THE POPULAR REACTION IN indian academia and industry to the tenth consecutive Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014, published by the globally respected Mumbai-based NGO Pratham (estb.1994) and formally released in Delhi on January 13, is that the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) northern states of the Hindi belt are depressing national averages and obscuring improved learning outcomes in other academically and industrially advanced states of the Indian Union.
Undoubtedly, the declining trend in learning outcomes of rural India primaries as reported by Pratham, which mobilised 30,000 youth (mainly undergrad students) to survey 341,070 households and test 569,229 students in 577 rural districts countrywide, is alarming. For instance, only 25 percent of children in class III can read a class II text fluently. This number improves to under half in class V. Even in class VIII just before children enter high school, 25 percent of them cannot read and comprehend class II texts adequately. Maths learning outcomes ” which hindutva zealots and academics claim originated in ancient India ” are even worse.
In 2012, a mere 26.3 percent of class III children could do a two-digit subtraction sum. Two years later, only 25.3 percent can.
These devastating conclusions of ASER 2014, indicative of reckless promotion of ill-prepared children into higher classes, have provoked nationwide ” albeit fleeting ” outrage.
œWhile government concentrates on revving up the economy, the poor state of Indian education is a ticking demographic time bomb. In a country with the largest proportion of young people, economists have long talked about the demographic dividend, but if large sections of these Indians remain functionally uneducated and unskilled, this demographic dividend can soon turn into a demographic disaster, thundered a lead editorial in the Times of India (January 15).
ASER 2014 also blasts the myth that learning outcomes in the rural hinterlands of industrially advanced states are much better than national averages. In Maharashtra, where 27,953 children in 33 districts and 975 villages were tested, only 53.5 percent of class V children can read class II textbooks ” a decline from 59.5 percent in 2013. Moreover, the percentage of class V children who can do elementary two-digit division sums is a paltry 18.9 in India™s most industrially advanced state, which reportedly accounts for 25 percent of the country™s industrial output.
Unsurprisingly, children™s learning outcomes in private primaries in rural Maharashtra are significantly better than in government schools. The percentage of children in class III in private primaries who can read words at 78.4 percent is higher than 70.9 percent in government school primaries. Moreover, 76.6 percent of private school children in class III can recognise numbers (from 1-10) compared to 61.6 percent in government schools. Little wonder that over 20 percent of class I-V and over 55 percent of class VI-VIII children in rural Maharashtra have fled to fee-levying private primaries notwithstanding the fact that government schools are free-of-charge and provide a free mid-day meal as well.
œA 100 million children have gone through school in the last decade without basic reading and math skills. The experts were busy working out holistic ideals with not a clue about how to implement them on the ground. The government of India, under the influence of these experts, took a long time to move to a learning outcomes orientation and stopped well short of what is urgently needed, laments Madhav Chavan, promoter-chief executive of Pratham and one of the most well-respected champions of qualitative universal elementary education  in India.
With learning outcomes of children in foundational primary education in rural India, which is experiencing mass migration of youth into urban factories and the services sector, continuing to decline, the implications on skilling costs and productivity of India Inc in the new globalised era are too dreadful to contemplate. Yet year after year the huge body of work and alarm bells rung by the ASER surveys continue to be ignored. And going by current indications, the newly inducted BJP-led NDA government at the Centre and its mascot and messiah prime minister Narendra Modi, are unlikely to be any different.
Indrajit Dutta (Mumbai)