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Primary education eludes 40 million Indians: UNICEF

One hundred and thirty million children of primary school age in the developing world, 40 million of them in India, have been denied their fundamental right to basic, quality education, a United Nations Children's Fund study has found.

The study, titled 'The state of the world's children 1999', also finds that another 150 million drop out of schools before class five due to sub-standard learning situations.

Nearly half the population in the region lives in severe poverty, and child labour, a cause and consequence of low enrolment and high drop-out rates, is persistent, says the report, released by UNICEF's India representative Alan Court.

The study attributes the trend to the failure of governments concerned to finance the 'Education For All' initiative.

A major priority agreed on at the World Conference on Education For All, held in Thailand in 1990, was girls' education; but this has shown little improvement during 1990-95, the report points out.

Court said the most shocking finding is the systematic discrimination against girls. Girls are often barred from schools solely because of their gender. Of the estimated 130 million children aged six to 11 who are out of school, 73 million are girls.

The gravity of the situation can be gauged from the fact that of the 855 million adult functional illiterates throughout the world, two-thirds are female.

Dr Shiv Kumar, a development economist who spoke during the release of the report, said India has made very slow progress in the last few years in its attempts to universalise elementary education. The number of illiterates in the country has grown from 250 million in 1951 to 750 million in 1991.

The minimum amount that India needs to spend in the Ninth Five Year Plan to educate all children is Rs 400 billion. The estimated per pupil cost per year is Rs 439. Dr Kumar said the country had the capacity to mobilise the resources but state inertia proved a setback. This is evident from the fact that between 1991 and 1996, public expenditure in education went down from four per cent to 3.1 per cent, he said.

The study finds that over 80 per cent of children in India's urban areas go to school. In rural India, the rate is only 60 per cent.

The UNICEF' strategy is to enrol more girls in schools and keep them there longer by incorporating a gender-sensitive approach.

The report notes that teachers are poorly paid in most developing countries, and many are ill-trained to teach beyond the primary level. It calls for a shift in teaching methods by improving work conditions and making teacher training more innovative.

The world would need to spend an additional seven billion dollars a year over the next 10 years to provide universal access to quality education for all children. The figure for South Asia is 1.6 billion dollars. But for this, several steps are required including increased donor aid.

The report urges a renewed commitment to the ''20/20 initiative'', which requires governments of developing countries to devote 20 per cent of their budgets and industrialised nations to devote 20 per cent of their development aid to assisting basic social programmes in the Third World.

Currently developing countries allocate an average of around 13 per cent of their national budgets to basic services. Donor countries devote around 10 per cent of their overseas development assistance to supporting these services.

UNI

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