While the gross enrolment ratio (GER) for elementary schools has increased from 81.6 in 2001 to 93.03 in 2018-19 and stands at 102.1 in 2019-2020, overall retention is 74.6 per cent for elementary education and 59.6 per cent for secondary education in 2019-20, states the UNESCO 2021 State of the Education Report for India: No Teachers, No Class.
“Quality of education is the core challenge of the next decade when it comes to improving overall educational standards, retention, transition, and equity in academic achievement. Hence the focus of this decade on teachers and teaching,” read the report, which was launched today.
Since March 2020, schools in India have not been functioning physically. Foundational learning, which is the focus of the early classes, is set to slide even further down from current low levels.
The report added, “The use of technology in education for the purpose of teaching and learning has emerged as important, but this has also exposed a range of issues – lack of devices and Internet bandwidth for a significant proportion of students, lack of preparedness of teachers in the use of technology, and lack of resources in Indian languages.”
According to Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE+) data for the 2018-19 school year, a total of 9.4 million teachers were employed across 1.6 million primary and secondary schools (class 1-12) in India. The figures for 2019-20 were nearly 9.7 million and 1.5 million, respectively.
