New Delhi, November 11: Vice President Hamid Ansari today said unless universal access to elementary education is matched with quality teaching, right to education would merely become a right to schooling.
Referring to the annual status of education report 2009 which shows high student absenteeism, students’failure to recognize alphabets in grade one and doing simple mathematics, he said priority should be given to quality teaching.”We must remember that ensuring access to education without a commensurate focus on quality and outcomes will result in the right to education remaining merely a right to schooling,”he said at National Education Day function here.
To improve the education standard, issues like teacher absenteeism, single teacher schools and multi-grade teaching should be resolved, Ansari said.”We also need to address equity concerns of the disadvantaged, vulnerable social groups and urban-deprived groups with regard to access and retention,”he said. According to the survey report, over 30 per cent of children in grade-I could not recognise alphabets or know numbers from 1 to 9. Around two-thirds of the children in government schools in grade-V are unable to do division problems.
Many students, even of grade-I, are resorting to private tuition in both government and private schools across the country, it said. The report noted that while 96 per cent of the children in the age group of 6-14 years in rural India are enrolled in school, average absenteeism ranged at around 25 per cent, going up to 40 per cent absenteeism during the days of survey in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The Vice President also expressed concern over the fact that in large states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, 50 per cent of the children from Schedule Caste community do not go beyond the primary level education.
UK Minister of States for Universities and Science David Willets, who was also present on the occasion, said his country was”keen”to work with India in the areas of civil nuclear energy and in the upcoming innovation universities. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal was also present on the occasion.
–PTI–