Maharashtra Inconvenient spotlight The second Annual Status of Education Report 2006 (ASER 2006) — a valuable initiative which measures the efficiency of government expenditure in rural primaries in terms of learning outcomes — researched, collated and published by the renowned Mumbai-based education NGO, Pratham, was formally released in Mumbai early this year (January). Like Pratham’s inaugural ASER 2005, the latest survey is also a people’s initiative conducted by 20,000 volunteers who visited 549 districts with 600 households surveyed in each. “The objective of ASER 2006 was to gather reliable data on the status of childrens’ schooling and basic learning at the district level in rural India, and secondly to measure improvements if any, in reading, writing and maths ability over last year,” says Madhav Chavan, an alumnus of Ohio State University, former reader in physical chemistry in Mumbai University and founder-promoter of Pratham (estb. 1994). “Moreover since it became abundantly clear in ASER 2005 that mothers’ education attainments have an important impact on children’s educational status and learning outcomes, ASER 2006 introduced questions on parents’ educational attainments with mothers tested for basic reading as well.” The most significant findings of the 174-page ASER 2006 are that while overall enrollment into primary school remains unchanged, a perceptible shift in favour of private school education is discernible, especially in Punjab, Haryana and Karnataka. Enrollment, to which the Union HRD ministry and establishment educrats accord great importance, is steady at 93.2 percent in the six-14 age group, while in the seven-ten age group it is 95.3 percent. However, notes Chavan in his foreword to ASER 2006: “When one looks at the figures of children out of school from age 11 onwards, they re-emphasise the fact that more than half the children who enroll in grade (class) I drop out before completing grade VIII.” Refreshingly, instead of blaming poor parents or children themselves for discontinuing their education, ASER 2006 suggests that the fault is of the ramshackle, poorly administered government school system in rural India. “It would be (sic) hard to believe that public interest in sending children to school has not been stimulated adequately; the reasons why children do not stay in school are what should be engaging our attention now. Greater attention will have to be paid to those factors that result in pushing children out — inadequate infrastructure, insensitive teachers, and uninteresting (or irrelevant) curricula,” admits Amit Kaushik former director of elementary education in the HRD ministry (2001-06) in his foreword to ASER 2006. Comments Chavan: “ASER 2006 records some simple facts: the proportion of out-of-school children has not diminished; children are entering formal schooling one year too early; over-age children are in lower classes in large numbers; learning levels show some improvement but more needs to be done on a nationwide scale; mothers’ education is highly correlated with the child’s and half of mothers cannot read. There is a need to integrate the listless adult literacy programmes with improvement of quality in schools.” Quite clearly the value addition provided by the annual ASER surveys of rural education is that they highlight inconvenient truths, and make it impossible…
