Majority of rural childern in Haryana still prefer private schools

According to the 2018 annual status of education report (AESR) for rural areas, 55.3% of the children living in rural Haryana were found to be going to private schools in 2018 as compared to 55.8% in 2016.

The number of rural children in the 6-14 age group enrolled in private schools in Haryana continued to be over 50%, said the 2018 annual status of education report (ASER) for rural areas, released on Tuesday.

The ASER survey said about 58% students from Classes 3 to 5 were able to read the Class 2-level text. (HT Fiel /Representative Photo)

As per the report, 55.3% of the children living in rural Haryana were found to be going to private schools in 2018 as compared to 55.8% in 2016.

The ASER report added that about 6.8% girls in the 15-16 age group and 2.3% in the 11-14 age group were not enrolled in any school in the rural areas of the state.

The state has also shown an improvement of more than 5 percentage points over 2016 levels with regards to percentage of children in Class 3 who can read at Class-2 level, the report added.

The report, which also evaluated learning levels of students, said that in 2018 about 58% children from Classes 3 to 5 were able to read the Class 2-level text.

The report revealed that only half the schools in Haryana have a physical education period in the time table, a surprising aspect in a state which has traditionally excelled in sports.

“A fifth of Haryana schools do not have either a physical education teacher or any other subject teacher to supervise the physical education period,” the report said. However, the proportion of schools with a physical education teacher remained significantly higher in Haryana than the national average.

A more positive finding was that 84% in Haryana had a playground inside the school premises. A playground was accessible in more than 90% of schools in Haryana.

In 2018, ASER surveyors visited 15,998 government schools with primary sections in the state. While 9,177 of the total were primary schools, 6,821 were upper primary schools. This represented an increase of almost 13.6% over the number of upper primary schools visited in 2016.

Large increases in the number of sampled villages with upper primary schools were also visible in the state.