|
UNESCO’s Education For All Global Monitoring Report 2009 is a severe indictment of the Indian government’s commitment to education. India’s public investment in education is 3.3% of its gross national product, lower than sub-Saharan Africa’s median. But it is not all doom and gloom. India is on track to achieving a net enrolment rate of over 97% by 2015
India is one of 17 countries in the world with the greatest number of out-of-school children. UNESCO’s Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2009, released recently, says enrolment in secondary education in India increased from 39% in 1999 to 43% in 2006. Around 7.2 million Indian children are still out of school.
On the positive side, the report says India is on track to achieving its enrolment targets for elementary education, which will be cut to just 600,000 in 2015. “Of the 17 countries with most children out of school, just three -- Bangladesh, Brazil and India -- are on track to achieve NER (net enrolment rate) in excess of 97% by 2015,” the report states.
According to the 2001 national census, India has a literacy rate of 65%. UNESCO’s annual report suggests a further strengthening of policy commitments towards quality education.
The report highlights, among other things, the need to ensure that children have basic literacy and numeric skills. This has been an area of concern for India. Fewer than half the children in Grade 3 can read simple text; only 58% can subtract or divide, says a country-wide survey conducted in 2007.
Teacher absenteeism is another area of concern. The report finds that contrary to popular perception, absenteeism among teachers plagues both private and government schools. It suggests greater commitment to reducing inequalities and sustained political leadership to reach education targets.
The UNESCO report is not all negative. It explains how India was able to lead the aid relationship whilst finalising funds from the World Bank. This, the report suggests, was the result of low levels of aid dependence, high levels of government capacity, and strong national institutions for capacity-development.
The present government has, after four-and-half years of delay, recently finalised and approved the Right to Education Bill. It is expected that the legislation, which is likely to be introduced in Parliament when it re-convenes in December, will help create the requisite environment to ensure quality in education.
According to the report, in terms of absolute numbers, 80% of adult illiterates worldwide live in just 20 countries -- 50% of them in India, China and Bangladesh. And with the share of government expenditure on education dropping between 1999 and 2006 in 40 countries, including India, low-fee private primary schools are filling the slot.
Poor quality government schools are important factors in the growth of private players. In India, contract teachers (para-teachers) have been used to increase the number of teachers in remote rural schools.
“As they are often less qualified and more inexperienced than civil service teachers (trained teachers), the situation raises concerns about providing teaching of equal quality to all areas,” the report underlines.
In South Asia, Bangladesh devotes 2.6% of its national income to education, Pakistan 2.7%, and India 3.3%.
India, along with Bhutan and Nepal, has, however, achieved gender parity in primary education. But it has failed to arrest child mortality and malnutrition among children.
Here, Bangladesh and Nepal have outperformed India. Had India reduced child mortality to Bangladesh’s levels, it would have had 2 lakh fewer deaths in 2000, the report says.
The report notes that one in three children in developing countries, around 193 million in all, reaches primary school age with impaired brain development and educational prospects, due to malnutrition.
Around the world, the report says, millions of children are denied opportunities to go to school, condemning them to a life of poverty. It warns that a “wide gulf” in educational opportunity separating rich and poor countries seriously threatens global efforts aimed at achieving the internationally agreed target of universal primary education by 2015.
Children in the poorest 20% of countries, such as Ethiopia, Mali and Niger, are three times less likely to be in primary school as children in the wealthiest 20%. In Peru and the Philippines, children in the poorest 20% receive five years less education than children in the wealthiest families.
“When financial systems fail, the consequences are highly visible and governments act. When education systems fail the consequences are less visible, but no less real,” says UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.
Wealth is not the only marker of disadvantage. Girls remain a neglected segment, and discrimination based on language, race, ethnicity and rural-urban differences are deeply entrenched.
“The circumstances into which children are born, their gender, the wealth of their parents, their language and the colour of their skin should not define their educational opportunities,” say the report’s authors.
The report adds that the world is not on target to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education. Despite some gains, UNESCO says, at least 29 million children will still be out of school by 2015. And this figure does not include conflict-affected countries such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The report identifies a range of policies to remedy extreme inequality, including the removal of school fees for basic education, increased public investment, and incentives for girls, whilst warning against decentralisation which often widens inequalities by reinforcing financing gaps between rich and poor regions.
The international donor community has failed to deliver on the commitments it made in 2005 to increase aid by $50 billion with a current shortfall of $30 billion. The report estimates that the aid financing gap for achieving basic education by 2015 is around $7 billion annually.
“These large aid deficits are holding back progress,” the report concludes.
Source: The Economic Times, November 26, 2008
IANS, November 26, 2008
PTI, November 26, 2008
http://www.un.org , November 2008
|
