the survey found.
Of the schools that did have buildings, a sizeable number -- 26% -- were rented, while around 74% had their own buildings, the report says.
Interestingly, despite several schemes launched by the government to ensure that schools have adequate classrooms, as many as 107,842 schools, about 10% of the country's 1.04 million government-run schools, have only one classroom. This is an indication that the schemes are yet to meet their target.
For instance Operation Blackboard, launched in 1987, envisaged the provision of two classrooms and a verandah for each school covered under the programme. In 1994, the government launched the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) aimed at providing additional classrooms. The programme, initially implemented in 42 districts in seven states, was later extended to 272 districts in 18 states.
Subsequently, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was launched in 2001, under which the remaining districts were covered and a number of schools provided additional classrooms, says the survey report.
Currently, over 90% of single-classroom schools are located in India's rural areas, the NIEPA survey found. On average, 41 students share a classroom, while in states like Bihar, the student-classroom ratio is as high as 91 per classroom, followed by West Bengal (65) and Assam (59). "Teaching in single-classroom schools with all the children in one room is a challenging task. Unless all schools are provided with at least two rooms, meaningful teaching-learning transactions are not expected to take place," the report warns.
Operation Blackboard also aimed at providing a second teacher to all one-teacher schools. But the NIEPA survey shows that in many states the number of teachers has not increased and the strength per classroom remains just as high.
While there has been an overall improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), the performance of a few states is worrying education policymakers. Overall, 27.74% of schools in Bihar have a single teacher handling around 100 students, followed by Uttar Pradesh (24.2%) and Jharkhand (11%). Among states where the teacher-pupil ratio is better are Maharashtra, where only 0.5% of schools have one teacher per 100 children, Andhra Pradesh (0.4%), Gujarat (0.8%), Kerala (0.2%) and Rajasthan (0.2%).
There are 137,704 single-teachers schools in the country; 96.02% of these are located in rural areas, and most are government schools. "One can easily imagine the classroom conditions where the PTR is 76:1 at the elementary level. Many schools have a single teacher and single classrooms, which further deteriorates the situation within the classroom," says the report. On average there are four teachers in an elementary school. However, schools in rural areas have fewer teachers than in urban areas.
The survey also notes that the average number of teachers at government schools -- 3.47 -- is far less than that at privately-managed schools (7.10). Maharashtra has an average of six teachers per school, while Kerala (10), Chandigarh (25) and Delhi (15.2) have higher averages. Among the lowest is Chhattisgarh with 2.71.
As many as 33% of schools -- that's 342,000 -- that impart elementary education did not have female teachers despite the fact that Operation Blackboard has a provision for providing a large number of female teachers.
The NIEPA survey also found that as many as 81,617 schools, including 48,989 primary schools, do not have a blackboard -- the most basic requirement for teaching.
Source: The Hindu, July 20,
2006
DNA, July 20, 2006
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