Startling learning deficit, gender gap among early school children, finds study
DISPARITY The report said just 37.4% of children below 6 years are able to recognise letters
NEW DELHI: Learning deficit in Indian students begins much ahead of them climbing the education ladder with 35% to 70% of the students in four-eight age group failing to understand foundational learning including age appropriate cognitive and numeracy skills, a report by Pratham, a non-profit organisation focused on education, said Tuesday. The survey was conducted in 26 districts across 24 states.
The findings, part of Pratham’s annual status of education report (ASER), showcase the education bankruptcy at an early stage that has the capability to impact the entire education supply chain system in India.
The ASER 2019 report also shows that the government-run pre-school system is increasingly losing out to the private ones in terms of enrolment. The report said just 37.4% of the children below six years of age are able to recognise letters and 25.6% can do numeric additions. Similarly, only 34.8% children in Class 2 can read text meant for a level below and in Class 3, only 50.8% can read the texts meant for their juniors two levels below, the report showed.
“A focus on ‘breadth of skills’ and activities that strengthen cognitive skills rather than formal subject learning in the early years may generate substantial benefits for later academic performance of children,” the report said, underlining the need for government and private sector to focus on early years of education to improve basics of education.
The study further found gender gaps among young children with more girls enrolled in government institutions and more boys in private institutions.
“We hope the policy makers make right provisions for this cohort of children in the upcoming new education policy to improve learning outcomes. More than the central government, the state and district administrations need to have a bigger say to make early education effective,” said Rukmini
Banerjee, chief executive of Pratham.
Among four-five-year olds, 56.8% of girls and 50.4% of all boys are enrolled in government schools or pre-schools whereas 43.2% girls and 49.6% boys are enrolled in private pre-schools or schools, said the ASER survey.
“The gap in enrolment between boys and girls is larger among six-eight year olds, with 61.1% all girls versus 52.1% of all boys in this age group going to a government institution,” it added.
“Government policy and practice has not kept pace with people’s aspirations as the Indian economy liberalised. Most of the young mothers in the next decade will not be very young as median age of marriage has increased from 18.2 years in 2001 to nearly 21.7 in rural India and 23.4 in urban India by 2016. Then there is the improvement of education among women. Such changes in young Indian mothers ‘ profile need to be taken into account when thinking of the education inputs to be designed for the young children of the new decade,” she said.
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