By NNN-PTI,
New Delhi : Even as India is doing well in reducing its drop-out rates of children in schools at primary level, high rate of child malnutrition remains a major area of concern, a UN report said today.
UNESCO’s report ‘EFA Global Monitoring Report — Overcoming inequality: Why governance matters’, released today, said India would achieve net enrollment ratio of 99 per cent by 2015. But the country has to seriously look into the problem of child malnutrition, which would affect children’s achievements.
It projected that the number of drop-out students in India may fall from 7.2 million in 2006 to 0.6 million in 2015. There may be at least 29 million out-of-school children in 2015. Pakistan is projected to have 3.7 million children out of school that year.
However, India, despite its higher economic growth, has failed to make significant progress in arresting the child mortality rate and malnutrition of children. Bangladesh and Nepal have outperformed India in reducing child mortality rate, the report said.
Child malnutrition is a major barrier to Universalisation of Primary Education (UPE), affecting one third of all children under five and accounting for around 3.5 million deaths annually.(One Lakh:100,000)
Had India reduced child mortality to Bangladesh level, it would have had two lakh fewer deaths in 2000, the report said.