Making Proper Primary Education More Accessible in the Rural Parts of India
Research Type: Mixed
Quantitaive
Qualitative
Vidya Jyoti: Bringing Innovation to Rural Schools (
Gramonnati, 2018)
Offline based projection system in case of power outage or no internet connection (2:26)
Providing teacher enablement trainings (4:30)
Using animated education videos created by NGOs for teaching all course subjects in order to compensate for absence of teacher or good teaching. (2:00)
Policies implementing change
India's National Education Policy 2020 (Sahni, 2020)
Notable Points
Education will begin at 3 years old and be extended till 18 years old instead of 14.
Training and equipping teachers on special education for Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups (SEDGs)
Incorporating digital learning: extend optical fibers to the remotest villages and achieve universal digital access and literacy. And prioritizing “the development of communication and early language, literacy and numeracy
Quality Education and Global Studies
Results of making education more accessible
click to edit
The World Bank calculates that this failure to educate girls costs the world economy as much as $30 trillion in lost earnings and productivity. It also comes at a high cost to their health and well-being. (World Bank, 2018)
If all girls completed even a primary education, an estimated 189,000 maternal deaths would be avoided annually – a reduction of two-thirds. (World Bank, 2018)
Key Points
According to UNESCO, the world needs another 69 million teachers to deliver education for all.
Globally, 125 million children are not acquiring functional literacy or numeracy, even after four years in school.
Globally, 90% of girls now complete primary school, in low income countries, fewer than 67% of girls complete their primary education (The Human Journey, 2019)
Trained teachers in primary education has drastically gone down by 5% over the world in the past 7 years. (World Bank Data, 2019)
Although the literacy rates have increased by almost 20% over the past 50 years, lack of education is an issue still faced by many developing countries (World Bank Data, 2019)
Programs tackling the challenges(The Human Journey, 2019) (Russell, 2018)
BRAC (a Bangladesh NGO) aims to alleviate poverty by empowering the poor. Owns and operates 32,000 primary schools in 12 countries
Savelugu Girls Model School in northern Ghana, is one of dozens of model schools in the north of the country funded and administered by the local authorities. Partnered with Oxfam,
In 2016 Google launched a $50 million global program to support organizations that are using technology to help children who do not have basic math and reading skills, even after several years of school.
Causes of poor or no education
School Infrastructure (Singh, 2018)
Other (Banerji, 2020)
Motivation behind the topic
I have seen these issues first hand in rural areas and even in charity funded schools around my own school. Seeing the low quality of education left a long term impact on me as there was a huge difference in the education I received and the less fortunate receive just because they are born poor.
Access to sanitation facilities poses a major impediment to student attendance, especially girls, and leads to drop-outs. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2017 data found that only 68% toilets in government schools are usable.
District Information System for Education (DISE) data shows only 53% of total government schools, which form majority of schools in rural India, have electricity connection.
Only 28% schools (18% government schools) have a computer and 9% (4% government schools) an internet connection infrastructure.
Availability of Teachers (Singh, 2018)
The competencies of the teaching staff are below par—according to DISE data, 18% teachers in India, in 2016-17, had no professional qualification in teaching.
Even when teachers are on-roll, high rates of absenteeism have been recorded. A World Bank study found that one in four teachers are absent at a typical government-run primary school
Teachers often focus on auxiliary tasks which takes away from teaching time and takes a toll on quality of learning delivered.
The rigid structure of India’s schools allows children to fall behind – teachers are expected to stick to the curricula and textbooks for each grade, and cannot spare much time to help children who are below that level.
About 50 percent of rural school-going children in India have mothers with no or very little education, who can provide little active support for learning at home.
parents with a low educational level may not be able to see when a child is not progressing, and may lack confidence to communicate with teachers about this.
Interpretations through different publications.
What does India need?
Increasing classroom participation by projects, communication, leadership skills and extra-curricular activities (Rawal, 2019)
Ensuring that by the time a child finishes 5 years of schooling they can read and understand basic texts, discuss what they have read, express their views, ask questions and have confidence in their ability to learn (Banerji, 2020)
Better training of teachers. (Rawal 2019)
Reducing the drop-out rate.
Tackling lack of proper infrastructure issues
Budget Explainer: How India Funds Public School (Khaitan, 2021)
Graphs are below
According to National Education Policy, India needs to spend 6% of its GDP on education since 1968, however, it only spends 3.1%.
Education is a key driver for reducing poverty, fostering economic growth, achieving gender equality, and social development. (Government of Canada, 2017)
Education is particularly important to communities that are fragile or rebuilding. Education provides stability, structure and hope for the future, helping children and youth to overcome trauma caused by war, disaster, or conflict. (Government of Canada, 2017)
ICT –Enabled Rural Education in India (Roy N. K., 2012)
Benefits of ICT's are not reached expected level in the rural areas and are still living with minimum levels of ICTs facilities
When implementing ICTs related programs in rural areas, local conditions and priorities of rural students need to be assessed to maintain uniformity
Creating awareness on ICT Education
Increasing Community Participation and debunking common misinterpretations of ICT education
Majority of the rural students think computer based education is like computer training in various levels like MS word application and C, C++ programming and also one instruments for playing games, need more English knowledge, difficult to access and getting information.
Even with the increase in Education budget, the % of GDP and % of total government spending remains stagnant.
After the rise of COVID-19, government introduced 2020 New Education Policy.
Government is required to reallocated its spends funds (Khaitan, 2021)
The Relationship between Primary School Teacher and Student Attitudes towards Science and Technology (Denessen, 2015)
Relation between Teacher attitude and Student's attitude towards subjects
Students show a stronger decrease in their attitudes when teachers are less enthusiastic about teaching science and technology
In particular girls’ attitudes seemed to be affected
Study stats below