Education and its Power in Social Change: Understanding its Role and Impact, Best Sociology Optional Coaching, Sociology Optional Syllabus

RURAL SCHOOLS AND INVOLVING LOCAL COMMUNITIES

RURAL SCHOOLS AND INVOLVING LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Relevance:

Sociology:

  • Rural and Agrarian transformation in India:
  • Programmes of rural development, Community Development Programme, cooperatives, poverty alleviation schemes.

G.S paper I: Society and social issues: Social empowerment.

Introduction

Educating and imparting quality education to the rural masses to empower and make them an equal partner in the development process is one of the challenges India is still grappling with. It’s worth noting that after India got independence, the rural literacy rate was just 12.1 percent in 1951 but it reached a respectable 67.8 percent in 2011.

An Unfinished Agenda:

  • 100 percent literacy in rural masses, especially among women, SCs/STs and marginalized sections of the society, is still an unfinished and humongous task to achieve.
  • The challenge is finding a way to drastically improve female literacy rate which is still 58.75 percent.
  • Meanwhile, the literacy rate is 62.8 percent and only 56.9 percent for SCs and STs living in rural areas, respectively.
  • However, the bigger challenge is to ensure access and equity in the educational entitlement of the rural masses and to simultaneously improve the quality of education in rural areas.

Quality of Education & Challenges:

Despite the fact that India has made remarkable gains in achieving higher literacy among the rural masses in the last few decades, some of the factors which pose a challenge before the governments and policymakers are:

  • The poor quality of education- Number of surveys conducted by either non-governmental organizations like ASER (Pratham) or by Government’s National Achievement Survey (NAS) indicate that more than 50 percent children in class V are unable to read the text prescribed in class II and that the average scores in many grades and subjects still ranges between 40-50 percent.

  • Students dropping out of school.
  • Shortage of educational institutions: The shortages of higher and technical/professional educational institutions in rural areas are some of the most pressing challenges before the governments and policymakers.
  • While the central and state governments have almost resolved the access problem in rural areas by providing primary schools in and around every habitation/village, according to NITI Aayog majority of these schools have less than 50 students.
    • These schools are also facing the shortage of qualified and trained teachers, the perennial problems of poor infrastructure including no toilets or non-functioning toilets, no electricity, no running water, no library or computer labs, absenteeism in teachers and poor governance.
    • In public perception government schools are now synonymous with poor quality of education. It is not surprising that the percentage of children going to private schools is increasing every year.
  • The conditions of rural high schools and colleges are not good either. It is certainly affecting the employability of young people from rural areas as employability is directly related to the educational outcomes.

India may miss the benefits of the ‘demographic dividend’ if it fails to improve rural education, as a majority of the workforce will be coming from rural areas.

Finding Creative Solutions:

  • Time has come to discard the ‘top-down’ approach. It is very important to involve the local communities in rural areas as the most crucial stakeholder in educating the rural masses with quality education.
  • Decentralization in school/college management and governance is the key to fix and revive the broken governance system of rural education in India. In this context, the role of local bodies and Self-Help Groups (SHGs) becomes very crucial in reviving and improving the quality of education in rural areas of the country.
  • Both local bodies and SHG’s can mobilize local communities to take the ownership of the local schools/colleges and motivate its members to contribute physically and financially (for example Shramdaan or giving land or other resources for school/college) in expansion and maintenance of the school/college infrastructure on a regular basis.

Role of SHG’s:

  • The SHGs can be used in the management and governance of rural schools on a pilot basis after giving proper training.
    • The Government can initially, on an experimental basis, hand-over the operational management of five rural schools to different SHGs with a clear mandate and full financial as well as manpower support to improve the quality of education in three years’ time period.
  • SHG’s can play an important role by managing the mid-day meals in rural schools.
  • SHGs can play an important role in dealing with the rampant problem of teachers’ absenteeism in rural schools. Teachers should be accountable to the school management committee managed by a SHG.

Conclusion:

India cannot ignore the issue of quality of education in the rural areas. Time has come to involve local bodies and SHGs creatively and purposefully in revitalizing rural education.

 

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