2. TRIBAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN JHARKHAND
By
Dr. Vijay Prakash Sharma
Senior Technical Advisor
The Vistaar Project(USAID/India)
3. • India has made huge progress in terms of
increasing primary education attendance rate and
expanding literacy to approximately two thirds of the
population. However, education is still far behind
developing countries such as China or Thailand.
Most children never attend secondary schools. An
optimistic estimate is that only one in five jobseekers in India have ever had any sort of
vocational training.
4. • Education is one of the primary agents of transformation
towards development.
• It’s an activity, or a series of activities, or a process which either
improves the immediate living conditions, social, economic,
political, human, cultural, environmental, or increases the
potential for future living.
• It plays an important role in bringing tangible benefits by
developing the skills of the people.
• It expands livelihood opportunities and increases earning
potential and thus helps in tackling the problem of poverty at
large.
• The major role that education has been able to play is with
regard to skill inculcation and skill improvement of the persons.
.
5. Tribal development & education
It is a recorded truth by anthropologist that
Women in tribal societies overpower male
counterparts as workforce. Therefore,
tribal development must be channelized
through women’s education.
6. • Development may be defined as a function of
economic, social, education and cultural betterment
of the people.
• Tribal women must be educated and trained in main
stream education system so that they can further
encourage their children to join the national
development and education process.
7. Tribal Education
• There are thirty-two different tribal communities residing in the
Jharkhand State and they constitute 26.3 percent (6.6 million5)
of the total population of the State.
• The average literacy rate of Jharkhand state is 54.13 percent,
but among some tribal, particularly among the female, literacy
rate is as low as 10 percent6. Although the overall literacy rate
among the STs has increased from 27.5 percent (1991 census)
to 40.7 percent (2001 census) but despite this improvement,
the literacy rate among the tribes is much below in comparison
to that of all STs at the national level (47.1 percent).
• In Jharkhand, over all literacy rates among the STs, male and
female (54 percent and 27.2 percent) are also considerably
lower than those at the national level (59.2 percent & 34.8
percent).
8. Strengthening human development strategies for
education in Jharkhand:
Short Term
• Providing incentives to households to send their children to
school
• Filling up vacant positions with teachers with subject specific
knowledge for upper primary and secondary schools,
additional teachers to ease the burden of multi-grade
teaching in single teacher schools, adequate female
teachers and teachers who understand the local tribal
language and are sensitive to the contextual culture.
(Source: ”Jharkhand: Addressing the challenges of inclusive Development ,world Bank, 2008).
9. Medium Term
Upgrading Education Guarantee Schemes (EGS) into primary schools in a
phased manner
Providing the minimum pre-service and regular in-service training to teachers
without formal teacher training
Analyzing the tenure, qualification requirements, standardization, selection and
appointment and pre-service and in-service training of Para-teachers
Setting up of the State Institute of Education Management and Training and
strengthening the links between all these support systems
Periodic evaluations to provide technical support for SIERT and State Institute of
Educational Management and Training (SIEMAT) in curriculum revision, textbook
development, and training of trainers at the district levels, research and evaluation
10. • Addressing under spending of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
(SSA) allocations and identifying activities using the
innovative grants in SSA aimed at introducing state specific
interventions
• Promote public–private partnerships, especially at the
secondary level since 10 per cent of the total schools are
under grants-in-aid
Increase the private institutions under grants-in-aid
Expansion of the vocational education sector .
11. Conclusion:
•Persistently poor educational attainment for
the tribal is a result due to poor quality of life
and socio-economic deprivation suffered by
the majority of tribal population.
•Increase in drop-out rates, falling learning
levels and poor quality of education have
also been general concerns and not only
with regard to the tribal population.
12. • The issue of inadequate trained, skilled and
motivated teachers for the education of the
tribal must be addressed on urgent basis.
• Despite the various programs in place the
learning gaps between the tribal and general
population has been increasing as also the
gap in the drop-out rate.
• Lack of proper monitoring and evaluation
mechanism adds to the problem.
13. •There is a need for attitudinal changes at all
levels towards education for tribal children and
child centered learning in general.
•Due to diversity of languages the need for
multilingual education is of intrinsic value
(social, cognitive and developmental) of and
hence mother-tongue based education is
recommended.
•There is a need for concrete outcome based
planning from the ground level if we want to
bring development in tribal societies of
Jharkhand.
