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Can education for all work?
[DAWN] ARTICLE 25-A in our Constitution makes education a basic right for all five- to 16-year-old children. For the last many years, governments have been trying to get all children in this age bracket into schools but have not been successful as yet. In fact, though the article talks about all five- to 16-year-old children, most of the focus of governments has been on getting primary education universalised -- and we have not even been successful in that as yet.Punjab claims that the ’participation’ rate has gone up to 90 per cent at the primary level. But it is not clear as to what is meant by the ’participation’ rate, how this is linked to gross and net enrolment rates and what this means in terms of primary-level completion rates. The claims about enrolments, from other provinces, are lower than those for Punjab, so the problem is bigger in other provinces. It is often argued, in education policy circles, that getting all children into schools is the first priority and once that is done, we can worry about the quality of education and other related issues. And, broadly speaking, this is indeed the policy that the provincial and federal governments have been following. But, there are a number of problems with this perspective. Posted by: Fred 2017-05-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=487385 |