Enrolment_Dropouts

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Educationist and dissent-ing member in the Ashok Mitra Commission Sunanda Sanyal, who remains one of the government's bitterest crit-ics in the education sector, read out a litany of charges. Bengal's schools did not have a high dropout rate, he said. The number of en-trants itself was very low, he added, quoting from a 1998 Unicef report. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan would fail in Bengal, Sanyal said; a government that could not handle formal education would not be able to manage non-formal education, espe-cially when teachers would be paid only Rs 1,000 or Rs 2,000. Besides, the government has failed in making schools and the curriculum "attractive". Schools without meals, toilets and uniform and a syllabus that did not pay any attention to "area-specific needs" are what Bengal's students have got apart from a politicised school environment. Biswas did not deny the charges. "Amar buk bhenge jaye" he said, explaining how lack of finances had prevented changes.

- Kanti confesses to flaws in education policy, The Telegraph, 06/02/2005, N20 /eldoc/n20_/06feb05tel1.pdf

That leads to the context for reform. Shubra Chatterji, the Vikramshila Education Resource Society’s director, tells me that about 83 million out of 185 million children in the six to 14 group do not go to school. Primary level enrolment is a high 89.7 per cent, but it is anybody’s guess how many entrants complete the journey. Middle level enrolment is 59 per cent. “The critical questions that cross the mind,” the Society says, “are, what are the reasons behind such a huge number of out-of-school children, such a high drop-out rate, and why in spite of Article 45 (the ten-year commitment) and Article 46 (the “educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people”), each and every child cannot savour the benefits of education?

The state governments have not been able to get enough children into schools, but they have definitely mastered the art of fudging figures. Here's an example. In December 2003, Bihar claimed there were only 7.46 lakh out-of-school children (in the age group 6-14) left in the state. The HRD ministry, that gives 75% funds for ele-mentary education un-der the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, didn't buy the story and told the state administration to re-check. Bihar got back this month. The latest count reveals there are 29 lakh out-of-school kids in the state.
It has been a similar story across the country. The HRD ministry has found that the all-India figures, collated from all states in December 2003, were lower by nearly 20 lakh. The state level data showed that the number of out-of-school children in the country had come down to 61 lakh in De-cember 2003 from 2.3 crore in April 2003.
The ministry thought such a sharp de-cline in eight months was rather dubious and wrote to all states to verify their data again. The states got back early last month. "We are still collating figures. The number of out-of-school children is going to range anywhere from 70 to 80 lakh and not 61 lakh as the states had claimed earlier," said elementary education secretary, Kumud Bansal.
West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Ra-jasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the worst performers under Sarva Shiksha Ab-hiyan, had doctored the figures. West Ben-gal has 10 lakh out-of-school children and not 4.39 lakh it had claimed in December. Uttar Pradesh had 7.27 lakh and not 2.10 lakh kids it showed earlier.

The Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the United Progressive Al-liance (UPA) proposes to levy a cess on all taxes to raise out-lay for education to 6 per cent of the GDP. Is this a good thing? A num-ber of questions arise. Should the country spend 6 per cent of the GDP on education? Should this be fund-ed by the state? Should the state raise the needed resources from an earmarked cess? What should be the level of the cess? Education up to high school should be the state's responsibility.
Also, the retention rate through the primary school is very poor. The enrolment rates in the primary school are 104 per cent for boys and 85 per cent for girls. The enrolment in middle school (standards VI-VIII) in2000 was around 42 million whereas in primary school it was 112 million. Not all those who enrol complete their ed-ucation. Thus the loss of children from primary to middle school is large. Not only do we need to en-sure 100 per cent attendance but also increase retention to near 100 per cent in primary school. We should also aim to have all students complete at least middle school. While one accepts these, one may still ask, is there a need to raise resources allocated to education?
Teacher absenteeism is a major problem and also a reason for high drop out rates. The solution is greater local control. Teachers should be made accountable to pan-chayat- parent committees and their pay and promotions should depend on them or at least on their recommendations. This does not call for additional expenditure only a reorganisation of how education is organised. Experience with de-centralisation has not been very encouraging in that the rural elite seem to capture the benefit and that the gram sabhas are not as effective as one had hoped. This however is not too relevant here as it would also be in the interest of the rural elite to see that the teachers teach in the local school where his children also go.
There is, however, a large sup-ply gap. Many schools are one room schools. When a school does not have toilets for girls, they drop out. And there are many schools without toilets. Retention rate can be improved by providing facilities. While primary schools are wide spread and access is by now reasonable for most parts of the country, middle schools are not provided by the public school system in many places. The required expenditure and lack of access both serve as major deterrents to many poor children.

