Opinion: Focus on quality of education

By Venkatanarayana Motkuri Telangana, once considered an educationally backward region, is now a progressive State in the same domain. Almost all of its 6-14 years-age children are attending schools, near universalisation. My estimate based on the unit-record data of the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS-III) 2019-20 shows nearly 99.5% of the children in the […]

By Venkatanarayana Motkuri

Telangana, once considered an educationally backward region, is now a progressive State in the same domain. Almost all of its 6-14 years-age children are attending schools, near universalisation.

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My estimate based on the unit-record data of the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS-III) 2019-20 shows nearly 99.5% of the children in the State in 6-14 years of age are attending schools.

The latest annual rounds of UDISE or Unified District Information System for Education (2020-21) and AISHE or All India Survey on Higher Education (2019-20) indicate that gender parity has been achieved in school as well as in higher education in Telangana. Social group and regional disparities are minimised to the least ever.

Correspondingly, the education infrastructure, ie, number of schools and colleges available for the population, is found to be relatively better in Telangana when compared with other States in India. Although quality of education remains a cause for concern all over India as well as in Telangana, the progress in the State is far better in terms of quantitative expansion and the reach out of school and higher education even to the most disadvantaged section of society.

Schooling Vs Illiteracy

With solid evidence, the hard fact is that the illiteracy rate in Telangana is higher than not only the national average but also of many other States in the country. In fact, it is one of the highest among the States. An estimate based on the PLFS-III shows that 28.5% of the Telangana population (7 years and above) is illiterate while the all-India average is 21.2%. Even the States considered backward have relatively lower illiteracy rates than Telangana. For example, Madhya Pradesh has an illiteracy rate of 23.3%, Odisha, 23.9%, UP, 26.2%, Bihar, 27.5% and Rajasthan, 28.3%.

However, it is not a contradictory phenomenon when an educationally progressive State has a high illiteracy rate. It is possible when one views the progress in education in terms of the current attendance rate in school and college-age population which, in fact, saw faster growth in the recent past. The illiteracy rate, on the other hand, is a cumulative one affected by historical neglect of primary education for a long period.

A birth cohort of the population which missed the first chance during their primary school age to attend formal schooling and get primary education would not get a second chance of the same thereafter and hence remains illiterate throughout their life. In Telangana, it is disturbing to note the illiteracy of the surviving birth cohorts (especially those prior to the 1990s), who lost their chance to attain primary education when they were in school-age owing to various reasons, related to demand and supply factors of education.

It is true in the case of Telangana and also of other States that a high illiteracy rate is a historical burden as a result of historical neglect of primary education due to state policy, resource allocations and socio-economic conditions among others. Much of the progress in educational development in present Telangana was witnessed during the last three decades. Till the early 1990s, the progress in education development was slow both in the Telangana region and for the whole State.

Historical Burden

Telangana as a region was part of Nizam’s Hyderabad state prior to independence and subsequently an independent Hyderabad state (1948-56) until it was separated and unified/merged with Andhra and became part of undivided Andhra Pradesh under the States’ Reorganisation Act, 1956. Hyderabad state, though being the most privileged princely state in British India, remained backward in all aspects of social and economic development, including education. Travancore-Cochin, Kolhapur, Baroda and Mysore fared far better, especially on the education front.

The undivided State of Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1956 combining the Andhra state, which was carved out in 1953 from the Telugu-speaking districts of erstwhile Madras state and the Telugu-speaking region/districts (Telangana) from Hyderabad state. These two regions were under two different political regimes and travelled through different educational and socio-economic developmental paths. Telangana and Andhra (including Rayalaseema) had at that time different levels of educational development. For the next three-and-a-half decades since 1956, while the undivided State as a whole experienced slow progress in education, regional disparities in educational development continued to persist. As the undivided Andhra Pradesh witnessed a turnaround during the 1990s in terms of progress in educational development with the attendance status of school and college-age population outpacing the national average, regional disparities in the same space narrowed or were eliminated in the next one decade.

During the last two decades, Telangana has performed remarkably well outpacing Andhra in terms of attendance rates, and is among the top five in the current attendance rate. It must now concentrate on the quality of education.