State educational interventions cannot succeed without people's participation. This is revealed in a study by a Jaipur based NGO and the UN Millennium Campaign on the potential and efficacy of Rajasthan's education system. It calls for an inclusive model focusing on the needs of girls, dalits and minorities.
Education can be the key to empowering women and men to break out of the vicious cycle of gender inequality and poverty.
Education but cannot be selective and should not cater only to the interests of few communities who are economically and socially rich.
Since independence, the central and state governments in India have been trying to provide universal and compulsory education to all children below the age of 14 years as enshrined in the Constitution.
In Rajasthan one finds a plethora of schemes. Efforts are being made to universalise elementary education in the state through community-ownership.
The 1990s saw fresh initiatives and a number of governmental programmes came into operation: the Lok Jumbish, the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and the more recent Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
The thrust of these programmes is to expand schooling in a cost-effective and time-bound manner. Also, the use of local resources and the participation of the community in planning and management exercises for improving access to, and quality of schooling have been stressed.
However, it must be remembered that the literacy rate in Rajasthan (61.8%) is till lower than the national rate of (64.8%). Especially women’s literacy is as low as 44.34%
State initiatives
A study on status of mainstreaming of education in Rajasthan conducted by Centre for Community Economics and Development Consultants Society (CECOEDECON) and UN Millennium Campaign documents processes of change in educational scenario in Rajasthan and analyses the implications and impact of these processes.
School children are being benefited with mid-day meals in Rajasthan. Apki Beti Scheme has been introduced for the girl child belonging to below poverty line families and whose one or both parents have died. A scholarship is also made available under the scheme.
Special bridge courses have been started for physically challenged children and qualified teachers have been appointed for them.
To promote girls’ secondary education, the state government is providing free transport facilities through Roadways, bus pass and free distribution of bicycles in tribal areas.
An interesting feature of these programmes is the larger space now provided by the government for innovative works. Programmes such as the District Primary Education Programme and the Sarva Sikshya Abhiyan have stressed the importance of diversity in designing strategies for addressing access and quality issues.
Support in planning and implementation has been sought from diverse quarters, including NGOs.
Despite governmental efforts, the involvement of non-governmental expertise and the funds committed to programmes for universalising elementary education, there remains significant ambiguity about the results of these initiatives.
Although access to schooling has increased greatly, evaluations of various programmes such as the DPEP have revealed little progress in achievement levels of the target segment.
Poor literacy rate
The level of education and literacy rate is a major indicator of development achievement of a state. After sixty years of independence, Rajasthan is still lagging behind many other states so far as providing education to all sections of the society.
The 2001 census figure gave a chance to rejoice, when it was found that during the decade from 1991 – 2001, Rajasthan recorded highest literacy rate in India. Over all literacy levels in the state rose by 23 percent, from 38.6 percent to 61.03 percent, with literacy rate for males moving from 54.99 percent to 76.46 percent and for females from 20.44 to 44.34 percent.
Government admitted the fact that the literacy situation in Rajasthan is quite grim, with many districts being among the most backward in the country in terms of literacy rates, and even more so in terms of female literacy.
An analysis of enrolment condition In the districts of Rajasthan reveal that, as many as eight districts like Ajmer, Banswara, Bhilwara, Bikaner, Chittoregarh, Dhoulpur, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur more than 15% children were found to be out of school. While Bikaner had the highest percent (18.9%) children out of school, the lowest percent was found in Jhunjhunan (1.6%).
The question arises there fore, why the situation is better in some districts than of others?
Improving quality
While the goals of universal literacy and enrolments are laudable in themselves. The achievements in these areas would remain hollow without ensuring quality education.
During all these years a lot of attention has been given on the quantitative expansion of education infrastructure ignoring the quality aspects of teaching and learning.
A qualitative improvement in the content and processes of basic education, in order to make them more responsive to the learning needs of individuals and the development needs of different socio-economic sectors, continues to be a major challenge.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for improvement of the quality of education, given the abysmally poor levels of learning as evident in this study.
The challenge for providing quality education at the elementary level involves improvements in the preparation, motivation and deployment of teachers, the quality of textbooks and of infrastructural facilities.
It also involves making education relevant to society’s needs and strengthening the management and institutional capacity of educational institutions especially at the state, district and local levels.
Apart from parental education and socio-economic condition, enrollment of children and quality of education are related to a number of factors like presence of female teachers, drinking water facilities, and separate toilets for girls and boys.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2006 presents a dismal picture about the attendance record of teacher and student in the primary and upper primary schools. Out of 321 and 281 primary and upper primary schools visited, only 77.5% teachers were found attending primary schools and 76.2% in upper primary level.
Out of many other problems one most demanding issue relates to the additional demands on teachers time to perform several other functions than teaching, such as election duty, data collection during various surveys (e.g. livestock census and population census), and participation in campaigns such as pulse polio eradication.
Access to all
In a highly stratified and patriarchal societal culture, the inclusive management of the education at the local level poses a difficult challenge.
Even though the problems pose some constraints, there has to be a way out to remove all the barriers to achieve hundred percent successes in the education of girl children, dalits, minorities and tribal communities in the state.
Educational infrastructure and reforms must make the system more relevant to the livelihood needs of people, and should enable them to exercise greater control over their lives.
However, in Rajasthan the regular schooling system has been unable to provide primary education to the disadvantaged groups of the society, namely the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, women and communities in remote areas.
Thus, alternative systems have been devised to fill the gap. These have been successful in providing some education and some functional schools where none were there.
Community participation
The administrative and institutional structure of school education has been placed directly under the purview of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) since 1999. The aim was to decentralise the management and control in order to strengthen the ability of the poor and marginal groups to participate in local governance.
Without people’s participation educational interventions cannot succeed in the state, given the persistence of low achievements in spite of considerable investment in the expansion of education infrastructure.
It was strongly felt that the participation of the people could provide the best answer to face the challenges.
In reality there still exists gaps in the performance of the PRIs, because of complex set of rules and regulations thrust upon by bureaucratic system of governance.
Until the local people and the local governance mechanisms are fully functional without any interference the vision of “quality education for all” will remain a distant dream. It would apt to quote here the thinking of our educational planners about the future vision of education in our country.
To read the full report, please click on the attached file.
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