In India, every child now has a fundamental right to access education. The right, guaranteed under the constitution, has been hailed as a revolutionary step to ensure that no child in the country stays away from school. Needless to say, the move has resulted in a big jump into the number of school going children. But, in a video report by IndiaUnheard correspondent Sarita Biswal tells us that going to school doesn’t always mean getting educated.
Sarita Biswal is a young woman in her mid twenties. She lives in a remote village called Kacchila Nuapara in the Indian state of Orissa. Sarita used to be an insurance agent once. But in May 2010, she joined Video Volunteers IndiaUnheard program as a community correspondent. I asked her why she was changing her profession. Sarita’s reply was, ‘there are some burning issues within my community but nobody to raise them.
And were the issues? “Education, to begin with. In my village every child goes to school every single day, but learns next to nothing”.
The village has a government primary school with 165 students. According to the government rules, primary schools shouldn’t have exam system until 5th grade. So, students can not be failed until they reach grade 5.
Now, the school admits every student that comes to enroll, but instead of enrolling them in first or second grade, it admits them straightaway into 4th or 5th grade. Here is why:
For 165 students, there are only4 teachers in the school. The teachers say, they can’t give attention to every student and teach them well because the students are way too many.
But what they don’t say is that they are finding a short cut way out: Admit them in higher grade, so the students will stay just for a year or two and the teachers will have to spend little time and effort in teaching them.
Now while the strategy of pushing the students out of the school quickly works for the teachers, what happens to the students? They spend time in school, but for nothing.
The video shows a girl in 4th grade who can not spell ‘Apple’. What qualifies her for 4th grade? There’s no answer!
All the students have the same story in Sarita’s village. They reach high school, struggle to grasp the lessons taught and solve the tasks given in the high school.Then, within a few years, frustrated with the whole education business, the students just drop out.
The dropout rate in primary and upper primary schools all across Orissa is a major issue of concern. Again, when one compares girls dropout rate with boys, the dropout rate for girls appears much higher (35.4%) than that of boys’(31.9%.).
This situation has angered Sarita for long. Even before joining IndiaUnheard team she had been affiliated with an NGO called Patang as a volunteer and worked among drop out students in her village. She tried motivating the dropped out students to return back to school and also spoke to the parents to send their children to school. She also tried mobilising kids at her own home and teaching them in a creative manner using dance, plays, etc. to develop their interest in education.
But she also wanted to draw the world’s attention to the problem of education that her community suffered from. Today, with this video, which also happens to be her first, she has done that.
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