1. MANTHAN THEME
Stepping stones:
Enhancing the quality of primary
education
TEAM DETAILS (IGNITERS567)
1.Ankit Singh (Team Leader)
2.Amarjeet kumar
3.Suraj
4.Dayasindhu
5.Piyush Prabhakar

2. PRESENT CONDITION OF PRIMARY
EDUCATION IN INDIA
●Close to 200 million children study in primary and secondary schools.
The majority of these children belong to the rural areas of the INDIA.
●As per annual status of education report 2012,4.5% of total children
of age group 6-14 of rural areas do not go to school even once.
●Close to 1.5 million seats of teachers still remain vacant in primary
schools for maintaining ideal student to teacher ratio.
●Estimates suggest that 27% of all the children in age group 6-14
study in private schools.In urban areas it is close to 50%.It shows the
lack of govt. primary schools in INDIA.
●With implementation of programs , District Education Revitalization
(DERP), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan(SSA),Right To Education(RTE) etc ,there
is slight improvement in education system but proper implementation
of these programmes is the most challenging task ahead.
●Overall the present condition of primary education in INDIA is still
not upto the mark and several changes need to be made in it , so
that it can improve in coming days.

3. MAJOR CHALLENGES IN PRIMARY EDUCATION
AND REASONS BEHIND THESE CHALLENGES
CHALLENGES REASONS
Quality education This is major challenge .The annual status
of education report(ASER) states that
half of children in schools are no where
near class age appropriate learning
levels.
Issue of language India being diverse country with over 22
official languages and over 1500
languages as “mother tounge” means
that primary education can never be
easy. Teachers need to understand the
local language also which is difficult.
Lack of trained teachers In many states there is still lack of
institutions for teacher education.School
are therefore forced to hire less qualified
teachers which afects teaching quality.
Literacy levels Literacy in India is about 74.04% .In
other words quarter of parents are still
illiterate so their motivation to send their
child to schools is quite low.

4. CHALLENGES REASONS
Economic condition Although India has made great strides in
economic development and is regarded as
as 4th biggest economy of world.It is home
to 1/3 of world’s poor.Poverty seriously
affects the focus on education.
Implementation of govt. programs Government has started various programs
in regards to primary education such as
sarva shiksha abhiyan,mid day meal,
district education revitalization program
etc., but they are not being properly
implemented in many parts of country.
Above written were some of the basic and important challenges that
presently Indian primary education faces. There are numerous other
reasons behind the present bleakish condition of primary education.More
emphasis needs to be laid on these challenges so that in future we can come
out as nation with better quality of primary education.
Primary education , as we know is one of most important facets of overall
education sector of any country.

5. PROPOSED SOLUTION:ENHANCING THE
QUALITY OF PRIMARY EDUCATION
There are various sectors in the field of primary education that needs to be
improved for overall enhancement of primary education sector in INDIA.These
are listed as follows with the proposed solution-
TEACHERS QUALITY-Teachers quality can be maintained in schools by
making sure that they fullfill following criterias−
1)Their intake is by proper test at state level and also they should have some teaching
specialised degree like b.ed etc
2)There should be regular assessment of teachers according to the performance of
students he/she teaches,his/her presence found during random inspection in the school.
This should be done atleast twice a year.It would motivate them to teach in better way and
also it should be made important criteria for promotion of students.
3) There should be camps and seminars for teachers , giving them input about
advancements in teaching methodologies and innovative methods of teaching.
4)Teachers should not be given any task other than teaching , there should be separate
administrative staff for those purposes.This is happening in many states of our country that
teachers are made responsible to look after work of whitewashing of school etc.This should
be stopped so that teacher can focus on teaching only.

6. TEACHING METHODOLOGY-It basically refers to the innovation in
teaching style and coming up with new methods of teaching so that students can
learn more efficiently and also in a better way.Following innovation can be made in
the field of teaching methodology-
1-New and innovative tools of teaching should be employed such as use of toys
and real objects, it would keep the students interested and also it would provide
better sense of understanding.
2-Use of videos and concept of e-learning can be employed in primary education
sector of our country.
3-Teachers should take regular assessment test of students to analyse their
performance and the good ones should be given prize .It would bring sense of
competition in students,they will try to learn more.
4-Adopting the method of ‘learning by levels’ i.e weaker students should not be
left behind .They should be made to learn the concepts again , which they could
not grasp 1st time.

7. INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOLS
This is one of the most important thing regarding primary education that needs to be improved.
Folllowing few facts present the true story of infrastructure of modern day primary schools in
India.
• About 57 per cent of rural elementary (primary and upper primary) schools in India had less
than 4 classrooms.The portion of rural schools that do not have one classroom per grade is
substantially higher.
• About 13 per cent of rural elementary schools in India did not have drinking
water facilities.
• About 16 per cent of rural elementary schools in India did not have any toilet facilities.
• About 49 per cent of rural elementary schools in India did not have separate
toilets for girls.
• About 70 per cent of rural elementary schools in India did not have electricity.
• About 14 per cent of all rural primary schools in India had only one teacher.
Above facts clearly depict the true story of infrastructure of primary schools in INDIA.It also
points out the facts that Government needs to invest more in this field financially. Another
reason that is responsible for this is corruption and eating away of money mid way while
building school etc. by teachers, Gram pradhan etc. To avoid this, the process of construction
should be given to private or govt. contractors.Presently in most of places it is being done
under supervision of teachers, gram pradhans itself.

8. Those schools which have toilet and drinking facilities also, their quality is really poor.As
pointed out earlier also teachers should be only responsible for teaching. So , a
separate administrativ staff should be there of 2-3 members who looks after things like
proper cleaning og toilets, maintainance of electricity facilities etc.A primary school
should atleast contain following minimum things-
1)Separate classroom for each class.
2)A watercooler/handpump ,whichever may be possible.
3)Separate toilet for boys and girls.
4)A teachers staff room.
5)A small playground.
All the works regarding maintainance or construction purpose should be constantly
monitered by the higher authority so that corruption can be avoided.
There should be atleast one school in every village so that every child can get access to
education. Seriously speaking there is huge scope of improvement in terms of
infrastructure , which can be only be possible if government gives primary education
sector more share in its financial budget and also state governments have a major role
to play too.Good infrastructure can also act as medium to attract childrens in schools
.We do not need a classy air conditioned class rooms at present nor we can get funding
for that, but they should atleast contain certain basic required features so that no
parent fears in sending his/her ward to school.

9. BRINGING MORE CHILDRENS TO SCHOOL:
INCREASING GROSS ENROLMENT RATIO
One of the greatest failures of development policy in post-independence India has been the
inability to ensure that all children attend school. The gaps in respect of provision of adequate
schooling facilities and in respect of the proportion of children who continue to be out of school
are particularly high in rural India.
Gross Attendance Ratio is defined as the number of children who attend school at a particular
level of schooling (say, primary school) as a proportion of the population of children in the
official age group for that level of schooling (say, primary school-going age)
Following methods can be adopted to bring more children to schools-
1)Conducting camps in villages regarding positives of education so that they can
understand the real importance of education and send their wards to school.It is
very imp. here to note down that large % of children who do not attend school are
SC,ST and from rural areas.This is because they do not understand the real value of
education.
2)Providing free or subsidised primary education to economically weakers.Indian
government has taken steps in lieu of that but we need to extend it to more broader
aspect such that more and more get benifitted from this.

10. 3)Another method to bring more childrens to schools is the most basic one, improving the
overall structure of primary schooling in India.This would automatically motivate them to send
their wards to schools.
OTHER METHODS OF ENHANCING PRIMARY
EDUCATION IN INDIA
1)One of the most important thing that we need to do is to make sure that all the
government programmes and schemes are implemented in a proper way.We recently heard
about the mid day meal incident in Bihar, that was due to poor management.So, that there
should be hierarchial mangement system for proper implementation of government
programmes and schemes.Each level of hierarichy should be accountable for its work to the
upper level.
2)We can take help of NGO’S , AGANVAADI kendras to increase the no of students in schools.
They can motivate and tell people of rural area the real worth of education.
3)Holding parents teacher meeting on regular basis so that teachers can inform about the
current level of their wards , also teachers can tell them about the way children should study
at home.It is very important for people of rural area as it often happens , being themselves
illiterate, parents do not know how to treat their child while he/she is studying.

11. CONCLUSION
The present condition of primary education in INDIA is really bad. It needs a huge
uplift.We as a citizen of this nation should pledge to send all our wards to schools, all
the persons associated with primary education sector need to work without
corruption and with greater accountibility and at last government(both state and
central) need to bring more schemes and programmes in this field.
No plan is successful without proper planning , so we need to improve and enchance
the quality of primary education in a planned and structured way.It is not a huge
task and government has taken few important steps in this regard already.India is
one of the biggest economies of world and we have sufficient funding for this.What
we need is to chalk out a effective plan and properly implement it.If this happens we
can expect India with peaking literacy rates .In coming days we expect INDIA with
better and improved primary education facilities.We just need to remember that
solution of every problem resides in our own hand.
JAI HIND JAI BHARAT

12. REFERENCES
1)Wikipedia
2)Segmented Schooling: Inequalities in Primary Education by
SONALDE DESAI
AMARESH DUBEY
CECILY DARDEN
3)Statistics on elementary school education in INDIA by VIKAS RAWAL
4) DISE statistics, taken from NUEPA (2010)
5) NSSO (2010)
6) Aggarwal (1997) and Jalan and Glinskaya (2005)
7) Ramachandran, V. K., Rawal, Vikas, and Swaminathan, Madhura (1997),
“Investment Gaps in Primary Education: A Statewise Study,” Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 32, nos. 1 and 2,january 2004.