UNESCO lauds India’s progress: Fewer children out of school

UNESCO lauds India’s progress: Fewer children out of school

By Newsgram Staff Writer

As per UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2015, India has achieved success in getting its children into primary schools and also improved the number of girl students. However, India still lags when it comes to quality of learning outcomes, adult literacy and keeping a check on rapidly increasing private schools in urban slums.

The report which was released by HRD minister Smriti Irani also showcased that India will be the only country in South and West Asia to have an equal ratio of girls and boys in primary and senior school. It also revealed that India has reduced its out-of-school children by over 90% since 2000, when 164 countries committed themselves to six global education goals.

Aaron Benavot, the report's chief author, said that, "Improvements in early childhood education, universal primary education, the huge reduction in out-of-school children and gender equality are big achievements for India, a country where more that 220 million children are in schools."

The report alludes to the 2014-15 Annual Status of Education Report to point out wide disproportions in students' basic skills across states. It states a 'strong preference' of parents to send their children to private schools to learn in English, and draws attention to a bulging number of contract teachers and teacher absenteeism.

"Research in 2009 and 2010 in Brazil, Chile, Croatia, India, Mexico and Rwanda found that men with less education expressed discriminatory gender views, were more likely to be violent at home and, if they were fathers, were less likely to be involved in child care," cites the report.

In spite of the 'good news,' there is still a lot to achieve when it comes to literacy. The report has also mentioned that 32% of the countries, which include India, are still 'a long way' from achieving adult literacy.

Related Stories

No stories found.
logo
NewsGram
www.newsgram.com