The Current State of Education in India

The 4th goal of all Sustainable Development Goal ensures quality educations for all people – from primary level school children till the late adulthood. Education is one of the most powerful tools which can improve humansэ lives in the future. To begin with, it fosters economic growth, reduces poverty, improves health and changes attitudes to empower woman. For instance, it provides people with knowledge and skills, which give them better start in a job market, make them less vulnerable to change and risks and also increase their productivity. Even one additional year of education can make a difference. It is estimated that on average it can increase wage earning by 10% (by 13% in sub-Saharan Africa). Moreover, it rises countries stability by decreasing the risk of civil conflict by 20% especially in courtiers where is a high percentage of young men in a population. Right now there are 32 Global Partnership for Education (the countries who are participating in achievement of Sustainable Development Goal), which are fragile or affected by conflict. I add up to 48% of all participating countries.

The total number of out-of-school children was at around 265 million in 2015 worldwide. Of this number 23% - around 62 million - were children of primary school age, another 23% - which is also 62 million - were kids of secondary school age, which means that 46% were not in the school in 2015. It is mainly the poor who miss out on schooling. Education is one of multi-dimensional concept of poverty next to the monetary dimension, which refers to consumption and income. In low- and middle-income countries if all adults completed secondary education the global poverty rate would be decreased on average by around 55% worldwide. Further, UNESCO studies claimed that if the 4th goal of all Sustainable Development Goal would be attainment, and if all children and adults (the ones who need it) would finish secondary education, it can lift more than 420 people million out of poverty.

Additionally it is also connected with:

• urban-rural location,
• health and
• gender stereotypes.

Primary, rural households have only one income source which is farm work. Education enables to diversify it by adding more lucrative earning opportunity, not connected with agricultural work.

What is more, people who are living under minimum level of "living standards", are more exposed to certain disasters or natural catastrophes, including earthquakes, storms, floods, and landslides. Education can help decrease the number of disaster-related deaths by around 15 000 per decade. Especially in Asia, because there is the largest population of people who are living in coastal areas.

Gender stereotypes and women discrimination are still burning issues in some countries. One striking example is Pakistan, where is a big difference in decision making of woman with no education comparing to those who completed secondary education. Only 30% of women from the first group believe that they can have something to say in the numbers of children they want to have, compared to 63% of women from the second group. Or like in India – education increases the percent of women who feel able to leave the house without husband permission (from 58% to 75%).

India is a typical case of colonial economy. Until 1947 it was expanding its economy not only for itself but also for foreign country - Great Britain. The “drain of wealth” (unequal exchange with the colonizer) has negative impact on Indian’s economy and social sector. On India’s Independence Day, its illiteracy was at a shocking high of 83%. For the data from 2011 it decreased to 26% on average (18% for men and 35% for woman). Some states like Mizoram and Kerala were above this rate, but from the other hand Bihar decreased it only to 36% illiterals.

At this time India had population of 1,21 billion people. Which means that with average score of 26%, 214,6 million people over 15 years old did not have ability read and write , with 32,5 years of life expectancy. In other worlds 214,6 million people did not received basic education for the most of their life. Last available data of illiteracy level are from 2015, and it shows that the score slightly decreased of 2%. Moreover, according to Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) it is the fastest growing economy in the world with 8,2 % of Projected Real GDP for 2015 (7,4% for 2018).

Taking into account the above data, it can be said that literacy, economic growth (GDP) and population growth are strongly correlated with each other. Increase of the enrolment number of young people in primary and secondary school will lead to improvement of overall quality of peoples’ life.

India is the second populated country in the world. In the same time, it has the highest overall number of out-of-school children. According to UNICEF research 11,9 million kids of primary and secondary education level were out school in 2015. The total school-age population for mentioned year was 195 million . 6,4 % of primary school-age children and 5,7% of secondary school-age children were non-participation in schooling system in India. Amongst children from India, who are out of school, 39 % of them are in a group that is likely to never enter primary school. From the other hand, sometimes children enrol at an older age than they usually should have done, which leads to many dropouts and cause major age-grade discrepancy in school attendance.

There are several profiles of out-of-school children in India:

• Urban-rural location: generally speaking, there are more out-of-school children in rural areas, but in urban locations the most affected are kids in slum dwellers and street children.
• Gender: Girls from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India (mostly rural location) have higher rates of exclusion than boys.
• Child labourers: There are around 12% of kids engaged in child labour. Those kids are more likely to miss school than other children of the same age.
• Geographic location: Children living in low-income states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have higher rates of exclusion and illiteracy rate.
• Social groups: In India social status is very important. Girls from poor locations, children with a minority language as mother tongue and Muslim children are disproportionally excluded.
• Children with disabilities: Around 38% of disabled children ages 6 to 13 were found to be out of school, without completing a full cycle of basic education.

According to The Global Human Capital Report 2017, Indian education performance is really bad. It is at the top of the bottom of overall Index (103 place out of 130). This country is also at the bottom when it comes to G20 countries, which is very import to notice, because promotion of global human capital development is in G20 countries development agenda. India also ranks poorly on mean years of education (5,8 years). Youth unemployment rate is 27,5% with one of the world’s largest employment gender gaps. More positively, it scored more points on development (rank 65) and know-how (79), especially on economic complexity, staff training, education quality, which means that government increasing expenditure on learning opportunities. Public spending on education in 2016 were 3,8% which is still around half of the percentage that Norway, leading country, was spending on education.