Hardly any students attend; teacher-children ratio not adhered to; no uniform and textbooks for children, report finds
Representative Photo: Savvy Soumya Misra / CSE Government schools in Bihar are in danger of being replaced by “cheap and dingy” tuition centres as the current state of primary education in the state is abysmal, according to a report released by Jan Jagran Shakti Sanghathan (JJSS), a registered trade union of unorganised sector workers, on August 4, 2023.
The JJSS had carried out a survey of 81 government primary and upper-primary schools in the Katihar and Araria districts of Bihar, in January-February 2023.
None of these schools met the norms of the Right to Education (RTE) Act.
“The gaps are wide. To illustrate, school attendance is abysmal: barely 20 per cent of pupils were present on the day of the survey. Most of these students come from poor families and marginalised communities,” a statement by JJSS noted.
There are acute teacher shortages, with only 35 per cent of primary schools and five per cent upper-primary schools meeting RTE norms on pupil-teacher ratio (one teacher per 30 children).
Just 58 per cent of the appointed teachers were found on duty at the time of the survey. “The dismal condition of government schools has led to a heavy reliance on private tuitions,” the statement added.
“The Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme for textbooks and uniforms forces a cruel choice on poor families: buying textbooks/uniforms or basic necessities. The result is not hard to guess: many children have no textbooks or uniform. Almost all teachers are opposed to the DBT system for textbooks,” according to the note.
The authors of the report, titled Where Are the Kids?, said the schooling system suffered a heavy blow during the COVID-19 crisis.
“A majority of teachers feel that “most” children in Classes 1-5 had forgotten how to read and write by the time schools reopened last year. No serious measures have been taken to help these students,” they stated in the statement.
Urgent action is required to address the crisis of government schooling in Bihar. The authors recommended compliance with the RTE Act, providing eggs every day with the midday meal and a ban on tuitions during school hours would be a good start.
Jean Dreze, noted economist under whose guidance the survey was conducted, told Down To Earth, “The first step is to understand why daily attendance rates are so low in Bihar, because it is not obvious. This would require a larger survey focused on children and their families rather than on schools alone.”
Then various initiatives could be considered, such as banning private tuitions during school hours, adding a daily egg to the midday meal, better grievance redressal facilities and a high-profile school attendance drive, he added.
“Compliance with the Right to Education Act would also be a useful roadmap. The main obstacle right now is the apathy of the state government towards the schooling crisis,” according to Dreze.
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