- Cess for education Effective expenditure must accompany revenue mobilisation, Business Standard, 15/06/2004, N20 /eldoc/n20_/15june04bsb1.pdf

There are more than 43,000 primary schools in the state set up by the government alone, catering to the educational needs of nearly one crore students. While the enrolment rate in the state is among the highest in the country, what is of primary concern today is the quality of education being imparted especially in government schools. The whopping drop-out rate of
34 per cent in primary schools is an indication that everything is not well.

A majority of the government schools especially in the rural sector are devoid of even basic infrastructure. Only 18 per cent of schools have girls' toilet and only 64 per cent of schools have drinking water facilities. As many as 11,000 classrooms are in an incomplete state. These are just conservative estimates. Even the report on Human Development in Karnataka brought out by the State Planning Department places the literacy rates in Raichur, Gulbarga, Bidar, Bellary, Mandya, Mysore, Kolar and Bangalore Rural districts lower than the literacy rates of sub-Saharan African countries.

A new and flexible approach to the schooling of children of the urban poor is imperative. Field studies in Mumbai and Delhi have yielded the insight that the reason for so many slum children not being in school has less to do with their families' economic circumstances than with the school system's shortcomings. The available evidence also suggests that the amount of learning the average slum family pupil in India acquires in primary school falls far short of what may legitimately be expected.
The three sets of empirical findings discussed in this paper serve to highlight specific problem aspects of primary schooling in urban India today and to show that the standard explanations are not sufficient. Based on field studies in slum communities in Mumbai and Delhi, the paper suggests that reasons why children are not in school or why they are not learning have more to do with the nature of schools than with the economic circumstances of their families. While school enrolment has risen dramatically in cities and villages, the ability of the government school system to retain and adequately educate children has been less impressive. An urban school system is supposed to provide schooling opportunities for all the children in the city. However, planning and imple-mentation of this mandate seems to assume that each school can cope with this task on its own. The large inequalities among schools in terms of teaching-learning conditions are largely ignored. The coverage of poorer localities in cities by schools has expanded, but not fast enough to keep pace with the growing populations of these areas. The school systems of Mumbai and Delhi do not have the flexibility to quickly reallocate teachers, materials and resources from one part of the city to another. For example, municipal school enrolment in south Mumbai has declined over time even while in suburban areas, schools are bursting at the seams and teachers have very large numbers of children in their classes. Overcrowded schools are difficult places for teaching or learning.

- Poverty and Primary Schooling Field Studies from Mumbai and Delhi, RUKMINI BANERJI, Economic & Political Weekly, 04/03/2000, /eldoc/n00_/04mar00EPW.pdf

On the basis of a study in a low-income urban locality on the outskirts of Delhi as a case-study, the article explores factors to be heeded if universalisation of primary education is to become a reality. The author argues for a focus on local conditions affecting schooling such as allocation and use of resources, and teaching-learning processes in the classroom - without knowledge of which the effectiveness of national or regional policies can get diluted. Further, the article asks for a shift from 'school-effects' to 'teacher-effects' in understanding differences in survival rates of children within a school.

