DNA Edit: Demographic disaster

In January, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a primer focusing substantially on the state of rural education in India, was released, and it makes for a chilling read. As per the report, one-fourth of the students studying in class VIII cannot read a class II level textbook, while half of them cannot solve simple division problems.

Official estimates show that in 2008-09, 2.4 crore children were studying in class V. By class VIII, a whopping 50 lakh had dropped out. By 2015-16, another 70 lakh had dropped out, leaving just 1.2 crore children enrolled in class XII.

Contributing majorly to this drop-out rate is a persistent lack of teachers in schools — either because of absenteeism or for the failure of the state government to fill up their posts. Other factors like complete absence of regulation and accountability in government schools have also played their part in the sorry state of education in India.

Exacerbating a gloomy situation is the plunging budgetary allocation to the education sector — scaled down from 2.1 per cent to 2 per cent of the total expenditure in this year’s budget. The expenditure on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has also been cut from 47.9 per cent to 46.3 per cent this year.

Now, the department-related Parliamentary committee on Human Resource Development has highlighted that more than 50 per cent of teachers are untrained in states like Bihar, West Bengal, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

According to a Lok Sabha MP who is also part of the committee, most of the untrained teachers come from un-aided schools. Unfortunately, many teachers in unaided schools lack the basic B.Ed degree, a sine qua non, for teaching students in India.

The government is trying to correct the discrepancy. A bill passed last year made an amendment to the Right To Education Act, 2009, which permits teachers without a BEd degree to earn one by the end of 2019.

However, the committee is far from impressed with this initiative of the government. The committee says that the most ‘worrisome’ aspect is that the Ministry of Human Resource Development has “no plans to tackle” the crisis of untrained teachers in India. It has been rightfully pointed out that, to this day, India is considered to be a country which can boast of supplying the brightest minds in the teaching profession, with no “dearth in the number of qualified candidates” who can work as teachers.

If the ministry does indeed start tapping into this abundant talent pool, it could help the government meet its goal of job creation, a metric on which its performance hasn’t lived up to its promise. In the meantime, the government’s lack of enthusiasm in this domain is building-up into a job crisis which will most likely blow up in the next 10 years.

Sooner rather than later, these under-performing students will hit the market looking for fruitful employment. However, with poor reading, comprehension and mathematical skills, they are ill-equipped to make any meaningful contribution to the economy.