The Right to Education Act 2009 has improved access to free elementary education in India. However, retaining children till the completion of schooling is a struggle due to socio-economic factors like child labour, engagement in domestic and economic duties, and child marriage. Resolving these issues would require simplifying the curriculum with greater focus on fundamental literacy and numeracy skills, an emphasis on vocational training as well as better childcare support for the poorest families, so that their children can get a real chance at education.
Let us understand the issue of high dropout rates, explore the underlying causes and look at possible solutions.
High dropout rate - A socio-economic problem
At the time of independence, India’s literacy rate was an abysmal 18.33%. The need for better education was quite evident to the political leaders at the time. There was an attempt to include the right to free education as a fundamental right which was rejected due to the costs associated with it. Instead it was placed in the Article 45 of the Directive Principles of State Policy stating, quite ambitiously, that “The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years”.
One of the main challenges India has faced in attaining this goal has been the high rate of children dropping out from school. As per the Standing Committee report on the Right to Education Bill, 2008, “In 2005-2006, Gross Enrolment Ratio for all children at the elementary stage stood at 94.91% while dropout rate in classes 1 to 8 was as high as 48.71%. Dropout rate among Scheduled Caste children was 55.25% and in the Scheduled Tribe children, it was 62.95%.” Clearly, children were entering elementary school but almost half of them were dropping out before finishing elementary education.
This break-up on dropout rates alludes to the effects of historic exclusion of SC and ST communities from access to education. This disparity continues to reflect in the most recent NSSO data on education. Low parental education has a correlation with higher chance of the student dropping out of school. Lack of parental education leads to engagement in low income jobs which then puts further pressure on the next generation to enter the workforce early, hence perpetuating the vicious cycle. It also hinders their ability to fully utilize the reservations provided for them in higher education. Subsequent governments have acknowledged this problem and attempted to solve it through the national education policy.
Mixed results in countering dropouts through the Right to Education
On analyzing the Right to Education Act (2009) with this context in mind, we can see that along with making elementary education more accessible, there was an attempt to tackle the high dropout rates through clauses like “No denial of admission” (to allow a dropped out child to re-enter the school system without discrimination) and “No detention” (to keep the child in the school system for as long as possible). The mid-day meals programme and shifting to a Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation can also be seen as helping the cause.
This is reflected in the increase of 19.4% in enrollments in class 6-8 between 2009-2016 (Bhattacharjee, 2019). There has also been a decline in the dropout rates at primary level as per the paper titled ‘School Drop-out in India: Pattern, Causes and Determinants’ (P. Geetha Rani and Mukesh, 2020) published in the 109th issue of Sarvekshana (September 2020) by the National Statistical Office (NSO). Unfortunately, further trends are not available as post 2012-2013, the available estimates are annual average dropout rates and hence not comparable to cumulative dropout rates.
Source: Figure 1, ‘School Drop-out in India: Pattern, Causes and Determinants’ (P. Geetha Rani and Mukesh, 2020), 109th issue of Sarvekshana (September 2020), National Statistical Office.
However, P. Geetha Rani and Mukesh also reiterate that the overall drop-out rates continue to be high with almost two-thirds of pupils dropping out at some point in schooling. That is alarming for the youngest country in the world with 26.6% of it’s population in the 0-14 age group in 2019 (The World Bank, 2019). India cannot hope to gain any dividends from its young population if it fails to provide them with adequate education and skills.
Why do children drop out?
The 75th round of NSS on Household Social Consumption on Education (July 2017-June 2018) throws some light on this issue.
Source: Statement 5.4, 75th round of NSS on Household Social Consumption on Education (July 2017-June 2018)
For males, the top stated reasons are:
Engaged in economic activity (36.9%)
Financial constraints (24.3%)
Not interested in education (18.8%)
For females, the top stated reasons are:
Engaged in domestic activities (30.2%)
Financial constraints (17.7%)
Not interested in education (14.8%)
Marriage (13.2%)
Understanding the underlying causes
Although, helping a parent at work or at home is not considered as child labour, engagement in economic and domestic activity is still the top reason for children quitting school. They are either helping their parents in their work or at home. For poor families with no childcare access, often the eldest child takes up the responsibility to take care of the younger ones at the cost of their own education. This coincides with the data that more than 50% of children from the poorest 20% segment quit schooling before completing primary and upper primary education (P. Geetha Rani and Mukesh, 2020).
