While updating my social media status with Education is Independence, we should remember to celebrate this Independence day with hope and commitment that “No Child Is Left Behind” on this Independence day, inspired by a poster of Teach for India fellowship, flashbacks of children I saw in the railway stations, streets of so-called developed cities, children selling Indian National flag to arrange a meal for the day, children in the corner of a railway station, who are now addicted to dendrites, children who work in hotels, children who pick up food that are thrown onto railway tracks really disturbs me. Is this the real Independence, after 72 years, we are celebrating?
As a teacher, I feel education is the only way to remove ‘anti-social’ elements from our society and also, I strongly feel this is the only way to eradicate poverty, casteism, communalism, religionism. The crimes that are growing, like rapes or mob-lynching can be easily prevented with education. In data published by ASER in 2018 on secondary education, the findings are pathetic or more appropriately, it is disheartening.
Important findings from the ASER 2018 survey
- The study shows that just more than half (50.5%) of all children in Class 5 can read a Class 2 textbook.
- The proportion of children in Class 5 who can do simple division is only 27.9 %.
- The reading levels of class 3, which was assessed by the ability to read Class 2 textbooks is 27.2%.
- Government schools in 10 states of Punjab, UP, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh have recorded a growth of more than 5 percentage points in basic arithmetic levels 2016.
- In Class 5 reading levels with 77.5%, Kerala tops. This growth is driven by state-run schools i.e.10% rise in reading levels in government schools compared to 7.3% in private schools.
The most disheartening truth is in the finding that “1 out of 4 children in rural India leaves Class 8 without basic reading skills and over half of them (55.9%) without basic numerical literacy or the ability to do a simple division sum.”
One positive aspect of the findings is that “The proportion of children (age 6-14) who are not enrolled in school has fallen below 3% for the first time in 2018 and stands at 2.8% and this is due to proper implementation of RTE.”
This is the harsh reality of Indian education, and policymakers must come up with some serious interventions in policy in order to reduce the learning gap. But in the current scenario, none of the Indian policymakers talk about education, all recent elections were fought on religion, casteism, and ‘nationalism- anti-nationalism’ but none of the elections were fought on the basic need that is education to eradicate undesirable elements. We as citizens also must understand the fact that only education can bring the desired change, and we must shift our focus to issues like education, health and employment from ‘Mandir, Masjid’ and Pakistan, as most of these issues are created by political parties to use for vote-bank politics.
Let’s Celebrate this Independence Day with the hope and commitment that “No children are left behind“.