India is still lagging behind in providing basic education to its children.
A recent study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has placed India fourth from the bottom in terms of the number of children out-of-school.
However, on a positive note, the study also says that India has made good progress in getting children into classrooms.
The political will to provide wider access to education, in the form of the Right to Education Act, has helped reduce the number of out-of-school children from 20 million in 2000, to 2.3 million in 2006 and 1.67 million in 2010-11.
This has helped push the country up by one position to fourth from bottom, with Ethiopia (1.7 million out-of-school children) taking its earlier place. Nigeria, with 10.54 million out-of-school children is at the very bottom of the list, while Pakistan comes second-last with 5.43 million. However, with about 57 million children being out of school globally in 2011, the world is far from achieving the target of ensuring that all children get proper schooling by 2015 – one of the millennial development goals of the UN.
Getting children to school is one of the two challenges identified by the UN, with the other being whether children learn once they get to school.
Unfortunately, the study has noted only a slight dip in the out-of-school population, from about 59 million in 2010.
Adding to this problem, the study has also noted a drop of six per cent in the aid for basic education between 2010 and 2011.
“Not only has aid to basic education declined, but the funds that are being allocated are not necessarily going to countries most in need. Of the $5.8 billion in aid to basic education in 2011, only $1.9 billion was allocated to low income countries, which face the greatest struggle to achieve universal primary education,” the study says. The report adds, that only three of the 10 countries in the world with the highest out-of-school children population – Ethiopia, India and Pakistan – are among the top 10 recipients of aid to basic education. With about 10 per cent of the global aid, India was the largest recipient in 2011.