India's Education at A Glance

Recent scenario of India Education sector: At a glance

•  96.5% of children in the 6 t 14 age group in rural India are enrolled in school.

•  71.1% of these children are enrolled in government schools, 24.3% are enrolled in private school.

•  The proportion of girls (age 11-14) who are still out of school has declined from 6.8% in 2009 to 5.9% in 2010; in state like Rajasthan (12.1%) and Uttar Pradesh (9.7%), this percentage remains high and shows little change since 2009.

•  Enrolment in private schools in rural India increased from 21.8% in 2009 to 24.3% in 2010.

•  Nationally, the percentage of five old enrolled in schools increased from 54.6% in 2009 to 62.8% in 2010. The biggest increase was visible in Karnataka where the proportion of five years olds enrolled in school increased from 17.1% in 2009 to 67.6% in 2010.

•  Nationally there is not much change in reading levels as compared to last five year. Only 53.4% children in standard V can read a standard II level text. This suggests that even after five years in school, close to half of all children are not even at the level expected of them after two years in school.

•  On average, there has been a decrease in children's ability to do simple mathematics. The proportion of standard I children who can could recognize numbers from 1-9 declined from 69.3% in 2009 to 65.8% in 2010. Similarly, the proportion of children in standard III who could solve to digits subtraction problem decreased from 39% to 36.5% in the same period. Children in standard V who could do simple division problems also dropped from 38% in 2009 to 35.9% in 2010.

•  ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) 2010 found that over 60% of the 13,000 schools surveyed satisfied the infrastructure norms specified by the RTE. However, more than half of these schools will need more teachers. A third will need more classrooms.

For rural India as a whole, children's attendance shows no change over the period 2007-2010. Attendance remained at round 73 % during this period.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.