India has failed to achieve increased literacy rate in children

September 8 is ‘International Literacy day’. The aim of this occasion is to highlight the importance of education to individuals, communities and societies. Each year on this day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) encourages celebrations and awareness across the globe to remind people of the importance of literacy, including adult learning. UNESCO has defined literacy as; “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying context. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.”

Today, all over the world, more than 750 million adults lack minimum literacy skills; one of five adults is still not literate, out of which two-thirds are women; 75 million children are out of school and many more attend irregularly or drop out. According to the UNESCO’s ‘Global Monitoring Report on Education for All’, South and West Asia has the lowest regional adult literacy rate (57.8%), followed by sub-Saharan Africa (59.9%) and the Arab States (62.5%). UNESCO has been emphasizing that the universal right to education is a fundamental right, and the nations across the globe are duty bound to make education mandatory for all.

India has a literacy level below the threshold level of 75 per cent. This has been greatly hampering socio-economic progress of the country. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate for Economics, has said the real investment for any nation is the money you spend for the health and education of its people. In India, there are the two sectors for which the budget allocation has traditionally been meagre. Healthy people with useful education are the real wealth of any nation. Since literacy rate is very low in India, education should get the utmost priority in any budgetary dispensation. 

In the last 70 years of independence, India’s literacy rate has grown to 73.07 per cent in 2015 from 12 per cent at the end of foreign colonial rule in 1947. The level continues to be below the world average literacy rate of 85 per cent, and India presently has the largest illiterate population of any nation in the world. There is also a wide gender disparity in the literacy rate – the low female literacy rate has had a serious negative impact on family planning and population stabilisation efforts. In the last few decades, considerable progress has been made in the field of education and yet, we have to go a long way to eradicate illiteracy completely. However, certain latest efforts to achieve at least the threshold literacy level, represents the largest ever civil and military mobilisation in the country.

A number of movements have been started to promote mass literacy like the National Literacy Mission, which is aimed at imparting functional literacy to non-illiterates in the age group of 15 to 35 years. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Total Literacy campaign) aims to provide universal education to children between the ages of 6 to 14 years. An important component of the campaign is the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) and alternative and innovative education meant primarily for children in areas with no formal school within one kilometer radius.

The Mid-day Meal scheme is one of the most popular measures adopted to attract children to attend school, which was launched in 1995. Another effort of the government is the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, commonly called Right to Education (RTE) Act, which was enacted by the country’s Parliament in August 2009, and the same was notified on April 1, 2010. 

The RTE Act has been especially enacted to ensure that all children of India between 6 to 14 years of age, regardless of their economic status, caste, class, creed or gender, would be given an elementary education by right and by law. In addition, the Act made some time-bound commitments to ensure schools achieve certain minimum standards of improved teaching techniques and quality education. Besides, the Supreme Court has made it mandatory for government, local authorities and private schools to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for the economically weaker sections, is one more step in making the right of education a reality for Indian children.

The origin of the historic RTE Act is in the global conference initiated by UNESCO at Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990, where the following was put out as World Declaration on Education for all; meeting basic learning needs. The representatives of various countries across the globe had expressed; “we the participants in the World Conference on Education for All, reaffirm the right of all people to education. This is the foundation of our determination, singly and together to ensure education for all… together we call on governments, concerned organisations and individuals to join in this urgent undertaking.”

Further, “the basic learning needs of all can and must be met… there has never been a more propitious time to commit ourselves to providing basic learning opportunities for all the people of the world. We adopt therefore this world declaration on education for all; meeting basic learning needs and agree on the framework for action to meet basic learning needs, to achieve the goals set forth in this declaration.”

Subsequently, another conference was held in April 2000 at Dakar, Senegal (West Africa), called the World Education Forum, where a concrete framework towards Education for All (EFA) was drawn up in order to make the programme of total literacy a success. April 1, 2017 marked seven years since the notification of the RTE Act. Unfortunately, despite India’s best efforts, it has failed to achieve increased literacy rate in children. According to a UNICEF report, 20 per cent of children (between 6 to 14 years) in India are still out of school. 

(The writer is a freelance journalist)