India slips in Unesco report

NEW DELHI: India has slipped five ranks, from 100 to 105, in Unesco’s global monitoring report on the education for all (EFA) development index. Norway and the UK are right on top.

The report says India’s progress towards universal primary education, adult literacy, gender parity and education quality is far too slow. The country has been clubbed with Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan with EDI scores of lower than 0.80.

According to the report, while India’s total primary net enrolment ratio (NER) is close to 95%, low adult literacy rates and survival rate to Grade 5 has influenced the EDI score.

Planning commission member, BL Mungekar explains why this has happened. “This shows that growth and various programmes have not reached the needy. Two, the slippage could be a fallout of other countries doing comparatively well,” he said.

However, India along with Nepal has improved considerably in school retention even though the survival of students to the last grade of primary level was particularly low in the entire region.

While striking gender disparities still prevailed, some improvement was noticed in India along with Nepal and Bangalesh. India has made noteworthy progress in gross intake rate for girls at primary level but there is a problem in retention and fewer girls are likely to reach last grade of primary level.