Skip to main content

India’s illiterate population largest in the world, says UNESCO report

Headway in improving access to education acknowledged

The latest Education For All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) — released worldwide by the UNESCO
on Tuesday — acknowledges the headway made by India in improving access to education but the country’s population of illiterate adults has been identified as the drag factor.
India currently has the largest population of illiterate adults in the world with 287 million. This is 37 per cent of the global total. While India’s literacy rate rose from 48 per cent in 1991 to 63 per cent in 2006, “population growth cancelled the gains so there was no change in the number of illiterate adults,” the report stated.
There are better tidings for India at the pre-primary and primary level. India features among the countries likely to achieve the pre-primary enrolment target of at least 70 per cent by 2015 along with countries like Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom.
Similarly, India is in the top bracket of countries likely to achieve a primary enrolment target of at least 95 per cent by 2015. This league includes Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States.
However, the report questions the quality of education; placing India among the 21 countries facing an “extensive” learning crisis. Referring to the new analysis, the GMR said less than half of the children were learning the basics in 21 of the 85 countries with full data available. India features in this list along with 17 countries from sub-Saharan Africa, Mauritania, Morocco and Pakistan.
Part of the learning crisis has been attributed to the ambitious curriculum drawn out for children in India; including disadvantaged learners. Contrasting this to Vietnam — where the curriculum focuses on foundation skills and is closely matched to what children are able to learn, especially disadvantaged learners — the report pointed out that India’s curriculum “outpaces what pupils can realistically learn and achieve in the time given”.
According to the report, India — despite spending a considerable amount on education — has reduced its expenditure on education from 13 per cent of the entire government budget in 1999 to 10 per cent in 2010.
  • India likely to achieve primary enrolment target by 2015

  • India placed among 21 countries facing “extensive” learning crisis
    • Labels:

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

    Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...
    3 comments
    Click Here To Read more »

    "ISRO has capabilities to build geostationary satellites for air quality monitoring” (downtoearth)

    Pawan Gupta's findings on trans-boundary movement of pollution (Punjab to Delhi) from biomass burning in 2015 spurred debates. He participated in discussions with Indian regulators early September at the Better Air Quality Conference in Busan on the advantages of using satellite data for air quality monitoring. He explains to Down to Earth how air quality monitoring is done using satellite data. How is satellite data used to measure air pollution? Satellites that provide information on atmospheric pollutants are normally (not always) in the low earth orbits (400-1000 km above the Earth’s surface). A single satellite can carry one or more remote sensing instruments onboard that look down to earth and obtain information about the object in the field of view of satellite sensor. The Earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which travels through space and reaches the earth-atmosphere system. The radiation then interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and the surface...
    1 comment
    Click Here To Read more »

    What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

    Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
    3 comments
    Click Here To Read more »