By IANS
New Delhi : The number of unlettered children in rural areas of India has gone down by nearly 33 percent in a finding that is bound to have a positive effect on the country’s overall literacy rate.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by the non-government body Pratham found that only 4.2 percent children in rural India in the six to 14 age group are out of school as against 6.6 percent in 2006.
Among the states, Orissa tops the list for most out-of-school children (eight percent) followed by Meghalaya (7.5 percent) and Kerala is at the bottom, according to the study released in the capital.
While only 0.4 percent of rural students in Kerala are not enrolled in schools, the figure is 0.5 percent in Goa, one percent in Himachal Pradesh, 1.1 percent in Puducherry and 1.2 percent in Tamil Nadu.
The report surveyed over 700,000 children and visited 13,000 schools across the country. Over 500 representatives of Pratham visited over 16,000 villages before compiling the final report.
Rural India accounts for nearly 70 percent of the school going children in the country.
Among the states Bihar and Rajasthan have made considerable progress. While 12.5 percent rural children from Bihar were out of school in 2006, the figure was 6.5 percent in 2007. Similarly, from Rajasthan’s record of 10.8 percent children out of school in 2006, it was 6.5 percent by the end of 2007.
“Across the country, the proportion of children in standard one who could not even recognise alphabets has dropped from 38.4 percent in 2006 to 31.9 percent in 2007.
“The proportion of children in standard one and two who can recognise letters, read words or more has gone up nationally from 73.3 percent in 2007,” the study revealed.
Besides, 50.1 percent of rural children can read letters and words.
“A high percentage of young children in Jammu and Kashmir and in the northeastern states can read letters (in English) and more. A higher percentage of older school-going children (standard three to five) in most of the northeastern states are able to read English sentences as compared to other states,” the study said.
“In Gujarat, where English is introduced in class 5, 74 percent of children learn to read alphabets or write words by standard 4. But by standard 6, 25.8 percent children can read sentences, well below the national average of 42.4 percent,” it unveiled.
Overall, states like Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are the front-runners in showing improvement.
India’s literacy rate currently stands at a little over 65 percent.