Click to play videoNew Delhi: The 27 per cent OBC quota reserves seats in higher education. But what about primary education? According to the HRD Ministry's own figures, almost 90 per cent of India's children drop out of school and never even make it to higher education.
Meet 13 year old Amar Singh. These are his education plans: "Barwin tak padhonga papa ki dukan par lagoonga (I will study till Class XII and then manage my father’s shop).”
He is not too ambitious, one might say. Or that he is very practical. This class VI student can't read or write well.
He has failed already and he does not fall in the OBC category to avail of any benefit of quota in higher educational institutions if he were to reach that level - the chances of which are very low.
Quota or no quota, for Amar, a student of a government school in Delhi, education will invariably take a backseat soon after he steps out of the gates of his school.
"Less than 90 per cent of our children in the college age group of 18-24 actually cross high school. That means they are not even eligible for admission in colleges. Ninety per cent of children in the age group of 6-18 drop out, so if there is such a huge number of dropouts we have a quantitative problem, which means not enough graduates,” says social activists, Barun Mitra.
In 2007 the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed concern over the alarming dropout rates. He said, "In almost half the districts in the country, higher education enrolments are abysmally low, almost two-thirds of our universities and 90 percent of our colleges are rated below average on quality parameters.”
Even when the Gross Enrollment Rates went up in secondary schools in the year 2004, it was abysmal at nearly 39 per cent in the upper secondary school. The upper primary school also recorded a high drop out rate at 52.8 per cent.
The quality of education at the elementary level is one reason behind this trend. An NCERT survey this year showed that a majority of students in government schools are not comfortable with fractions and decimals and can't even comprehend stories.
Shortage of teachers remains another cause for worry. Says a teacher of a school in Kundla MP, “I teach all the five subjects.”
Experts say implementing reservation in higher education is difficult unless children first cross the boundaries of their school. Only a burning desire to study that can keep it going.
Today while politicians tinker around with caste quotas, India has the largest number of illiterates in the world.
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