Stepping Stones

Enhancing the quality of primary education

Vaibhav Garg: vaibhav.g15@fms.edu Manish Prasad: manish.p15@fms.edu Rohit Agrarwal: rohit.a15@fms.eduWangchuk Tsheringla : wangchuk.s15@fms.edu Gideon Taso Lepcha : gideon.l15@fms.edu

58% of children do not complete primary education in India

According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012,

10 crore children in India are two or more years below their grade level

As of 2012, only 30% of standard three students could read a

standard 1 text a drop from 50% in 2009

The ASER report also estimates that only 50% of rural children enrolled

in standard five can fluently read a standard two text book

40% of standard five students in rural India cannot solve simple two-digit subtractions.

QUICK

FACTS

Hurdles are STEPPING STONES to success

• Lack of Infrastructure.

• Lack of the number of teachers. Currently the ratio is 59 kids/teacher

• Private interests of teacher especially in places where tuitions are prominent

• Lack of qualified teachers: Over 99 percent of the 7.95 lakh teachers who appeared for thelatest Central Teacher Eligibility Test, a benchmark for teacher eligibility, failed to clear theexam.

• Social challenges: Preference to get child employed over education

• Even the children going to school are not able to perform as per the standard that they arein; Using ASER figures, we estimate that over 100 million children in India are two or moreyears below their grade level

• Insufficient leverage of RTE Act

Steps so Far

• Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009

• National Programme for Nutritional Support (Mid-day Meal)

• Mahila Samakhya – In line with National Policy on Education, 1986

• National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL)

• Sarva shikshya abhiyaan – Education for all

• Scheme to Provide Quality Education in Madrasas

• District Primary Education Programme

• Scheme for Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutes (IDMI)

Public versus private education

Observations

• Illustrates the wretched condition of public education in rural areas

• The gap has just widened with years

Possible reasons

• Even rural people prefer private schools than government schools

• Unwillingness to teach, for government teachers

• Deep rooted job security factor

• Children going to school only for mid-day meal

Solutions

Special training for government teachers, especially rural postings

NREGA only for those parents who send their kids to school

Interactive lessons taught through video classrooms

Monetary benefits for rural postings, to motivate teachers

Biometric attendance of teachers on hourly basis, to avoid absenteeism

Public Private Partnership

Private companies can extend their hand for educating students in both rural as well asurban areas

Private players have the skill set and possibly the motives to educate children to createfuture employees and potential customers.

Government can provide them cheap land and infrastructure, which can be used toprovide the technical know-how with sufficient proficiency in Verbal and QuantitativeAbilities to serve as employees in lower cadre jobs of these firms.

CSR Initiatives

• Vidyadhanam – CSR initiative of Tata Motors:

Provides Scholarship programme, Extra-coaching classes for weak students, Infrastructure development

• Maitree – CSR initiative of TCS (the Asian CSR award)

Adoption of various schools like Immadahalli school, Bangalore

• Distribution of Study materials – Cognizant

• Infosys foundation

• Women of Wipro (WOW)

• Services related to CSR sector from E-choupal, ITC

Role of NGOs

• Teach For India (TFI) is an Indian non-profit organization, which is a part of the Teach For All globalmovement.

• Through its Fellowship program, TFI recruits qualified Indian college graduates and working professionalsto serve as full-time teachers in low-income schools for two years.

• Through the 'Teaching as Leadership' framework, Teach For India staff provides training and support toFellows so that they can employ innovative teaching strategies to maximize their effectiveness in theclassroom.

• Largest NGO working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India.• Pratham was established in 1994 to provide pre-school education to the children in the slums of Mumbai

city. Since then, the organization has grown both in scope and geographical coverage.• Today, they reach out to millions of children living in both rural and urban areas.

• Teach India is a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative by Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd.• The main objective of the program is to improve employability of youth from underprivileged background

by training them in spoken English.

Timeline

Automaticenrollment inschools as soon asa birth certificateis registered

Primary School in every village with a population of more than 2000 people.

Digitization of all the schools in urban area and technological shift in the mode of education provided in rural area2015

2017

2020

THANKYOU

References

• Towards a Knowledge Society, National Knowledge Commission India, 2008

• Skill Development in India, Vocational Education and Training System , Human

• Development Unit, World Bank 2006

• ASER 2012 (Rural) Findings

• The eighth Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2O12)

• Enrollment and Learning Report Card, ASER 2012

• Teach for India. (2012). India’s Education Crisis

• Kumar, Pramod G.: Why the State of India’s Primary Education is Shocking?

• Index Mundi. (2013). India demographics profile

• Financial Express. (2012, May 12). Education’s Primary Problems

• Balasubramanian, Sriram (2013, May 27). Primary Education in India needs a fix. Forbes India