India continues to have 5 times the number of schools than China for the same enrolment, according to a recently released report by Niti Aayog. The report, titled ‘Learnings from Large-scale Transformation in School Education,’ further added that more than 50 per cent of primary schools across several states have an enrolment of less than 60.
“The cost of such sub-scale schools in the form of extensive multi-grade teaching, lack of a student and parent community that can demand accountability, poor infrastructure, the same 1-2 teachers also handling all administrative responsibilities in the absence of headmasters/ principals, etc. is very high,” the report stated.
India has a shortage of more than a million teachers, the report read. Many of the states have between 30-50 per cent vacancies for teaching jobs. Furthermore, available teachers are not distributed equally with more teachers available in urban areas and higher vacancies in rural areas. “Education systems of states cannot practically transform and deliver much higher outcomes with such high teacher vacancies,” the Niti Aayog report added.
The report suggested that school mergers could be a solution to addressing the lack of enrollment in schools. Such a solution when “executed rigorously” across SATH-E states has given positive results in filling up the enrolments in schools, it added. “There is often a perceived risk around the impact of mergers on access. However, third-party studies in SATH-E have also demonstrated that when executed rigorously the benefits of mergers are largely positive and can lead to improved learning outcomes,” read the report.
States can also develop a set of large schools with at least 10-20 per cent spread across the state as integrated K-12 schools and provide transport so that all students can equitably access them, the report suggested. “This has been recommended in the NEP too with the call to set up large school complexes,” the NITI Aayog report read.
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