New Delhi, October 07: A World Bank report on the status of secondary education in India has severely criticised the government for neglecting education from classes 9 to 12. As a result, the enrolment rate was low and dropout rate high.
The report has also found fault with India’s school infrastructure and training of teachers. Inefficient teacher deployment and insufficient schooling opportunities that do not allow re-entry into the school system were other areas of concern.
The report, ‘Secondary Education in India: Universalising Opportunity’, pointed out that each year about 48% of students are “washed out” of the education system as they reach the secondary level — 11% drop out and 37% fail. India’s gross enrolment rate (GER) at the secondary level is 40%, far inferior to the GERs of its global competitors in East Asia (with an average of 70%) and Latin America (average 82%).
Even countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, which have lower per capita incomes than India, had higher GERs. China’s GER in secondary school was 81%, Sri Lanka’s 83%, Bangladesh’s 52% and Pakistan’s 44%. The relative success of these countries suggested that India was underperforming at the secondary level, and needed to significantly increase secondary enrollment given its current GDP per capital.
–Agencies