Official entry age for primary school in India is 6 years. and the country is also committed to give free education for all children upto the age of 14 years. How many of the children in this age group of 6-14 years are really in the schools? While it is difficult to give a precise answer to the question several indicators can help assess the situation. The most important indicator pointing to the participation of children in schooling is the enrollment ratio. Table 2.5 presents the gross enrollment ratios (GER), which represents school enrollment as a ratio of the total population in the age group of 6-14 years.

Gross enrollment ratios have remained relatively static during the decade. This is particularly true of the figures for boys at the primary stage (6-11 years). Corresponding figures for girls show an increase of about 6 percentage points. However, the figures indicate a decline with respect to enrolment at the upper primary stage. This is possibly due to several factors. One of these is the fact that children are not enrolled exactly at the official age specified by the state, which also varies from one state to another. As revealed by the figures related to proportion of official age children in Class I, the spread is quite large. While in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, more than 60 per cent children are enrolled in Class I when they are five year old, the level of enrollment is highest at six year in most of the states, and is quite high even for the seven year old category . (See corresponding table in data on 18 Indicators given in the Annex). This could be due to lack of school readiness and the fact that the number of first generation learners is very large in educationally backward States. Further, special enrollment drives carried out to bring even older children into the primary schools have also influenced the age composition of the school going population. Table 2.6 gives the current GER and NER figures for different States.

Chart 2.2: Net Attendance Ratio (1996)

Note: Estimates made by National Sample Survey Organization, 1996.

On the whole, as against a GER of 90.3 per cent (98.5 per cent Boys and 81.5 per cent Girls) in primary education, the NER comes to only 71.1per cent (Boys: 77.7 per cent and Girls: 64 per cent). Seventeen States/UTs have a lower NER than the country’s average while fifteen states/UTs have a higher NER than the national average. Whatever be the reasons for slow growth and even if computation methods are responsible for certain amount of under-reporting, the enrollment ratios indicate the major challenge that the country faces in bringing all children to school. Seen from another angle, one could say that in 1990s the GERs both for boys and girls at primary stage are getting stabilised. This may have reduced considerably the number of under-age and over-age children in classes I-V. Comparability of NER with net attendance ratios (Chart 2.2) also indicates to the stability being achieved in terms of enrollment and attendance pattern. Two broad issues emerging from the data presented above have to be specially noted:

• Low enrollment ratios is not a problem in all parts of the country. Several states show a NER of more than 80. Even traditionally underdeveloped states such as Madhya Pradesh show a significantly high NER of 88.1. Yet some states such as , Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal seem to face a serious problem demanding immediate attention.
• Though female enrollment has shown a significant rise during the last few years, gender disparity does not seem to be getting reduced over the years. Figures show that there are at least as many girls outside the school as there are inside in the age group of 6-14 years. Particular attention in this regard is required in some states such as Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. In fact, not even two out of ten girls in the age group 6-11 year in Uttar Pradesh are in the primary school.

Recognizing the problems of regional and gender disparities, the central and state governments have initiated several special measures. Following points in this regard need specific mention, though it may take longer to see measurable impact of these strategies and specific measures:

• The decision to modify the traditional distance and population size norm and opening primary education facilities in smaller habitations has yielded positive results as revealed by the figures for Madhya Pradesh or to some extent even Andhra Pradesh which have a high proportion of people living in small habitations located in hilly and tribal areas. It is proposed to strengthen such efforts and extend the programme to cover all parts of the country.
• Another major effort that seems to have succeeded in bringing more children into the fold of education is that of participatory school mapping and micro-planning as demonstrated by the Lok Jumbish project in Rajasthan. This is being implemented in many parts of the country under DPEP as well as other EFA projects.
• The third strategy being adopted for increasing enrollment and attendance of children in primary education and reduce inter-regional disparity is that of decentralized planning. Recognizing that there are wide disparities within each state and state level planning may not be able to fully respond to local considerations, the DPEP which covers more than 200 districts has adopted a district specific approach for planning primary education. Based on the experienced gained from DPEP and other EFA projects. It is being proposed to extend this approach to all parts of the country and prepare district elementary education plans in an integrated manner.
• The children who are still to be enrolled for schooling at primary stage constitute a more difficult group in terms of their socio-economic and cultural background. This is more so for the girl child and the problem is more acute and complex at upper primary stage as clearly indicated by the combined GERs for this stage. These complexities demand innovative modes of providing primary education through formal and non-formal channels. With this in view several programmes in the government as well as non-government sectors have organized alternative schools, residential camps and schools for adolescent girls. The results of these efforts have been quite encouraging.

It is well known that mere provision of access and enrollment of children in the school are not enough for achieving the goal of education for all. These should be coupled with suitable measures to ensure that children stay in the school to complete the full cycle of primary education. Though most states of India have done well in enrolling more and more children in the school, lack of capacity of the schools to retain the children in the school has been a serious problem. Efforts have been made for last several decades to ensure that children do not drop-out from the school after initial enrollment.

Regular information on drop out and retention of children is not collected in all the states. Therefore getting accurate data on the regular participation level of children in the schools and their progress through various classes to completion of the full cycle is not possible to compute as this is also affected by failure rates. This is further complicated, as most of the states follow a principle of automatic promotion in the initial classes of the primary cycle. However, in order to assess the progress made during the last decade, five indicators have been computed, namely, rate of drop-out, (Chart 2.3) rate of repetition, rate of survival from class I through class V, efficiency index in terms of average number of years taken by a learner to complete the initial five year cycle and rate of transition from primary to upper primary stage. One can easily see from the data presented in chart 2.3 a significant decline in the drop-out rates between 1991 and 1999.

* Provisional

** Estimated (5 percent decrease at I-V and 2 percent decrease at VI-VIII)

This is particulary pronounced in case of girls as between 1991 and 1995, it declined from about 48 percent to 38 percent at the primary stage (classes I to V). If the same trend continues, as the estimates indicate, 7 out of 10 girls joining the primary school in 1999 are likely to remain in the system at least for five years. It can also be observed that the difference between boys and girls is getting narrower. The situation however is not quite encouraging with respect to upper primary stage.

The technique of ‘school mapping’ is Lok Jumbish’s special contribution to the task of mobilizing people for education. This begins with LJ workers (or a local NGO) building a rapport with members of the community who are interested in improving education standards in the village. These members called the prerak dal (inspirational group), are given a short training for the task of mapping, which they undertake along with the LJ workers or the NGO. School mapping refers to the exercise of depicting every household in the village visually on a simple map. Small symbols indicate the schooling status of every household member in the 5-14 age group. The whole exercise is an occasion for interacting with the community. When the map is ready, it is possible to see which household needs special help, and to discuss the schooling facilities required in the village. The prerak dal and the local community draw up a set of proposals based on the mapping data .The proposals usually relate to two issues : the need for new schools and non-formal centres and the improvement of the existing ones . These proposals are sent to a block level committee, which is the sanctioning authority.

The school mapping allows the ordinary, even non-literate villager to participate in a field survey and make proposals - a tremendous capacity-building exercise. Prompt follow-up to these proposals further builds up the confidence of the community.

(Source: Public Report on Basic Education in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999)