As deadline for providing universal primary education draws closer, Centre prepares to push states with poor literacy rates.
Govt will use new Education Development Index to egg laggard states on.
NEW DELHI: As the deadline for providing universal primary education draws closer, the Centre is preparing to push states with poor literacy rates into improving their standing. The target date for achieving the objective, one of the Millennium Development Goals, is 2015.
The Centre has devised the first Educational Development Index (EDI) to rank states and Union territories on the basis of their record in education at the primary and upper-primary levels.
The rankings, prepared by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), will be released by the Union human resource development ministry later this month. The evaluation encompasses schools run by central and state governments as well as government-aided and private institutions.
Some parameters used to determine the rankings are: access to school per thousand population; classroom ratio; provision of drinking water, and of separate toilets for boys and girls; and average pupil-teacher ratio.
Other factors taken into account include the number of female teachers; total number of teachers; dropout rates; and boy-girl ratio.
Kerala tops the EDI ranking with 0.708 points. Other states with high scores are: Delhi (.707); Tamil Nadu (.701); Pondicherry (.700); Chandigarh (.690); Karnataka (.674); Himachal Pradesh (.688); and Andhra Pradesh (.654). Maharashtra (.635) is placed 12th.
Bihar, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh figure in the lower reaches of the table. Madhya Pradesh - home state of HRD Minister Arjun Singh - stands 29th. Assam, which sent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Parliament, ranks 30th.
“The northeastern states have shown good indices mainly because they are smaller and can be managed easily,” an official from HRD ministry said. “Same is the case with small union territories such as Goa and Lakshwadweep.”
Among the northeastern states, Mizoram and Sikkim have performed well while Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, despite their district primary education programmes, have shown the worst performance.
Kerala has the best student-class ratio of 29:1, while Bihar has the worst, 92:1. In Maharashtra, the ratio is 40:1.
Sikkim has the highest percentage of schools (36.65) without blackboards, followed by Arunachal Pradesh (29.9). All classes in Nagaland have blackboards, while in Maharashtra 1.39 per cent schools don’t have that basic amenity.
Chandigarh has the highest number of schools with computers (67.9 per cent) followed by Delhi (54.6 per cent) and Kerala (37.8 per cent). Only 18.3 per cent schools in Maharashtra have computers. In Jharkhand, the figure is 2.18 per cent; 2.87 per cent in West Bengal; 3.36 per cent in Meghalaya; 3.53 per cent in Bihar; and 4.03 per cent in Uttar Pradesh.
Pondicherry has the highest percentage of girls (51.6) enrolled from class 1 to 5, followed by Meghalaya (50.4); West Bengal (49.5); Maharashtra (47.4); and Bihar (44.36). The national average on that count is 47.9 per cent.
Enrolments in classes 1 to 5 have declined over the past year in 180 districts, of which 25 are in Karnataka, 20 in Andhra, and one in Maharashtra.
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