‘Not interested in education’ is a complex reason. It may also mean that these children or their families do not see enough value from the time invested in education. It can also indicate that due to poor quality of education, they are more inclined to work and gain life skills rather than trying to finish schooling with no clear path towards a vocation.
Marriage is another reason for girls dropping out from schooling and may require educational efforts and social awareness to push for schooling post-marriage.
Drop out or Push out?
Anugula Reddy explores the question of dropouts in an interesting way in the paper “Dropout or pushouts? Overcoming barriers to the Right to Education” (July 2010).
“Dropping out of school usually implies the inability of children to continue in school for some reason. Most often the child, his/her family circumstances or macro-economic factors are considered to be responsible for them dropping out. In perceiving it as such, the emphasis is on the inability of children to continue in school. On the other hand, if the issue is seen as children being ‘pushed out’ of school, then the onus of responsibility is on the system to ensure that they stay in school.”
Reddy argues that the system is often insensitive to the needs of many of these children and is unable to provide support at key points of failure.
Starting from primary level, there is lack of support for first generation learners or those who are falling behind. This accumulates over time and ends up in poor outcomes and the child losing interest altogether.
The lack of adequate employment and income support for adults results in the burden falling on their children.
A lack of affordable childcare results in the eldest child in the family (especially if the eldest child is a female) having to share that burden.
A lack of quality and paucity of vocational training results in parents preferring to send the child to work rather than stay in school with sub-standard outcomes.
So what is the solution?
If we start thinking with this approach of looking at the dropout issue as a “failure of the system” rather than the “failure of a family or a child to stay in school”, we can find some solutions that address these points of failure.
We need a curriculum that focuses on reading, understanding and numeracy skills at primary levels rather than a broad curriculum that requires rote learning. This will reduce the pressure from both the students and the teacher and shift time and focus on foundational life skills that are more important in day to day life and for later phases of learning.
Expand the reach of the “Anganwadi” program. Free and accessible childcare will help reduce the burden of childcare on elder children of the household. It will also support women labour force participation as well as early child nutrition. Also, expanding the scope of the program to impart free pre-primary education will reduce the initial gaps of learning at primary levels, which continues to see the highest dropout rates for the poorest families.
Create programmes for early vocational training. Life skills that can later provide employment may make for a better incentive for the families to send the child to school.
For the families below poverty line, there can be an additional direct benefit transfer done for every school going child between the age of 6-14. This should provide some income support to the family and ease the pressures of poverty, malnutrition and child labour on the children. While there is a tendency to call such grants as “freebies”, it can be viewed as an investment by the state towards ensuring that its future human capital is not wasted away by ill-effects of poverty.
Karthik Muralidharan, in his paper “Reforming the Indian School Education System” (2019), expands on the first three solutions in greater detail and is an excellent read on the topic.
We can see that the system’s inability to alleviate the burdens of poverty and socio-economic backwardness is resulting in it’s children having to pick up that burden, which is disgraceful for a civilized modern society. The broader point to take home is that India’s high dropout rate is not an indictment of just our schooling system, but also of our larger social support systems.
References:
Bhattacharjee, Sanchayan (2019): “Ten years of RTE act: Revisiting achievements and examining gap”, ORF.
Household Social Consumption on Education in India (July 2017- June 2018)
Key Indicators of Household Social Consumption on Education in India (JULY 2017 – JUNE 2018)
http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/KI_Education_75th_Final.pdf
Muralidharan, Karthik. “Reforming the Indian School Education System” in What the Economy Needs Now, (2019)
National Policy on Education (with modifications undertaken in 1992) https://www.educationforallinindia.com/1992%20%20NPE%201986%20as%20Modified%20in%201992.pdf
NSSO - Education in India (2014)
https://www.thehinducentre.com/multimedia/archive/03188/nss_rep_575_compre_3188221a.pdf
Reddy, Anugula. “Dropouts or Pushouts? Overcoming barriers to the Right to Education” (July 2010)
Report by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development on Right to Education Bill, 2008
The Right to Education Act, 2009
https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/bills_parliament/RTE.pdf
The World Bank (2019), Population ages 0-14 (% of population)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.0014.TO.ZS?locations=IN
P. Geetha Rani and Mukesh (2020), “School Drop-out in India : Patterns, Clauses and Determinants”, 109th Issue of Sarvekshana (Sept, 2020) http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/109th%20issue%20of%20Sarvekshana-pdf.pdf