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India Needs to Refine its Current Education System for Better Future

Monday, 04 November 2019, 17:31 IST
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Si TeamEducation is every child's birth right. Still, India's literacy rate is just around 74 percent which is very low compared to the other neigh boring countries such as China and even smaller nations like Vietnam. China's literacy rate was 95 percent as of 2010; it was 65.5 percent in 1982 and has evolved to 96.4 percent by 2015 with an average growth rate of 10.39 percent. Vietnam had 94 percent in 2009, whereas India's literacy rate was just at 69 percent even in 2011. Education lays the foundation for the productive society; and thus lack of proper education system is one of the vital reasons for India still being a developing country.

The current Indian education system tends to practice more of rote learning, memorizing information in a repetitive manner, which can be applied in the initial stages of schooling while learning numbers, alphabets, and multiplication tables. Rote learning enable quick re-call of the facts learned, thus one can even apply this method for chemistry equations and formulas at high school levels. But, this method of learning lacks critical thinking and applications, as a result of which students are not able to apply the facts they learned in real world situations. Hence the system should implement the combination of rote learning, critical thinking and practical study where this combination would complement each other, rather than using single method of learning.

Making the Basics Right
Even today many schools lack basic amenities such as good ventilated classrooms, play grounds, well main-tained sanitation facilities and skilled teachers. Earlier it was mandatory for every school to have a play ground but now a days' many urban schools are unable to provide play grounds due to lack of space; on the contrary, the rural schools lack efficient teachers and good sanitation facility. This condition has been one of the
major causes for the early dropout of students from the school, especially the girls.

The number of girls enrollment to the school has increased (from 39 percent to 46 percent from 2007 to 2014) through the introduction of several schemes and awareness spread in the recent years. Considering the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), the enroll-ment of children between the age group six to 14 years has been above 95 percent and the number of students not enrolled in schools falls below three percent for the first time and stood at 2.8 percent in 2018. But in spite of all the efforts taken by the government, getting them complete their education is still a difficult task. Thus the administration can look into the issues and provide the basic amenities like proper sanitation facility, well trained faculties and encourage the students to pursuing their education.

Education Quality's Rate
As per to the ASER reports, the percentage of class three children who can read class two syllabus has elevated gradually over past few years, the figures have increased from 21.6 percent in 2013 to 23.6 percent in 2014 to 25.1 percent in 2016 and finally to 27.2 percent in 2018. Whereas the ASER arithmetic test indicates that class three children who were unable to even perform subtraction has not changed much from 27.6 percent in 2016 to 28.1 percent in 2018, and the government school children figures rose just from 20.3 percent in 2016 to 20.9 percent in 2018. The proportion of students in class five who were able to do division has increased slightly from 26 percent in 2016 to 27.8 percent in 2018. The overall performance of class eight students in basic arithmetic has not changed much; about only 44 percent class eight students could solve three-digit by one-digit numerical division problem correctly.

Mid-day Meal Plan
The Government of India initiated the Mid-day Meal Scheme to increase the school enrollment, boost school attendance, to check mal-nutrition, and also to bring socialization among castes. This scheme has certainly increased the number of students joining the school, with 6.6 percent increase in primary school enrollment, in particular it is 18 percent increase in class one, nine percent increase in class two and seven percent increase in class three and so on. If noticed, the percentage rate has went down with the increase in class grades. There are various reasons for a child to drop out from the school such as poverty, family migration, child marriage, inaccessibility of schools and many more. When the parents are not financially stable, education is the first thing to give up and the child is left with no option other than supporting the family by turning as one of its bread winners.

The various measures are already initiated to improve the literacy rate of India, but the lack of its proper implementation by the respective authorities has led to failure of measures taken. Thus the sole way out for the existing problem is education, where a proper education can fill the gap and give the responsibility to every individual in their respective field.