Renovation of School Infrastructure

Context: 

In the recent days, in India the Primary Education infrastructure has been increased whereas the Higher-Level education is lacking capacity because of which a down trend in enrollment of students is visible as the children get older.

Important Aspects:

• Govt. of any country must focus on investing more and more in public education to maximise the potential of their young masses.
• The major visible key example is South Korea’s economic success. It is because of their focused approach in education during industrialization. Because of their strategic investment in the education sector, today their literacy rate is quite improved, their workforce is equipped with necessary skills and talent for use in industrial development.
• In a nutshell, it can be very much visible that investment in education is directly proportional to the sustainable economic development of any country. It increases the higher earning potential of an individual and thereby the GDP growth of any country.

Why Invest in Education:

• The backbone of industrial and technological sectors is the Literacy Rate. And the literacy rate is directly proportional to public education. Hence education is the prime focused point for rapid industrialization.
• Studies reveal that, if one country invests in education then definitely it leads to increased economic results.
• Every year of schooling by students has a direct impact on positive GDP growth, as per a report produced by UNICEF.
• In our constitution, educational reformation at the state level has been given greater significance in relation with education.

Developments achieved so far in educational field:

• As per UDISE (Unified Digital Information on School Education) tracker, structural and gender parity indicators between 2014 and 2023 have got a positive improvement stride.
• Tumbling in the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) across all levels of education signifies that one-to-one interaction between student and teacher is prevailing across classrooms due to their smaller sizes.
• Inclusion of female teachers in a major scale which amounts to 52.3% for this a recruitment of more than 4.1 million teachers (60% female) have been done.  
• Enrollment of a great number of female students and they outperformed their male counterparts with better scores.

About the Pyramidal Structure and actions to be taken for it:

• • Because the focus of the education system is on elementary education, certain places have fewer higher secondary schools which results in unequal distribution of resources for the basic school education and a shortfall in educational infrastructure and the learning could not be supported at higher levels of education appropriately. 
  • The demonstration of results comes in the form of drop of enrollment at higher levels.

• As per National Education Policy the goal is set to 100% students to continue higher education but as per data w.r.t current education system in India, the percentage is at 44% only which is far below the set goal.
• State govt. must implement necessary steps even with the support of central govt through Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan program to address the issues to reduce educational disparities.

Conclusion:

• An inverted rectangular shape of attrition is being resulted as there is a decline in the number of students who enrol when they are being promoted to the higher level.
• There is a strict need for systematic reformation such as increasing the infrastructure for higher-level education, increasing accessibility to education, and increasing better faculty resources for quality teaching to curb the prevailing problem.

Source: Live mint

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