Elementary education in India: quality or quantity?

25 December 2012
Author: Ranjit Goswami, RK University

The ninth E9 Ministerial Review Meeting, which took place in New Delhi in
November, was held among nine of the world’s most populous developing
nations: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico,
Nigeria and Pakistan.

The result of the meeting was the New Delhi Commitment, which aims for
‘inclusive, relevant [and] quality education for all’. The E9 countries make
up 54 per cent of the global population, but account for 42.3 per cent of the
world’s out-of-school children, 58 per cent of the world’s illiterate youth, and
67 per cent of the world’s illiterate adults. As such, education policy is of
great importance to the group of nations.
India has made huge progress in one of the areas above, having reduced
the number of out-of-school children from 20 million in 2002 to four million
in 2008–09. The improvements are largely due to the ‘Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan’ (Universalization of Elementary Education) program launched in
2001, and the Midday Meal Scheme, mandated by the Supreme Court of
India in the same year, in which meals are provided at school. In a nation
where 68.7 per cent of the population lives on less than US$2 per day, and
32.7 per cent lives on less than US$1.25 per day, such programs have led
to tremendous improvements, both in increasing enrolments and reducing
drop-out rates, as well as in reducing hunger and malnourishment among
children.
But this does not mean India has adequately addressed education quality.
Progress on the number of students enrolled in education, in particular
given India’s very young population, is laudable. But as researchers have
time and again pointed out, it has led to a situation where ‘there are even
more who are enrolled, but learning little’. Increased access to education
has led to reduced efficiency, which detracts from the noble objective of
‘quality education for all’ adopted by the E9 nations.

The definition of literacy and education has of course progressed from a

standard of barely being able to read and write; a more inclusive definition
now calls for any literate person to have the ‘ability to read for knowledge,
write coherently, and think critically about the written word’, which
essentially means the ability to process and use information. Students from
lower economic and social backgrounds have been found to have far lower
test scores than their wealthier counterparts. Aside from economic
classification, in India, literacy among scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes, which make up 24.4 per cent of India’s population, is lower by a
margin of 15–20 per cent than the national average.

Increased enrolment in elementary education means that more families in

lower socio-economic groups are sending their kids to school. But there is
an inherent contradiction between quantity and quality, and education is not
an exception to this rule. When children from uneducated or semi-literate
families enrol in schools, the sole responsibility of educating these students
rests on the school itself; whereas among higher-percentile families, it is
usually shared by both the school and the family. Without specific attention
and additional resources focused on maintaining the quality of education
among children from lower socio-economic sections of society, quality is
bound to fall on an aggregate level, and more so among the
underprivileged.

In spite of the tremendous improvements made by India toward education

for all, various studies have shown that the overall quality of education has
deteriorated. Further, experience and research findings from developed
nations like the United States show that educationally disadvantaged
students make the least progress even where compensatory programs
specifically intended to reduce inequality in early learning are in place. In a
nation like India, where no systems are yet in place to reduce inequality at
the starting gates, such effects will likely be even starker.

India faces a huge resource shortfall, as can be seen by its persistently

high budget deficit and current account deficit. Public expenditure on
education in India is around 4 per cent of India’s GDP, and has been
hovering around the same range since the late 1980s, ranking India 81 in
education spending in a global country-level ranking. It has not increased
spending as necessary to extend the existing quality of education to the
large number of new enrolments.

The result has been a 20 per cent reduction of expenditure per student on
a per capita GDP basis over the 2003–06 period. This has coincided with a
huge increase in enrolments of students in elementary education
originating from disadvantaged families. This anomaly must be addressed
by New Delhi if the E9 goal of ‘quality education for all’ is to become a
reality.

Ranjit Goswami is Professor at, and Director of, the School of

Management, RK University.
Has It Upheld the Constitutional Objective of Equality?

Review of Elementary Education Policy in India

Vol. 49, Issue No. 43-44, 01 Nov, 2014

Special Articles

Kiran Bhatty

The Right to Education Act, 2009, has received mostly negative reactions
from various quarters. These reactions have raised fundamental questions
about the provision of elementary education as a public good and the role
of the State in it. In this article an attempt is made to do a historical review
of elementary education policies, placing them in the context of the
constitutional objective of "equality of opportunity" and the fundamental
right to education now guaranteed through the 86th amendment
operationalised in the Act. The policies are reviewed with the lens of
inclusion, as that has been, and continues to be, perhaps the most
challenging issue in the education sector, even today. To what extent have
the government's policies, and their modes of implementation, addressed
the concerns and constraints faced by children from marginalised and
excluded families in accessing their right to education as equal citizens?
What are the implications for the future role of the State in the provision of
basic education?