Sunday 2 July 2017

Rural Education System in Shambles

When a child opens eyes in this world, their parents start dreaming and making effort for the better future of their child and evidently, so far education is a best and easiest way of doing it. But in rural India, there is a different story on part of both parents and role of education system. Here, I will emphasis on role of parents because of its social context, and education system.

Parents are first school, therefore educated parents and their understanding of the issues, play an important part in the children’s life. But it seems that first school in rural India is not good enough to help their children in their studies as parents are not well educated and they are not aware of that how education can change the life of their children, however it is not parents to blame for it, it is the poor education system and there is a social-economic context to be blamed. Therefore;   in rural India, a large number of parents are reluctant towards educating their children. There is a need to point out attributes which are responsible for not sending children to school and indispensable to highlight these factors since government is providing free education up to 12th standard in rural areas, still parents are not sending their children to school.

Parents believe that free education upto 12th standard is not enough, for their children to be employed and they can not afford higher education. And education system at the level of primary had not been efficient enough, therefore most of the students are not able to get through at 10th and 12th board exam and this fact is troubling and discouraging for most of the parents, lead to reluctance towards sending children to school. Parents think that it is a waste of 8 or 9 years as their children are not able to get through at 10th or 12th and instead of wasting time at school, it is better to teach the local skills or working in farm, so they can start earning at early age. Here it is very important to notice, poor education is more responsible than parents.

Now the question is, inspite of government effort as nearly 83% villages and 94% of the population has a primary school within a distance of one kilometre , what stopping children in rural India to get qualitative primary education. There can be so many factors but main factor is lack of competent and committed teacher, some secondary factors may be such as text books and access to technology. Teachers in primary school are not committed to teach students or they are not competent enough, they never come on time and no teaching classes. But amazing thing is, these schools have 100% passing rate and that continues to till 8th or 9th class, and while in 10th board exam, same students do not get through and it sends back a very negative message towards rural society and children.

However, having such a poor education system, there are few children get through 10th and 12th   exam and led  them to have access of further higher education, to become employable. As mentioned before, one who passed 12th is not skilled enough to be employed most probably. These few students anyhow complete their higher education and get employed but poor education remain liability for them all along their life. But upto some extent, they bring the positive message to the rural society and to their parents and encourage the society to send their children to school however number of such students are not much, so it do not have a very big impact on society.

Therefore poor education system has a direct impact on rural youth as poor education at primary level does not allow to access of higher education however fraction of youth get access of higher education but they remain less competitive. Consequently, this plight of rural youth has direct impact on rural economy, therefore, a large population in rural India still to get feelings that their country growing at rate of 8% or 9% or second fastest growing economy in the world.

Now the question is how to improve this poor education system, few things can be suggested as follows.

Firstly there is a need of efficient selection panel which make sure that competitive teacher have been selected to offer primary education, the reason to raise this point because in the absence of corruption free selection panel, one can not expect honest selection and it lead to incompetent selection of teacher.

Secondly, Government must set up performance based monitoring system, poor performing school should be penalised and performance measurement should be the performance of students in board exams, there can be some more parameters in addition to this but it needs a more depth analysis.

Thirdly, I see the a lots of good students end up with nothing in the absence of good guidance system, therefore government should set up guidance centre in rural areas blockwise or district wise and make sure can easily access by rural youth.

Having said that, there are some good sign for privilege section of the rural society towards education in rural India as private sector entering into education sector and they are helping few students from rich families since private education can not be afforded by each and everyone in rural India.

Lastly; government should concentrate on above recommendation to improve the health of public education system because large rural population do not have access to private education because of their economic conditions.

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