Education as envisaged by Swami Vivekananda must be a tool by which the strength of the mind is increased, Intellect is expanded and by which one should be able to stand in one’s own feet. Quality education is the one which focuses on the holistic development of the child. But, in India, the world bank study on status of education has sounded a warning that majority of the young population going to the school has learning levels below that of the children in similar age group in advanced countries.

When we speak about quality and affordable education, especially for the children from the disadvantaged socio economic conditions in rural India, we must also look into the mindset of the people, per capita income of rural folk, facilities available and the hurdles faced by them.

Let me just focus on the scenario in the rural north Karnataka, where the parents who are well off prefer residential schools in the cities or towns for educating their male children. The reason for this option is many. First and the foremost is the availability of the quality school in their nearest surroundings. What is a quality school? Is it a school with good faculties and facilities? When we speak about faculties, especially in rural private school, retaining the faculty is a big task. The faculties of any quality, selected through interviews and selection tests gets better through various in-service programmes,workshops and training etc. Once they feel they are better off; they try to move out to cities and towns in search of better amenities. Then there is always a question, what about the government schools?

In government schools attendance of the staff and the students is a big challenge. The government has introduced mid day

meal programme for the students, which has improved the students attendance but not learning. If we can really transform the government schools into a real place of transferring knowledge, and if we are serious about it, the government need not invest crores of rupees in RTE to educate the poor. We also should think seriously whether, through RTE the needy are really benefitted?

If we can really transform the government schools into areal place of transferring knowledge, and if we are serious about it, the government need not invest crores of rupees in RTE to educate the poor

The second reason for choosing a residential school is because, in day scholar schools after school hours, once the child reach back home, they won’t be able to learn unless they are self motivated, genuine and has a craze for learning. Many parents leave their children independent for learning. They won’t be able to check what exactly he/she is involved in. They feel that the entire responsibility of educating their child lies in the hands of the school as they are paying for it. Also they are not in position to be available to their children as they are busy with their farms and are sometimes staying in distant farm houses.

Another challenge faced by rural India is availability of quality school in their reachable surroundings. In rural Arunachal Pradesh you cannot dream of quality school in their reachable area due to limited population. To serve rural India, one should have a mind prone to service and sacrifice.

Education in present days is the responsibility of every individual. For the lack in quality, let us not completely tarnish the school and teaching community for all the unwanted incidents that we come across through media. Of course, stringent action needs to be taken against the culprits. To bring out the innate capabilities and creativity of the child, the teaching community requires a free and undaunted mind. A teacher requires constant motivation and appreciation to work better. When the parents pressurize teachers for marks, and if the performance of the teacher is evaluated on the basis of the scores made by the children, the teacher may not be able to do much in improving the quality of education.

The need of the hour is to improve the quality, we at K J Somaiya English Medium School, which is located in rural north Karnataka, concentrate on building self esteem and confidence in students. This confidence and self worth makes the students work harder. We believe that, for better learning children require more motivating and nurturing environment, which we always stick on. We should also think seriously about the syllabus and the number game. In the run of completing syllabus and scoring marks do we sometime forget the under achievers? May be that is the reason, our children are not able to master the numeracy and literacy skills.