- Why Don't Children Complete Primary School? A Case Study of a Low-Income Neighbourhood in Delhi, Rukmini Banerji, Economic & Political Weekly, 09/12/1997, /eldoc/n00_/09dec97EPW.pdf

THE problem of children being deprived of schooling refuses to go away. Physical access is not an issue; almost 98 per cent of children in the age group of 6 to 11 years reportedly have a school within walk-ing distance, and the situation is much better in urban areas. Yet a survey carried out in January 2000 in Delhi by Pratham, a non-govern-ment organisation, revealed that almost 2,500 children in Trilokpuri were not attending any school. Similarly, a 1999 survey of Cal-cutta, funded under the West Ben-gal District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and carried out by the West Surveys done under the aegis of the India Education Initiative and Pratham Mumbai in Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Jaipur and Patna rein-force the above picture a very large number of urban children are not attending any school, even though primary schools are avail-able within "walking distance".

As the Public Report On Basic Ed-ucation in India (PROBE) points out: "The effect of poor teaching standards is slowly sapping parental and child motivation over time, but the last straw' that causes a child to drop out is often some-thing else, like illness in the family or financial hardship." Beating, social discrimination (including caste and community-related comments), gender biases all these work together to push children out. It is indeed quite revealing that an overwhelming number of out-of-school children are from Dalit or tribal groups, are first-generation school-goers, face particularly difficult circum-stances (for example, children of sex workers) or are working (in hotels and mechanic shops, or as roadside vendors).

- Inaccessible Education Turn Drop-outs into Drop-ins, VIMALA RAMACHANDRAN, Times of India, 07/06/2001, /eldoc/n21_/07jun01toi1.pdf

According to government of India physical access to primary schools has improved considerably with almost 67,000 new primary schools opened in the decade of the 1990s (Select Educational Statistics, GOI, 2002). The NFHS data reveals that overall 79 per cent of children in the age group of 6-14 were attending school in 1998-99 up from 69 per cent in 1992-93. School attendance varies across states more than 90 per cent attend school in Himachal Pradesh and Kerala to less than 60 per cent in Bihar in the 6-14 age group (NFHS II 1998). Attendance rates vary across different age groups they decline as we move towards higher ages. This is more marked for girls in rural areas, where they decline from 75.1 per cent for 6-10 years, to 61.6 per cent for 11-14 years, and 32.8 per cent for 15-17 years. The dropout rate at the primary level has come down to 42 per cent for girls and 40 per cent for boys. However, the dropout rate at the upper primary level stands at 50 per cent for boys and 58 per cent for girls.

The gap between states is worrisome zero in Kerala to 78 per cent in Meghalaya! The Select Educational Statistics (GOI 2002) reveal that 59 million children in the 6-14 age group are still out of school, out of which 35 million are girls – i e, approximately 59 per cent are girls. Equally disturbing is the distribution of out of school children by social group and by location. According to NFHS-II, rural girls belonging to disadvantaged groups like SC and ST are perhaps the worst off with a staggering 50 per cent and 56 per cent respectively having dropped out. The proportion of SC girls to all SC children in school is 36.5 per cent and that of ST girls it is 36 per cent, while the corresponding figure for forward castes is almost 48 per cent.

- Is Schooling for the Poor on the Government Agenda?, Vimala Ramachandran, Economic and Political Weekly, 24/07/04, /eldoc/n21_/240704EPW3349.html

This is an Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) school. Having enrolled 68 children in classes I to V, it usually has an attendance of just a handful in the beginning of the session due to the harvesting season. During rest of the year, the attendance is about 50 per cent, although the names entered in the register are marked present for compulsions such as the mid day meal, scholar-ships and pressure on teachers to M: enroll and retain every school aged child in school. However, the same names can be seen in the private school in the vicinity. Yes, girls outnumber boys in enrolment and they belong to ex-tremely deprived groups and low caste. However, many of the boys from the same families are enrolled in private school. Parents report that the quality of education of-fered in private school makes a difference. It is the boy, and not the girl, who has to be well educated in order to run the family. Girls can pickup some basics from the government school.

- Poor record of SSA School in Gurgaon, SUMAN SACHDEVA, Grassroot Development, 01/05/2004, /eldoc/n21_/01may04GRD4.pdf

The declining fertility and consequent declining enrolment has resulted in the generation of numerous uneconomic schools in Pathanamthitta district. But a significant finding of this study is that the declining enrolments have not resulted in any notable surplus physical infrastructure facilities in schools and the available facilities are still poorly maintained. The reason for this phenomenon was the existing inadequacy in the physical infrastructure of these schools earlier. First, classrooms were not separated by walls; rather, long classrooms were separated with wooden partitions, which can now be removed to increase the space of the rooms. This is an improvement over the earlier situations, where previously students used to sit in congested classrooms because of large enrolments with many students attending the classes. Secondly, too many schools don’t have separate rooms for headmasters and staff. With decline in enrolment these rooms are now utilised as staff room, sports room, recreation rooms, etc. Thirdly, both private aided management and government schools have partially stopped making any fresh investment on infrastructure because enrolment has come down drastically and they face the threat of closure.

One of the advantages of declining enrolment in these schools is the attainment of better teacher-pupil ratio. Almost all schools are better off now with respect to the number of staff rooms, classrooms, library books and drinking water facilities. But a major deficiency still exists in terms of laboratory facilities, library rooms, recreation room, sports rooms and play-grounds, latrines and urinals for boys. In a few schools there is a deficiency of teachers and it can be adjusted through transfer of teachers from schools having surplus. There is a need to provide some more non-physical infrastructure in schools besides improving available facilities and maintain quality. The increase in cost per pupil so far has been towards the salary payment of the teachers but not on the improvement of quality and there should be a policy change in this regard. In sum, declining enrolments in government and private aided schools have led to improvements in physical infrastructure facilities but nowhere has it resulted in significant surplus infrastructure.

- Fertility Decline and Falling School Enrolment, J Retnakumar, P Arokiasamy, Economic & Political Weekly, 15/11/2003, /eldoc/n21_/151103EPW4827.htm

THE civic authorities are high on eu-phoria on World Literacy Day today, what with their annual enrolment-drive among primary school children ove.r-shooting the magic 25,000-mark by a substan-tial 3,433 children. But before full marks are awarded, let the gullible be warned a simple perusal of attendence sheets in the civic schools where the children were enrolled not a month ago indicates that 60 per cent of the children have dropped out. The reason? The plan failed to account for the fact that most of the children targeted were street children, who feel they can spend their time more pro-ductively outside the confines of school.
...The children, on the other hand blame the teachers for their disinterest. Most of them complain that they are either rude or ig-nore them completely, because of which they don't feel like they "belong". Some of them are also beaten, they claim. Parroting alien rhymes like "Twinkle twin-kle little star" and "A for apple" is the clincher. So, they simply leave, free uniforms notwith-standing. Says Imran (7), "I might as well con-tinue begging at traffic signals. That way, I earn at least Rs 40 and don't have to take or-ders from a teacher."

It may reasonably be argued on the other hand that the existing education up to elementary level only, in the main stream, is likely to alienate the children from labouring classes from the culture of labour and as a result complicate their problem further reducing their employability. It may not even act as a socialisation process favouring modernisation nor as a process of counter-socialisation. Instead, there may ensue a culture-chaos leading to social degradation.
It is in this connection a few words may be said about the findings of the 42nd round of National Sample Survey regarding the rea-sons for non-participation in the existing programme of elementary education. It has been found that in rural areas only about 10 per cent of 'never enrolled' children did not enrol themselves for want of schooling fa-cilities, 46 per cent of the non-enrolled could not be enrolled because of various economic reasons including domestic chores while about 29.46 per cent were not en-rolled as they were not interested in educa-tion. Likewise, percentage distribution of drop-outs by reasons for discontinuance shows thafS0.83 per cent dropped out for various economic reasons, 16.29 discontin-ued because of failures while 26 per cent dropped out for lack of interest in educa-tion. 8 The scene in urban areas also is not very different. It may be noted that lack of interest in education appears to be one of the major reasons for both non-enrolment and drop-outs, though participation in house-hold economic activities and other eco-nomic reasons together causes the largest number of drop-outs and non-enrolments. However, lack of interest in education may have some economic bearing as well. In fact, lack of interest in education is a broad category which may need some elucidations. In the absence of any visible economic benefit people may lose interest in education.
In other words, lack of interest in education may be due to uncertain eco-nomic return particularly from terminal el-ementary education. Toiling people in less advanced rural situations may not find any use of the existing elementary education. Agrarian relations in many areas may even discourage the toiling people to go for edu-cation. The culture content of the elemen-tary programme may also act as a deterrent. It may make children shy of soiling their hands. On the other hand, landholding em-ployers may not like to employ educated labour lest they create labour problems by asserting their rights.

