Vijay Garg
Education is the doorway to the wider world. Education empowers us to have a better outlook towards the life as well as enable us for a smarter approach towards life and an exposition on rural infrastructure is incomplete without an assessment of the extent to which we have been able to open this door for the children of rural India. Education, as we all know, is very important. Education is necessary not only for the professional purpose but also for the mental growth of individuals. Without proper education, it is very difficult for a person to survive in today’s modernized world. It is a fact that the majority of the Indian population still lives in villages and so the topic of rural education in India is of utmost importance. There are a lot of provisions that government is providing for the education amongst rural people. The big question, however, is whether enrollment and attendance is the right parameter for evaluating the progress of rural Indian education and there is need to look upon the fact that whether in the search for numbers the quality of education is not being ignored.
The major topic of concern these days is not the enrollment figures, instead, the quality of education imparted in rural India. A survey named called the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), shows that even though the number of rural students attending schools is rising, but more than half of the students in fifth grade are unable to read a second grade textbook and are not able to solve simple mathematical problems and also the general level of awareness was nil. And to add on, the level of math’s and reading both in English as well as Hindi is further declining which clearly demonstrates the level of our rural education. Though many other surveys are also conducted by several governmental as well as non-governmental groups, the results were found to be same. Though efforts are being made by the government the problem is that they are not in the right direction. The reasons for such behaviour are many. Poor attendance of teachers, lack of infrastructure as well as the interest of government teachers is some of the reasons for poor education level at rural level.
Education and rural India
There is a lot of difference in the level of education as well as the educational opportunities when compared with that in the rest of India. It would not be wrong to say that the teachers in the rural area are also least concerned with the level education. It is not that the children of our cities and the children of our villages are taught different things. The curricula must obviously is of the same standard. But the problem is that the level of education in these areas had been neglected right from the time when the concept of formal education in India started. And that negligence is still prevailing and teachers in rural India are least concerned about making any improvement. It would be wise to recognize that the different contexts have fostered different inherent skills and abilities. The initial upbringing of the rural kids would have emphasized different skills. Since their upbringing is really different from urban kids, it would be really unfair to compare the abilities of rural and urban kids. Basically, the point is that these rural kids have to start from a different qualitative baseline.
Not only are the students and their general abilities, but also the education environment varies a lot. There is a lot of difference in the terms of opportunities; infrastructure as well as mindset. Many rural schools have less robust buildings, problems in access with seasonal variations, and less access to a range of knowledge centres even if they have great teachers. These problems are not something that we don’t know. Most of these problems in our rural schools are well known. Everyone knows that some basic problems like inadequate infrastructure – solid walls and a roof that does not leak are a distant dream for the rural students. Most do not have toilets or reliable electricity. Teaching equipment is limited to a rudimentary blackboard and chalk, and textbooks do not always reach the students on time. These all are the reasons that are some of the reasons for the low level of education in rural area. There are several other reasons also responsible for constantly degrading the level of education in rural India. Over one-third of our rural government schools have a single teacher for the whole school. This means that if the teacher is ill or absent, school is closed. It also means that not only is each classroom a multi-ability classroom, each classroom has students who are supposed to study in different grades/standards with different textbooks.
Rural India and Government
India has the second largest education system after China. India viewed education as the best way of bringing social change among the masses. Soon after gaining independence in 1947, making education available to all had become a priority for the government and government launched various schemes to uplift the level of education in the country, both in rural as well as urban sector. The government came up with the Right to Education Act (RTE) to impart free and compulsory education and many other schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan to uplift the education standard of the country. Government is really serious towards the cause of education in the country but still, there are many roadblocks in the way.
Despite some setbacks, the rural education programmes continued throughout the 1950s, with support from private institutions as well. A sizable network of rural education had been established by the time the Gandhi Gram Rural Institute was established and 200 Community Development Blocks were established in India. Nursery schools, elementary schools, secondary school, and schools for adult education for women were set up. Over 50% of our population still comes under rural area and our government is really serious about their uplift. The government continued to view rural education as an agenda that could be relatively free from the bureaucratic backlog and general stagnation. However, in some cases, lack of financing balanced the gains made by rural education institutes of India.
A lot of programs and schools came under the rural development scheme. Ministry of education is daily coming up with new and innovative ideas to deal with the problem, some of the ideas strike the right chord whereas few of them failed to find acceptability among India’s poor and investments made by the government sometimes yielded little results. Today, government rural schools remain poorly funded and understaffed. Several foundations, such as the Rural Development Foundation (Hyderabad), actively build high-quality rural schools, but the number of students served is small. Need today is to bring in some awareness as well empowerment to deal with the problem. Government is doing the job from their side, and now the need is to ensure the effective utilization of the resources being spent by the government and for that to happen, awareness is required.
Ways to deal with the problem
The Government of India, as well as the governments of the states and UTs, has been striving for several decades to put in place adequate rural education infrastructure, particularly for elementary schooling in these areas. The government has also come up with various Anganwadi centres in the rural areas. As we discussed earlier, most of the government schools do not have basic infrastructure like a strong school building, classrooms, blackboards, proper benches to sit and listen to their teacher effectively, drinking water, playgrounds for recreation and other recreation facilities, toilet facilities, cleanliness of the school surroundings, etc. For instance, the rough blackboard does not encourage even some efficient teachers to write something on it. This will encourage teachers to avoid explanation with some important diagrams and thus only oral teaching. This will lead to lower knowledge levels to the students.
There is a need for some serious reforms. The need of the hour is to improve the basic but the most important facilities immediately. In most of the government schools, the accountability among the teaching staff and other administrative staff is lacking. Teachers are not regular in their job, also when they come they are not in a mood to perform their job with sincerity. Friendship among school administrative staff and the teachers are responsible for the negligence of many aspects of education. This is evident in the fact that for the past several years the private schools have been excelling in several examination results. In some schools, corruption too is rampant in the accounts department due to lack of accountability and transparency. Many teachers and other staff too are lazy. Thus the ultimate victims of all these malpractices are the innocent children who would like to excel in life. Education Ministry should conduct regular checks as well as surprise inspection in schools to check-out if everything is going out well. Also, students should be asked for the feedback about of the teachers and keeping in regard the result of the school there should be a regular meeting among the principals of various schools and area heads that take care of education schemes in a particular area.
Teachers should motivate and guide the children with the help and counselling from the principals of schools. The much-publicized mid-day meal scheme meant to reduce dropout rates in schools seems to be not yielding the desired results. This is due to misappropriation of funds meant for the scheme, mismanagement, lack of seriousness among the implementing authorities, diversion of funds, lack of awareness among the parents of poor children, etc. According to some reports, the quality of the food served is inferior. There should be proper awareness created by the government about their schemes and programs that are to being run. All the beneficiaries’ must have proper knowledge of their rights. Hence need today is to create awareness as well as the motivation among the people for a brighter future of our country.
(The author is retired principal, educational columnist and can be reached at [email protected])
