A For “Apil”, M For “Mego”
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A for “Apil”, M for “Mego”

 I recently saw a video on facebook about a primary school of India (http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150177444041544) exposing the level of education in a government school at Samastipur, a district in Bihar.

A teacher giving lecture on English to primary school students didn’t know basics:

1. She had her own spellings, apple (Apil), Monday (Mande)

2. She was not aware of who our Prime Minister is!

3. She did not know how many days are there in a year!

It was not only her but other faculties as well who were even greater, while one teacher said “patna” is the capital of India another was found sleeping in the class.

Now you can imagine the level of education given by Government schools

The maximum numbers of schools in India are run by the government, most of them affiliated to respective state education boards. There are about 3,000 Catholic schools, over 900 Kendriya Vidyalayas, 423 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas and over 550 DAV schools. Around 5,000 schools are affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and over 1,000 are affiliated to the Council of Indian School Certificate Examination (ICSE). There are more than 70,000 schools in Bihar with over a crore enrollments.

Recently there was a 24% hike in allocation for education with Rs. 21000 Crore for Sarve Siksha Abhiyan. Do they really need this huge amount for running such a school where teachers know nothing? With an annual expenditure of more than Rs. 42000 Crores of budget given to education, if government is not able to teach kids, we can imagine what our future would be!

The case considered is from Bihar, a state which produces more IAS officers than Kerala, state with highest literacy (90%).

In Patna last year, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said 40 lakh illiterate women were made literate under the 'Mukhyamantri Akshar Anchal Yojana' by two lakh teachers across the state (2 lakh uneducated teachers). He also announced that the government would provide Rs 250 annually to all students between three and six years going to anganwadi schools and Rs 500 to students from class three to class five for purchase of uniform (what about purchase of books?”. “Literacy among women increases in Bihar” the headlines said. It is so great to hear but if you read between the lines, they have not mentioned a word about the quality of education. For them literacy means “apil”, “mego”, “sande”,”mande”, “januri”, “febri”

But if you ask them, they will claim of establishment of an organization called “Bihar Education Project Council” which proudly says “We manage a full-fledged Project Management Information System to monitor the implementation of various programmes being run in the State of Bihar” Launched in 1991 with the purpose of bringing about quantitative and qualitative improvement in the Elementary Education system in Bihar. The goals of the BEP quintessentially is "to bring about a driving force in the State of Bihar through educational reconstruction as a change in the educational situation will then bring improvement in all spheres, and the atmosphere of despair, cynicism, and violence will give way to a firm determination to deal with the environment, social, cultural and gender issues". Heavy words give blow only to future!

Another claim says Bihar Government spends 7-800 per month on each student; the only problem is Bihar elementary education system is flawed by politicians.

It is been decades since our politicians are eating our system and creating a hole in the heart of our country but no one has the guts or the authority to question them and even if they try, the issue will end as another interesting story.

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