GAPING HOLES IN MAHARASHTRA’S EDUCATION SURVEY

Students in open schools and in distance education programmes have been classified as out of school.

The Maharashtra government created a controversy with a recent announcement that its educational survey would count students of madrasas that do not teach mainstream subjects like science and mathematics as “out of school” children. Educationists say that there are graver problems with the survey.

For one, the survey also counts students from open schools and in distance education programmes as out of school. Then there is the plan to use ink to mark outof-school children’s fingers, something the government has been ambiguous about. Activists also say that the discrimination children might feel from this is a matter of concern. The government has been taken to court over these points.

The ambitious 12-hour survey was conducted by the Maharashtra government on 4 July, in order to count the number of out of school students in the state. Nearly 10 lakh officials, NGO members and people from private organisations are estimated to have participated in the survey, which the state government has called “foolproof”.

The government says it trained its staff for the survey. Every official would have to cover nearly 100 households, according to the brief given to them.

But experts say there are gaping holes in the survey, which means it will be far from achieving the government’s goals.

Excluding institutions like open schools and distance schools from its purview, educationists say, is detrimental to the spread of education. Calling the survey “illtimed”, they suggested that it should have been conducted over a larger time span after the Diwali vacation, when the numbers would have re-