Key Bihar lesson: Private tuitions are necessities

Shakuntla Sinha knows where to cut corners to keep the house running with her husband's Rs15,000 salary. The couple maintain a strict, austere lifestyle and rarely indulge, except when it comes to their kids' education. A Rs.2,000 fund is exclusively kept for their private tuitions.

In Bihar, there are millions of parents like Shankuntla and her husband Sunil who are not satisfied with school education and think of tuitions as a basic necessity.

A recent report by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2011-12 reveals that nearly 46.7% children in government schools in Bihar take tuitions while 60.8% in private schools take tuition -- the highest figures in the country. In comparison, nationally 23.3% of students in government schools and 21% in private schools take tuition. According to the report, the trend of school children opting for private tuitions indicate falling standards in school education and a dip in the quality of teachers.

"Private tuition is the most important element outside school. It provides the (children) support to solve problems related to studies at school," said Shakuntla. Then there's Guddan Khatoon who also prefers a private teacher over the school where her children study. "We feel tension-free with private tuitions because school teachers do not give them full attention," she says. Mukesh Singh, another parent, said there have been instances when he has detected spelling errors and even wrong math problems marked as correct by teachers. His daughter is a Class X student in a government-run high school here.

An 80-page report on "Elementary Education in Bihar: Progress and Challenges", released by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, said one out of every four boys and one out of every 10 girls in rural Bihar take private tuitions. According to data, there are over 20 million students in government schools in Bihar. Last year, a report revealed that 94.1% children in Bihar study in government schools, 5.7% in private schools and 0.2% in unrecognised madrassas.

Another interesting finding of the report was that 6.6% of primary school teachers and 10.4% teachers of upper primary classes run private tuitions. Of them, 45.5% justified private tuitions as a "desirable practice".