By
Satyaki Paul
Recently, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has released a report titled “United Information System for Education Plus” (UDISE+) 2019-20 for School Education in India. The Department of Education and Literacy (DoSEL) under MoE has designed this mission to capture all necessary information related to schools, teachers and student’s enrolments.
The important parameters observed from the report are:
1. Gross Enrolment for Students: The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in primary schools was more than 109% in 2012-13, which has come down to around 103.7% in 2019-20. The GER for upper primary in 2019- 20 was 89%. It was 84% in 2012-13. The GER for secondary education has reached 78% in 2019-20, which is an improvement of nearly 10% points from 2012-13 (then GER secondary was 69% in 2012-13).
2. Gender Parity Index (GPI):In current context, the GPI is 1 or more at all levels of school education.GPI value 1 or more shows that the GPI is favourable to the girls, while GPI of less than 1 shows relative under representation of girls in that specific level of school education.
3. Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR):The PTR at all levels of education has improved substantially during 2012- 13 to 2019-20.
4. School Infrastructure:There has been improvement in the infrastructure at the school level in terms of Electricity, Toilet, Drinking water, Library etc. However, the schools fare poorly in terms of access to computer (40%) and Internet (20%). This highlights the growing digital divide in India.
Nonetheless, the most significant data as per the report is that, around 30% students in the country do not transit from the secondary to the senior secondary level. This is a matter of grave concern. Thus, to alleviate this situation there is an urgent need to improve access (especially digital access) and improve literacy standards at all levels. Number of schemes such as National Broadband Mission, Digital India Scheme, BharatNet, PM-WANI, PM-DISHA, etc. were introduced to augment the scope of our Indian education. However, the success of such schemes in full throttle are yet to be experienced, as because COVID19 pandemic has taken toll on every possible social institution of our country, especially those related to educations.
The author works as a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, and the co-author of the book Anthropology For All (2021).