elementary education in punjab

7/28/2019 Elementary Education in Punjab

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Kushmanda PCS Academy

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Elementary Education in Punjab

The goal of universal elementary education in India has remained elusive.

In spite of several initiatives made during the last few decades, the everincreasing number of out of school children, slow increase in enrolment, early

drop out and poor retention have underlined the sad tale of educational

backwardness and deprivation in India. In order to tackle these problems

the revised National Policy of Education identified three thrust areas so

as to enable children achieve essential levels of learning. These were as

follows:

Universal access to elementary education

Universal retention of children up to 14 years of age

Improvement in the quality of education

Initiatives were put in place to facilitate the realisation of free and

compulsory education to children between the age of 6 and 14. Right To

Education (RTE) Act 2009 that got enacted in 2010 needs to be sortedout with respect to model rules, financial implications and sharing of

requisite costs between the centre and the states. India has a long way to go

before the objectives of universal elementary education is realized. Sarva

Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), flagship initiative of the Central government is an

endeavour in this direction. Sponsored largely by the central government, SSA

provides an opportunity to introduce comprehensive reforms in the education

sector.

It is a programme that aims:

To provide and strengthen educational infrastructure

To help teachers through sustained training & interaction

To develop teaching and learning materials and academic support

at the cluster, block and district levels.

To endeavour towards increasing community participation


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To encourage girl child education & those sections that have remained

educationally deprived

It needs no emphasis that much would depend on the political will of thestate governments and its bureaucracy as it is the state governments

that have to finally implement various components of the SSA programme.

Fact File

The educational profile ofPunjab presents a paradox of sorts. Punjab is one

of the richest states of India that has been successful in lowering the incidence

of income poverty in its population. However it has not shown commensurate

levels of achievements with reference to social development indicators such as

education and health. In order to contextualise the educational scenario in

Punjab the Education Development Index (EDI) may be instructive to assess

accessibility, infrastructure, teachers and educational outcomes. Based on a

set of indicators determined by the MHRD for primary and upper primary

levels, the overall EDI rank for Punjab in 2007-08 stood at 12 out of 35

States and UTs.

Punjab did better for primary schools where its rank was 9, but it

dropped to the 15 rank for the Upper Primary. On the basis of access

indicators Punjab stood at the 16th rank, teacher related indicators at 13th,

but it performed very poorly with respect to outcome indicators,

where it acquired 29th rank, only a little better than Bihar, Rajasthan, West

Bengal and Chhattisgarh.

The rank position of Punjab with respect to the above indices suggests thatstates advantage in the area of school infrastructure has been considerably

offset by its poor scores on access, teachers and educational

outcomes. Educational outcomes, other things remaining the same, are

dependent both on quantity and quality of educational infrastructure and

quality, regularity, motivation and creativity of teachers. Studies have

indicated that the learning achievements of children in recognized

government and aided schools in Punjab has been rather poor for classes III

and VIII, and that the learning levels of class V children witnessed a decline


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during 2002-2007. The poor quality of education in Punjab, as is generally felt,

is largely due to poor institutional structures, ineffective regulatory

mechanism, teachers unionism, and more importantly also because of

political interference in the appointments and transfer of teachers whichhas gradually eroded accountability of teachers.

The allocation mechanism for deployment of teachers in Punjab is such that a

large number of primary schools have fewer teachers than required. In a large

number of upper primary, secondary and higher secondary schools specialised

subject teachers are not available.

Teachers training is another important dimension that needs considerable

rethinking in the context of Punjab. One of the distinguishing features of

Punjab educational landscape is marked by the phenomenal growth in the

number of private recognised and unrecognised schools. These schools

have over the last decade attracted significant proportion of enrolment in

the name of providing quality education. Apparently, the perception

that government schools fail to meet the educational needs and aspirations of

the elite needs examination, but it may not be out of place to suggest that the

withdrawal of the better-off sections from government schools makes

inefficiency and poor quality of education acceptable and institutionalised

as the articulate segment remains unaffected by the developments (or lack of

it) in institutions run by the state.

In view of the phenomenal expansion of private sector in school

education one may be interested to ask as to how the state visualizes its role in

effective monitoring of the education providers, both public and private.

Strengthening the existing public institutions through the creation of commonschools holds the key to weaning over the growing middle class back to the

public education system. This report concentrates on a few aspects of

elementary school education only. These pertain to both quantitative and

qualitative aspects with special emphasis on understanding the supply side

constraints in elementary school education in the state. It may be noted here

that in spite of educational norms supply of educational provisions, especially

in the school subsector, has largely been demand based.

Contd.

elementary education in punjab

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