There are a lot of Challenges in availing uniform access to education in India. Here are some of the most important ones.

1. Rohit Manglik June 3,
2019
Challenges in Availing Uniform Access to Education in
India
rohitmanglik.com/challenges-in-availing-uniform-access-to-education-in-india
Education, for long, has been the key to scaling up in the social and economic ladder. To
dream about the idea of equality of opportunity is futile till there’s no access to quality
education. Given the vastness of the geographical expanse that this nation houses, the
adversities associated with it are great, both in numbers and manner. A sphere that
clearly echoes this challenge of the nation is that of education, among others.
The Front of School Education
Schools are the primary agents of supplying education to the tender minds of this nation.
This is particularly more for the children belonging to the deprived sections of our
society. The great expanse that we have talked of in the lines above, contributes critically
to the making or marring of the accessibility of education. Besides, there are also the
underlying factors of the financial health, gender, etc, related to these beneficiaries of
school education, which hold the sway in equal distribution of educational benefits to
them.
The lines below will be researching upon the possible causes of this deplorability in the
sphere of accessibility of school education
The Location of the Schools
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2. As per the information of 2017, available with the EY-FICCI, nearly 1.4 million schools
accommodate more than 250 million students. That’s roughly 179 students for each
educational institution enjoying the capacity of k-12 education. What these figures don’t
speak about are the children left out of the ambit from these institutions. The situation,
as we mentioned above, is more alarming for the children of the deprived sections.
Things are even more stressful for girls and children suffering from disabilities. While
some of the issues in enrolment get resolved by the small community-based schools,
there is a little concern that these schools have limited amounts of meaningful learning
and low standards.
Gender
Girls with more likelihood, don’t attend school in India, than boys. Disparities in
enrolments regarding gender have diminished, particularly in richer states. Still, girls
more likely drop out of the places having low enrolment rates. While boys frequently quit
their schools on economic grounds, girls often follow the suit due to their involvement in
domestic chores. And still some rural families, generally, consider girls’ education as
extravagant.
Social Disadvantage
The factor of social disadvantage also affects the accessibility of education. The trend has
more been traditional with the disadvantaged sections of the society. These are the
sections that enjoy more participation of the SCs, STs, and the OBCs.
Concerned authorities have brought in programs and projects to help these traditionally
disadvantaged groups for attending schools. Still, access to education and their
engagement in it isn’t up to the mark.
Poverty
A major cause restraining India’s child from the accessibility to schooling is poverty. The
children having poor economic status continue to get pushed to the borders of the
system, and eventually beyond that. Anyhow, a detailed study displays that the social
structure itself nourishes discriminatory economic impoverishment.
The Sufferings of the First Generation
It’s generally found that children from families with no or little previous experience in
education are more likely to get prohibited from schooling. Often, the environment
discouraging them from learning and continuing their education surround many first-
generation learners.
Poor Health
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3. Repeated illness and malnutrition accompanied by a shortage of healthcare facilities
result in several children failing to attend school.
Quality of Resources and Infrastructure
The quality of provisions supplied to some schools in India is fragile. Many schools have
inadequate facilities, infrastructure, and resources. Many teachers belong either to the
undertrained or completely untrained category. Similarly, some syllabi of the curricula
are useless and irrelevant. Several children get extremely little learning. Consequently,
they face the risk of getting silently out from the process of schooling. The assurance of
quality education has weakened further with the ever-increasing numbers of small and
private schools. Often, classes outnumber the teachers in small schools. You can
corroborate this with the fact that 16.6% of primary schools in India employ only one
teacher. This results in teachers teaching across various levels of classes. Moreover,
many such teachers have no or little teacher-training in multi-grade pedagogy. Also, the
authorities have oriented the curriculum more for mono-grade schools, employing at
least one teacher per grade.
The Front of Higher Education
Even with an average rate of growth of over 7% in the last decade, India’s Gross
Enrolment Ratio (GER) in the sphere of higher education is extremely low. By an
estimation, even if India achieves its aim of 30% GER by 2020, 100 million qualified
students will still not find admissions into its universities.
Despite the attempts for spreading the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) more
uniformly across the nation, there is great variation. Some factors lie underneath the
sphere of Higher Education that pose hindrances in the realization of the aim. These can
be counted as:
Significant Inter Group Disparities
As per the findings of a report labeled as “Intergenerational and Regional Differentials in
Higher Education in India,” a Muslim or Dalit in south India, even on being from the most
deprived among communities, possesses chances for having better access to higher
education. This access is despite upper caste Hindus availing the same opportunities in
many other regions in the nation. Interestingly, people from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and
West Bengal — termed as the north-central region — and those from North East India
have the poorest access to higher education. Those in the northern region — consisting
of Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, and
Haryana, and in southern India — are comparatively better positioned.
Age-Group Disparities
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4. Similarly, the Northern and the Southern regions provide over 15% and 13% of its
population, respectively, access to higher education. This is about people falling in the
age group of 22-35 years. The number is just 10% for men and 6% for women for the
north-central region. Whereas, only 8% of men and 4% of women have access to higher
education, in the Northeast.
The Rural and Urban Divide
As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published in January 2018, there’s a
large break between urban and rural education, in India. About the rural pupils, it
proclaims that post eight years’ schooling, more than 40% couldn’t tell hours and
minutes from a clock; only 43% of 14-18-year-olds could perform simple division; a little
less than half couldn’t add weights in kilograms. Similarly, 46% didn’t know in which city
the capital of India was.
The Key Indicators on Household Consumer Expenditure, belonging to the National
Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in 2011-12, spoke of some revelations. It showed that the
average monthly educational spending for those in the 50th-60th percentile of the
income distribution (the real “middle class”) in rural India, was Rs31.47. The figure was
Rs125.49, for those in the same percentile in urban India. Such a huge contrast is, in all
likelihood, to be reflected in the quality of education too. Moreover, Rs908.12 was the
monthly expenditure on education for the top 5% of urban Indians. Whereas, for the
lowest 5% of our rural brethren, it was Rs7.54.
So Where Does the Solution Lie?
Be them the institutes offering school education or the HEIs providing undergraduate
and postgraduate studies, meeting the demands as discussed above seems quite a
challenging task. Nevertheless, in the context of the recent technological advancements,
the remedies to both the spheres of education apparently seem to lie in the distance and
online learning modes.
These newer modes of delivery of instructions promise a world of benefits for the
scholars of today, particularly for the pursuers of disciplines requiring lesser inputs of
practical applications. Literature, arts, fine arts, humanities, etc, are such disciplines
which seem to thrive well on the online and distance mode of education, today. Let’s
hope that these new vehicles will usher the required change in our manner of imparting
education, only for the betterment of all stakeholders of education.
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