Education in India: NGOs continue to grapple with school dropouts, manpower shortage
You are able to read this article, because you received the gift of education, but not everybody is lucky to learn to read and write. As per India’s Right to Education Act, 2009, it is mandatory for children between the age group of six to 14 years to receive free and compulsory education. Though the statistics state otherwise.
According to Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) there are nearly eight million children in India who never start school. Even the majority of those who are enrolled for elementary education, drop-out before reaching class 10. Let us take the example of the state of Maharashtra, population-wise, the second largest state in India. For an average enrolment of 10 million students at the primary level of school education over the period of a decade, from 2005 to 2014, the drop-out rate is given below.
“When I started as a daily wage worker at the age of 14, I could not give enough time to studies, and left school. After 3 years, I started looking for a better job like an office boy but because of my poor educational background, I didn’t qualify,” said Dharmesh Sawant, a slum dweller in Mumbai.
Sawant continued, “I decided to complete my education and took class 8 examination when I was 17 year old (average age of class 8 students is 13–14 years). I cleared higher secondary (class 12) exam in 2016 only. I realised I love the digital world, and enrolled myself in an animation and video effects course.”
There are millions of children in India who are working as child labourers, beggars etc because they don’t know what else to do to make a living. Not all are fortunate like Sawant who realised the importance and power of education.
To address this core issue, the Government of India introduced the Right to Education Act, 2009, as a Fundamental Right. Though it was a major milestone in the history of India, it continues to face several major roadblocks like student enrolments and drop-outs, poor performance, and a struggle to find enough manpower, to name a few.
This is where the need of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) come in. NGOs have active learning programmes in rural areas and slum clusters, but they fail to serve as a school. They do not have enough means and land to specifically serve as school buildings. They work with first generation learners, and children from the underprivileged section of society. While the RTE Act promises to deliver formal and compulsory education to children, there is a gap between what is promised on paper and what is delivered at the grass root levels. Some NGOs have been working closely with underprivileged children and their parents for years now, and are quite familiar with where the challenges lie.
PaGaLGuY visited some NGOs in Mumbai, Maharashtra, to understand the struggles and success of these NGOs.
Bina Lashkari, Co-Founder, Door Step School
“Door Step School (DSS) was started in 1989. We impart basic reading and writing skills, and encourage them to dream practical. We do not want to discourage our students, but when they say they aspire to be a doctor, or an engineer, we tell them how difficult it is. All of these students come from the weaker sections of society, and they can’t spend much time and money on studies.
We look for children who are on the streets, in slums, or at construction sites. We enrol them at our nearest centre, and start with basic learning. We have certain limitations because of which we cannot provide them full-fledged education. Most of the students are quick learners, and we enrol them in Municipal-run schools to get proper education.
Most of the times, teachers don’t pay attention to students in Municipal schools, and then children tend to drop-out. For instance in some Municipal-run schools in Mumbai there is only one teacher for three classes. Reasons why students tend to drop-out may vary from poor academic performance, to poor concentration, or the family pressurises them to start earning. DSS is trying to fill this gap, and one such programme is School on Wheels, where out-of-school children (street children and slum dwellers) get non-formal education. We have our own curriculum, which includes English language, life skills training, and digital literacy. We follow-up with all of our students for almost 10 years, to ensure they get proper jobs.
Mostly NGOs struggle to find dedicated staff members who visit slum clusters and rural areas to teach these children. To meet the requirements, DSS trains their own graduates, and local people.
When DSS started, 80% children from the Ambedkar Nagar slum cluster, Colaba, Mumbai, were not in school. Today, 90% of the children are in school, and many of them have started working at Banks, Call Centres etc.”
Prachi, Member, Vidya Foundation
“Even after 30 years of Vidya foundation, reaching out to parents and children continues to remain a difficult task. We work with them to stem the school drop-out rate, and increase the level of learning in Mumbai. We have seen a positive growth in at least half our students; their learning level is increased by a minimum of 20%. We also offer employment-related, government-affiliated courses to our students because it helps them get good jobs.
Vidya has in-school partnership programmes, where our staff visits Municipal schools offering supplemental learning modules to students.
Like most of the NGOs, Vidya is also facing similar problems with regards to infrastructure and manpower needs. Even Municipal schools face difficulty in recruiting dedicated teachers. It is hard to find people who are willing to work in areas like slums, where even basic sanitation is not available. We have our own recruitment process, we train our teachers before sending them to our various learning centres.
As far as funding goes, we depend on individual and corporate donors, the government doesn’t provide any funds for NGOs. Even if they did, the funds will take a couple of years to reach us.”
Alankrita, Member, Teach for India
“We need more people to join the cause to improve literacy rates in India. We need to recognise the importance of education, and given our current status of the education system, it is a monumental task. The minute we are able to inspire more people to join the programme in any capacity, it will be transforming.
We try to cover most of the ground with the help of our two-year fellowship programme, which is open to anyone who is willing to teach under-privileged children. Teach for India (TFI) fellows are trained to impart classroom, as well as outside classroom learning to children.
Some of our fellows, who are pursuing their own education may apply to get a certificate, or to build a profile for admission in foreign universities, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day these are the fringe benefits that come along with what our fellows are doing for the greater good. The reason why our fellowship programmes exist is because we require more people on the ground, more people to start working about the problem rather than complaining about the scenario of education in India.
As noted by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), India’s curricular policies are not suitable for children of all sections of society, are not area specific, and are not related to the day-to-day life of students and teachers. Indian curriculum has also been shown to be overambitious content not suited to the pace of children’s learning. Therefore, TFI has its own curriculum, in line with the state board syllabus as students need to clear their school board exams.
We not only deal with students and their overall development, but also with the community, which includes parents, school headmaster, locals etc.”
NGOs do not provide formal education to under-privileged children, but their informal approach to learning has proved to be fruitful. One such case is of Santosh, his father joined DSS in the year 1989, where he learned the importance and power of education. Being a daily-wage worker himself, he wished a different future for his son. He enrolled Santosh in a Municipal school, who is currently pursuing MBA from Mumbai.
Over the past several years, India has made substantial progress in achieving elementary education goals but there are certain sections of society which continue to stay untouched, where children are still working to supplement family income. It is these places where elementary education and sufficient manpower is the need of the hour.
