Children of uneducated mothers more likely to drop out

An annual report finds the state of education in private schools in poor light, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Jan 5, 2007, 20:54:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Children whose mothers are not educated are more likely to drop out from schools and their learning ability is also less, says the Annual State of Education Report, 2006, released on Friday by Deputy Chairperson of Planning Commission Montek Singh Aluwalia.

The survey of 3.18 lakh households covering 90 per cent of the districts in the country found the state of education in public schools in poor light.

About 55 per cent of students in Class V in India cannot divide three digits by one digit correctly. And, about 47 per cent students cannot read a Class II-level text fluently.

There is no change in these percentages as compared to 2005. Although gains were reported from Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, low reading levels in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are a still matter of concern, the report said.

The good news for education planners is that there has been four to five per cent improvement in learning abilities in the lower classes - Class I and II - in the last one year.

About 73 per cent children can recognise alphabets and 59.3 per cent can recognise numbers up to 100. About 60 per cent students are also able to solve mathematical problems.

Aluwalia, however, said that the situation was not so bad as learning abilities of children in the western world was also not very high.

"Even in US, 50 per cent students may fail elementary learning ability test. What we need to do is to judge our children's learning ability as compared to children in the developed world," he said. Madhav Chavan of Prathan, the NGO that conducted the study, readily agreed.

Poor learning ability of children is related to education of mothers, apart from poor classroom teaching skills.

The survey found that over 52 per cent mothers have never been to school and about 53 per cent cannot read Class I-level text. The survey also hinted at poor education ability of literate mothers as 95 per cent of those who have completed class V or more cannot read a Class I text.

Lower education of mothers have a direct relation with dropout rate. Dropout rate of children of uneducated mothers was about 10 per cent as compared to 2.5 per cent of their educated counterparts.

The survey indicated at more gender discrimination by un-schooled mothers as only 8.4 per cent of their sons were out of school as compared to 11.4 per cent daughters.

With regard to relation between child's learning ability and mother's education, the study found that 25 per cent of children of un-schooled mothers were unable to recognise even alphabets as compared to 12.8 per cent of schooled mothers.

Chavan called for a new approach to integrate adult literacy with school education. "Education of mothers is important to improve quality of education in public schools. Schools should be centres of knowledge for all," he suggested.

The survey also found that although enrolment in India has steadied at 93.2 per cent in the 6-14 age group many parents sent their children to school at an age of five. "It indicates that rural India needs kindergarden schools," Chavan said.

Aluwalia wanted more than enrolment figures. He said there should be data on the attendance of children and minimum hours they spend in schools.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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