Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is world’s most extensive primary education programme, but is it working? The grim reality that India’s Right to Education is at best working in terms of quantity of schools, and certainly not in terms of quality of education, was first proved in successive Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER), brought out by education NGO ‘Pratham’ through nationwide ground-level surveys.

Now a Planning Commission evaluation report confirms most of those, now familiar, fears. The June 2010 report, based on extensive surveys, is prepared by the Programme Evaluation Department of the hallowed Planning Commission and it concedes that a severe shortage of trained teachers, poor school infrastructure and high dropout rates are hampering the implementation of the Right to Education throughout India. 

It is official that we have a shortage of five lakh teachers in primary schools in India. About three lakh teachers, who are now employed, lack adequate training. There are 10 lakh 29 thousands primary schools in 633 districts of the country and 50 lakh 79 thousands teachers are employed in them. And even when the teachers are available, they are tasked to get involved in non-educational activities like census, elections and implementation of schemes like mid-day meal. The report says that all this is hampering education, particularly in single-teacher schools, and most of the teachers associated with Sarva Siksha Abhiyan are disinclined to take up such extraneous jobs.

The report says that under the SSA, about 19 per cent teaching posts are vacant in rural areas and 12 per cent in urban areas. In the rural areas, 7 per cent schools have just one teacher. Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan have more such schools, when compared to other states, in flagrant violation of the Right to Education Act, which make it mandatory for all schools to have at least two teachers.

The Planning Commission report reveals that states are more interested in constructing new school buildings and providing other facilities rather than in the quality of education. For example, in the districts covered under the survey, 92% of allocated budget for the construction purposes was utilized as against only 50 to 54 percent budget utilization for activities like computer education and teachers’ training. The report presents a sorry picture of rural primary education, where 60 percent schools have no electricity and computers or computer teachers. In contrast, the 86 per cent primary schools in urban slum have electricity and 62 per cent possess computers.

The only silver lining, according to the report is that 88 percent schools are now running in pucca buildings and 90 percent schools have drinking water facility. But for some schools in Himachal Pradesh, now all other schools have blackboards. However, 82 percent schools still have common toilets for girls and boys. The other positive feature in the report is that the total enrolment of children has gone up to 93 per cent between 2003 and 2007.

The report also brings out some other very important facts, like:

• There is no uniformity in classification between primary and upper primary level in different states. In some states classes up to 5thcome under the primary level, but in some others class 5th is in the upper primary schools. In yet another states, upper primary schools are part of secondary schools.

• Due to unavailability of school within the range of 1 km, in states like Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, the number of girl students is very low in about half of rural area’s upper primary schools.

• Only in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, the Panchayti Raj institutions are effectively participating in providing primary education.

• Enrolment has gone down in some rural areas of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh due to migration of people. In Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, enrolment in govt schools in some rural areas has dropped due to parents preferring private schools.

•  Children of 7% rural and 20% urban slum families are not enrolled in schools and most of them are from SC/ST category.

• Half of dropout students are girls.

• Ten percent of rural and 15 percent urban students complained of corporal punishment.

Following are some important links on primary education, quality of education, problems of enrolment and related areas: