The education system is the foundation of any prosperous country. India is one of such country. During the last decades India has rapidly progressed and has tried to revamp its primary education system. The DISE or the District Information System for Education had informed in 2012 that about 95% of the Indian rural populations are within one kilometer range of the primary schools.
The 2011 survey of Annual Status of Education Report or ASER reported that 93% of the rural children enrolled in the primary schools in their areas, without any huge respect in gender basis. But even though the children have enrolled highly in the schools, their literacy rate is very low. The 2011 ASER reported that only 43.2% of the total student studying in the fifth standard could read at a second standard level.
The main problems
The Indian education system is still lagging to the other developing countries in respect of literacy rate. The causes of this lagging are as diverse as the country itself. The principal reason is the bad education quality, which can result from a host of issues. Some of them are given below:-
Ø High absence rate: One of the major factors ruining the quality of education in India is the highest absence rate in rural primary schools. During the year 2003, about 25% of the rural primary-school teachers were absent on any given day.
Ø Insufficient teacher support and qualification: The teachers working in rural school have to teach many different classes and the textbooks are far too hard than the understanding level of students. So the teachers have to remember various things in which sometimes they fail. The rural school teachers also don’t even have pre-service education. So they often fail to give their full motivation to students. Including this is the poor qualification of the teachers. The 2008-2009 censuses also reported that 45% of the teachers were not graduated.
Also sometimes the fault is related to the nature of the teaching i.e.
Ø Bad teaching method: Repetitive learning is an educational trendsetter in India. Primary school teachers of rural India try to teach their students by making them memorize the parts of their texts one by one. Usually they don’t even tell their students the meaning of the text which is followed by diminutive understanding skills in the students
Sometime the medium of studies also creates problem. The details of this problem are given below:
Ø Dialectic variety: At last, the variety of languages of India creates problems in its education system. The teachers also have to learn various languages in order to educate the student coming from different cultural and regional background. Some children from rural India even cease to speak basic sentences in the English language. Even some teachers can`t speak or write English.
The efforts for revamping the education system
The government has learned the needs of the educational system and is trying to revamp the Indian educational system. They have made many programs to achieve it, like the midday meal plan in which free meals are served every school day in government schools. It has worked great as the class one enrollment has been increased by 20.8% just by adding a midday meal.
Conclusion
The Indian education system has enhanced over the three decades. Every child can go to school. Enrollment and attendance are at their fullest. The teachers are well qualified. Due to the right to education act (RTE) the education quality has dramatically increased. But the verbal diversity, teacher support issue, economical issue, low funding and technology use in classrooms still affect the education system in India.