By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS
New Delhi : A mere 45.04 percent of students passing out of government-run primary schools – up to Class 5 – in India score 60 percent marks or more, reveals a new survey.
Tripura and Orissa fare the worst with less than 15 percent of students scoring 60 percent or above, says the latest District Information System for Education (DISE) data collected by the human resource development (HRD) ministry.
“Girls have performed slightly better than boys and the percentage of girls and boys passing with 60 percent and above respectively is 45.12 percent and 44.96 percent,” said the HRD ministry survey which covered all districts.
Sixty percent or more is considered as first division by many educational boards in the country.
Among the states that are doing really badly is Tripura, which is at the bottom of the pile with just 13.89 percent of students scoring 60 percent.
Orissa follows suit with just 14.5 percent scoring 60 percent.
Similarly, nearly 26.5 percent students from Assam, 37 percent of students from Bihar, nearly 37 percent from Uttar Pradesh, 21 percent in Madhya Pradesh, 28 percent from Jharkhand, 23 percent from Nagaland and nearly 46 percent of students from West Bengal scored 60 percent in Class 5.
Anil Sadgopal, an eminent educationist, said the dismal performance in primary schools should open the minds of the authorities at both the state and central levels.
“Many primary schools in India don’t have basic infrastructure like proper buildings and blackboards. Thousands of teachers in schools are either unskilled or don’t attend classes,” Sadgopal, a member of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), told IANS.
“Let’s be realistic and start working on our elementary school system,” he added.
However, the DISE data also revealed that most southern and western states are doing really well. These include Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
One noticeable feature of the survey is that across the states, girls are doing better than boys. In Andhra Pradseh, 68.57 percent girls scored 60 percent and above as against 68.55 percent boys.
In Maharashtra, over 56 percent girl students scored 60 percent marks as against 54 percent boys. In Tamil Nadu, nearly 70 percent of girls scored 60 percent and above marks as against 65 percent boys. Expressing concern over the state of elementary education in the country, HRD Minister Arjun Singh has said the country has a long way to go in improving education at the ground level.
“Unless we improve our education at the primary and secondary levels, we cannot improve the higher education system,” he said in an international higher education symposium Monday.
“Unless our teachers are trained, they cannot impart quality education to our students in schools. Only trained teachers can produce good students,” he said, making a point on the need for more quality teachers.