New Delhi: If the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the Economic Survey 2021-22 is anything to go by, children in rural areas have moved out of private institutions to government ones in all three age groups (6-14; 11-14; 15-16).
The report pointed out the shutdown of low-cost private schools, financial distress of parents, free facilities in government schools, and families migrating back to villages as the most probable reasons.
Based on the report, additional support has been recommended for the government school system if this reverse migration trend continues.
The survey though failed to throw light on the real-time impact on the education sector thanks to repeated lockdowns. The lack of the latest available comprehensive official data forced the survey to rely on different smaller surveys by the government and by citizen-led non-government agencies.
Acknowledging the disruption in the academics due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the survey found that “enrolment in the age cohort of 15-16 years continued to improve as the number of not enrolled children in this age group declined from 12.1 per cent in 2018 to 6.6 per cent in 2021,” reported The Times of India.
However, children (age group 6-14 years) in the ‘not currently enrolled in schools’ category leapt from 2.5 per cent in 2018 to 4.6 per cent in 2021.
According to the survey, the government-run school system would need enhanced support “in terms of teacher-pupil ratio, classroom space, and teaching/ learning materials, to absorb students migrating from private schools and from urban to rural areas.”
The problem of school dropouts and learning gaps especially for children from marginalised sections have always been a major challenge in the Indian education system. The survey showed how those problems got aggravated by the academic disruption caused by the pandemic and subsequent switch to online mode of learning.
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