1998 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 97-119
In 1950, Indian Constitution declared to provide free and compulsory primary education to all the children of the country up to 14 years of agè within ten years after its commencement. Till date, however, this commitment to the universal primary education remains to be fulfilled. Given the importance of the basic education to the nation's overall development and the fact that India has the biggest illiterate population in the world, it is urgently required for India to achieve the substantial improvement in the performance of its primary education.
This paper examines the current status of primary education in India based on the past studies and the author's experiences, and identifies some of the critical issues which need to be addressed on a priority basis. The author first presents the current status of primary education in India in three aspects, i.e. enrolment, retention and the quality of education. He then examines the causes of low achievement in these areas in terms of four factors, i.e. wide prevalence of poverty, low level of resource allocation by the government, limited access to primary education due to physical and social factors, and the low quality of education. Although the poverty plays a critical part in lowering the level of enrolment and retention, it is only one factor among many others. Among other important factors is the poor quality of education in many of the government primary schools which works as a disincentive for the poor households to send their children to school. This in turn is due to a low political priority attached to the basic education in India, and correspondingly low level of resource allocation to education sector in general and primary education sector in particular. Another critical factor is the existence of social norms which work against the schooling of certain disadvantaged groups such as girl children and the children of schedule castes and schedule tribes. The present status of primary education in India need to be understood as a result of interplay between the system failure and the existence of these social norms, as Drèze and Sen put it. In the end, the author comments on the issues to be addressed on a priority basis under five heads, viz. more prioritised resource allocation to primary education sector; substantial improvement in the quality of education and its relevance to the life of the majority of Indian population; improvement of the quality of teachers; collection, use and dissemination of reliable data on the status of primary education; implementation of the realistic programme for decentralization and community participation; and formation of social alliance to advocate universal primary education as the national goal.