promises free and compulsory education to all children between the age
six to 14, on Friday completed a year since its implementation.
However, the fact that more than eight million children are still out
of school shows that a lot more needs to be done.
Releasing the RTE report card in the capital on Friday, Human Resource
Development Minister Kapil Sibal said: "It's unfortunate that
81,50,619 children in the age group of six to 14 are still out of
school. We have to bring all those children to school."
The report which analyzed the overall primary education scenario of
the country, said that the total enrollment in the primary level in
2009-10 was 13,34,05,581 while in the upper primary level it was
5,44,67,415.
The percentage of girls enrolled in the primary level was 48.46
percent while in the upper primary level it was 48.12 percent.
The total number of elementary schools, government and aided, in
2009-10 was 11,20,968. And the total number of teachers was 44,77,429.
"21 percent teachers were found to be without professional
qualification and nine percent schools were with a single teacher,"
Sibal said, citing the report.
"It was found that 508,000 additional teachers are required and in
2010 we approved the recruitment of 455,000 teachers," he added.
According to Sibal, the real problem now is no longer access to
education but its quality.
"Access to education is no longer the real problem now, it's quality
of education and for that we have set parameters under the RTE Act
like infrastructure in schools, pupil-teacher ratio and professionally
qualified teachers," he said.
The student classroom ratio across the country was found to 32:1. As
many as 93 percent schools were found to have drinking water facility,
59 percent with girls toilet and 47 percent with ramps for the benefit
of physically disadvantaged children.
Some of the not so encouraging figures came as far as the notification
of rules in the states was concerned - 15 states had notified the
rules and only 11 had constituted state commissions for protection of
child rights, meant to monitor implementation of the Act.
"However the level of commitment in the states is good. This is just
the first year, things will be even better next year," Sibal said.
Sounding excited about the latest census data, Sibal went on to say
that India will be completely literate by the year 2020.
"The Millenium Development Goal says that India should achieve rate
of 72 percent by 2015 but we have already gone ahead of that figure.
The census data says that our literacy rate is 74.4 percent," he said.
"What is even more encouraging is that the female literacy rate has
gone up by 12 percent," he added. IANS
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