- Universal Elementary Education Receding Goal, Poromesh Acharya, Economic & Political Weekly, 14/01/1994, /eldoc/n00_/14jan94EPW.pdf

Successful efforts to boost the enrolment rate...

TRAWL the Himachal countryside, and a primary school crops up every few kilometres, each one boasting not only well-kempt clasrooms but also a healthy student-teacher ratio of 25:1, or even lower, all for a handsome fee of Rs 2 a month. Neelam Chauhan, a teacher at the Dhyarighat primary school, recalls that the first visible signs of change appeared in the early ’90s, when schools began to proliferate. ‘‘Earlier, there was one school for seven to eight villages, now there’s one after every kilometre or two.’’

It is the fallout of a 1993 policy decision, which decreed that no child should have to walk for more than 1.5 km in the hills and 2 km in the plains to reach his school.

Besides jacking up the enrollment rate to a handsome 98.7 per cent, this also brought down the dropout rate from 33 per cent in 1994-95 to two per cent in 2003. Keen to pull this down to zero, the government has decided that no student with an attendance of over 80 per cent should be flunked till Class III.

Did you notice the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s advertisements in newspapers some time ago and did you read the fine print? After the series of advertisements from the same ministry proclaiming that free and compulsory education has now become a fundamental right. This second cycle of ads told us that only 10 million children are not in school now. This is so spectacular that it surpasses what Cuba achieved many years ago. And such a record is unsurpassed in the history of the world.

To place things in perspective, let me quote from the Approach Paper to the Tenth Plan (2002-07): “Our performance in the field of education is one of the most disappointing aspects of our developmental strategy. Out of approximately 200 million children in the age group 6-14 years, only 120 million are in schools and net attendance in the primary level is only 66 per cent of enrolment. This is completely unacceptable and the Tenth Plan should aim at a radical transformation in this situation. Education for all must be one of the primary objectives of the Tenth Plan. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which has been launched to achieve this objective, indicates a strong reiteration of the country’s resolve to give the highest priority to achieve this goal during the Plan period.” Remember the Approach Paper to the Tenth Plan was published in September 2001. Surely, the Planning Commission wasn’t lying. So, in the 6-14 age group, 80 million were out of school in 2001.

Cut to the Tenth Plan document proper, circa 2002: “Out of the approximately 207.76 million children in the 6-14 age group in 2000, the number of children not attending the schools is 40 million. Those outside the school system are mostly girls, SCs/STs children, working children, urban deprived children, disabled children and children in difficult circumstances. Providing access and motivation to these to be taken up during the Tenth Plan...”

Notice how 80 million has dramatically dropped to 40 million. Perhaps the Approach Paper had dated data. Perhaps the right figure was indeed 40 million in 2002. From 40 million in 2002 to 10 million very early in 2004 is a remarkable drop. True, there were official targets that all children should be in school by 2003, all children should complete five years of schooling by 2007 and all children should complete eight years of schooling by 2010. But these are official targets. In every country, including India, citizens don’t believe official targets. They are not meant to be achieved. This is one of the rare instances where an official target has actually been achieved. Of course, 10 million are still out of school. But at the rate at which we are going, by the time the Indian cricket team is back from Pakistan, these 10 million children will also be in school...
Therefore, 30 million children have been brought into school in 12 months. More than 80,000 have been brought into school every day.

...data revealed that over 100 per cent children were in school! A wide range of schools and centres have emerged in the last ten years to cater to a spectrum of out of school children. The decade of the 1990s was indeed a period of churning and also a decade when we made significant leap in literacy rates.

The 2001 Census of India revealed that 65.4 per cent people (75.85 among men and 54.16 among women) are literate, and that for the first time the absolute number of illiterates has actually gone down. It recorded a decadal jump of 11.8 in the literacy rate among men and 15.00 among women and hitherto backward regions like Chhattisgarh recorded a jump of 24.87 in literacy levels among women, Madhya Pradesh 20.93 jump in female literacy and Rajasthan decadal increase of 21.47 (M) and 23.09 (F). These figures are truly impressive and no doubt we have much to cheer about it. It was more than apparent that children contributed a major share to this increase — and the government's various primary education programmes, notably the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), had indeed made a difference.

Uttar Pradesh has reported the highest number of schools- 1,19,443, ahead of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. First under DPEP and later under SSA, 33, 452 new schools were opened in UP in the last decade. In 2003, 91.51 per cent of UP's primary schools were in the rural areas. Also, in the last decade or so, however, Uttar Pradesh has seen
an exponential growth in the number of private schools. UP's high Gender Parity Index of 0.90, as against the all-India GPI of 0.89 in primary classes; means there has been some success in bringing girls into school. The highest enrolment of scheduled castes is also seen in the case of Uttar Pradesh - 31.9 per cent. Uttar Pradesh however, continues to have the highest pupil teacher ratio (1:67) after Bihar (1:83).

- Progress in education, Anuradha Kumar, ONE INDIA AND ONE PEOPLE, 01/09/2004, /eldoc/n20_/sept04oio1.pdf

Primary Education and Ninth Plan Despite all initiatives taken for achieving universalisation of primary education the backlog has continued in enrollment and dropout rate is still high. Two major initiative has been taken during Eighth Plan are the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and Nutrition Support to Primary Education (Midday Meal Programme) with a view to addressing the problem of equality, access retention and quality at primary state. During the VIII Plan the enrollment of girls and children for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes has shown an increase at the primary stage. The dropout rates have also shown a declining trend.
However, there is still a long way to achieve the goal of universalisation of primary education. The Ninth plan apart from carrying out the directions given by NEP(1992)12 is committed to making the nation fully literate by 2005 AD; keeping in view the declaration of education as an aspect of Fundamental Right. The Midday Meal Scheme will be implemented in all the states to ensure regular attendance and retention in primary and middle level schools.

- Policies and Programmes to Improve School Education in Rural India - A Critical Evaluation, H.D.Dwarakanath, Social Action 01/10/2002, /eldoc/n00_/01oct02SOA10.pdf

The Uttar Pradesh Government has launched a special campaign to ensure ad-mission of the entire eligible child population to primary schools. A similar campaign, named "school chalo abhiyan", had been launched at the beginning of the academic session last year too, which paid dividends. According to State Education Department officials, while the rate of drop-outs during earlie years was about 50 per cent, last year the ratio came down to 28 per cent. The Launching the campaign for-mally here today, the Chief Minis-ter said to ensure free education to all, the Government had decid-ed to provide free text books to every student upto Class V. Till last year this facility was available only to girls and children belong-ing to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. In all 1.60 crore children would benefit from the free text-book scheme and this would entail an expenditure of Rs 50 crores to the exchequer.

According to School Education department officials here, the Government would use the funds to upgrade primary schools middle schools ``wherever necessary'', and recruit teachers. As of now, there are about 37,000 primary and middle schools in the State.

For the Brihanmumbai Ma-hapalika Shikshan Sanstha and its members constituting 10,000 municipal school teachers, the decision to start the Centre for Public Education, a non-govern-mental organisation (NGO) be-gins a new mission helping stu-dents to complete their formal education. The decision to set up the cen-tre is a fallout of the rising dropout rates in municipal school, which has lately been a cause of concern. But according to Ramesh Joshi, general secretary of the sanstha, the effort reflects the "concern our union has for improving the standards of public eduacation".
Simple logic, however, suggests that the union's concern has been influenced by the connec-tion between the rising dropout rate and the proportional decrease in the number of posts for teachers in municipal schools.
"The number of surplus teachers in civic schools is con-stantly on the rise," reveals a mu-nicipal official. True, admits Joshi, "but our concern and the consolidated ef-forts we will be putting to de-crease the dropout rate should be appreciated as unions do not do such things these days. We are also putting our money into this."

- To deter dropouts, civic union goes to school, Indian Express, 28/12/2000, /eldoc/n22_/28dec00ie1.pdf

Innovative techniques are re-quired to get children to school. In Andhra Pradesh, for example, 75 villages are child-labour free be-cause there children are enrolled in school due, in large part, to the ef-forts of the M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation (MVF) over the last seven years. The programme began in five villages by enrolling 16 chil-dren way back in 1991. By 1998, more than 80,000 children between the ages of 5-14 were enrolled by MVF in government-run schools throughout the rural areas of the Ranga Reddy district. The pro-gramme focuses on making com-munities accept this concept de-spite the conflict of interests involved.
Yet MVF accomplished it by consensus-building among parents and children themselves, in which process youth volunteers and teachers participated along with local officials and employers.

Joshi was extremely critical of UNESCO and insisted that they were passing on old data. UNESCO had then criticised gender parity ratio in India's school enrolment figures. In a report on South and East Asia, released in Paris this week, the agency has repeated the same fig-ures and painted quite a sorry state of Indian educa-tion. The fresh report gives out the same figures of O.83 as India's gender parity in-dex which means for every 1,000 boys enrolled, there are 830 girls seeking admis-sion.

The HRD Ministry felt that the Montreal-based UNESCO Institute for Sta-tistics was responsible for not being able to comprehend the Indian scenario. There was also discussion that in India's case, there was a communication gap between HRD officials and the agencys statistical institute.

- UNESCO gives HRD blushes Fresh report repeats its gender parity figures in Paris, DIPTOSH MAJUMDAR, Indian Express, 12/02/2005 N20 /eldoc/n20_/12feb04ie1.pdf

More Articles:

- Creating socially desirable attitudes and behaviour patterns, N. Ravichandran, Pioneer, 13/09/1994, /eldoc/n00_/13sept94pio1.pdf

- Akshara's pre-schools raise drop-in rate, L.C.Jain, Asian Age, 14/05/2005, /eldoc/n21_/14may05aa1.pdf

- 17,000 non-aided school students enrol for board exams, Times of India, 07/10/2002, /eldoc/Education/071002.pdf

- 'Scared of standard four board exams, students may drop out', Deepa A, Times of India, 23/09/2002, /eldoc/Education/230902.pdf

- Municipal schools may find Std IV exam tough to handle, Jayshree Bajoria, Indian Express, 07/09/2002, /eldoc/Education/070902.pdf

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Reports:

1. Elementary Education for the Poorest and other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalisation, Jha, Jyotsna & Jhingran, Dhir, Centre for Policy Research, 01/06/2002, N00.23
- Dropouts/Enrolment- pg 66-79

2. Ministry of Human Resource Development - Annual Report 2003-2004, Government of India, 01/01/2004, N00.30
- Enrolment – pg 260-261 Enrolment of SC- pg 262-263 Enrolment of ST – pg 264-265 Gross dropout rates- 266-268

3. Selected Educational Statistics 2002-2003 (As on 30th September, 2002), Government of India, 01/01/2004, R.N00.32

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1. Education for all: A Graphic Presentation (Second Edition), Tyagi, P N, NIEPA, 01/06/1994, B.N00.T3

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