While Government programmes are essential, and have achieved much, parents need to aim high. This alone can improve education indicators, including dropouts
There are not too many good news coming from the education sector. From the heart of the country to the capital city, to others beyond, disturbing trends have emerged, which should make our policy-makers sit back and take note. As per reports, Delhi has seen a staggering 1.38 lakh students dropping out from its municipal schools in the last five years. Meghalaya saw an equally high figure of about one lakh students drop out in the last four years. Over 1,300 students, out of a total of 77,631, dropped out of Greater Chennai Corporation’s 281 schools in 2016-2017. The story is strikingly similar in many parts of the country with variations here and there. While Karnataka has a dropout rate of 2.3 per cent, which is below the national average, Rajasthan stands at 8.39 per cent, double the national rate, and Manipur stands at 18 per cent. In Telangana, a drop out rate of 22.37 per cent stares menacingly.
According to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the national dropout rate at the primary level was 4.34 per cent in 2014-2015, and it was even higher at the secondary level, at 17.86 per cent. This is problematic and calls for all round efforts to tackle the problem of dropout.
The reasons for this are varied and complex, and aptly summed up by Meghalaya Education Minister who recently said in the Assembly, “There are many factors and reasons for drop-outs, which include economic condition of the rural masses, poor infrastructure of existing State Government schools, lack of access to schools due to small habitations, teacher behaviour and lack of training, besides domestic and sibling-care responsibility for girls.”
Broadly, we can categories all the problems into three categories. First, existential — pertaining to social and economic conditions of people, access. Second, infrastructural — lack of classrooms, teachers, technology. Third, motivational — low or no aspirational quotient of people in the medium and lower social hierarchy.
Over the decades, the Government’s focus has ben adequately firmed up on addressing the first two set of problems. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has been operational since 2000-2001 to provide for a variety of interventions for universal access and retention, bridging of gender and social category gaps in elementary education and improving the quality of learning.
SSA interventions include opening of new schools and alternate schooling facilities, construction of schools and additional classrooms, toilets and drinking water, provisioning for teachers, regular teacher in service training and academic resource support, free textbooks and uniforms and support for improving learning achievement levels and outcome. With the passage of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, changes have been incorporated into the SSA approach, strategies and norms. The changes are guided by principles of equity, access, gender, centrality of teachers.
To address the motivational issues, the RTE Act makes a provision for more active participation of parents in monitoring the implementation of provisions and facilitating children to learn at their own pace, without fear, anxiety or stress. However, one critical factor that may have been missing in all these provisions — and is certainly full of challenges — is the focus on enhancing the aspirational quest of parents. One of the reasons why the pulse polio programme became a massive success was because parents were encouraged to think — or raise their aspirations — to keep their children healthy, and being polio-free was important for this.
While Government programmes are comprehensive and have achieved much over the years, the challenges of universalising elementary education can’t be achieved unless we undertake some dramatic steps. Creating a pull factor by upgrading the aspirational quest of parents is the need of hour and one which can possibly improve our education indicators, including a sharp decline in drop out rates. Aggressive mass media campaign using traditional and modern tools of development communication, use of credible brand ambassador as in pulse polio programme, and strategic inclusion of communication modules into the ongoing programs like SSA and RTE shall go a long way in educating parents and motivating them to try and aspire for a better future for their children — and telling them that one factor that can ensure this is good and sustained education.
(The writer is a strategic communications professional)