Spending High On Education,But No Cheerful Results

India has been marked as 72nd out of 73 nations in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Competition even after fielding students from its best states like Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The quality of Indian Education is confirmed by the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER).

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Right To Education Act at education has produced no quality gains at all. SSA is spending up from Rs.7,166 crore in 2005-06 to Rs.21,000 crore last year. But still, parents are shifting wholesale from free Government schools to private options like Schools and Tuition.

Comparing the last five years, private school enrollment has done from 18.7% to 25.6% of the total, with Kerala already at 54%. Spending higher, the government and parents has not yet seen a better outcome. Most of the studies have revealed that private schools have better outcomes, but the shift to private education has not yet achieved that at a large scale level.

On visit by the surveyors for 13,000 schools, they say the percentile of student absenteeism was 50% whereas teachers is 45%, which neither seems to be motivated. Defective RTE is expecting all private schools to attain impossible norms on playgrounds in areas with sky-high land prices, salaries on par with government teachers by 2013.

What do you say? Will the government dare to close down defaulting schools? Is there a chance to do so? But, its also true that these defaulting schools serve half of the country.