Govt data: 4 million students moved to govt schools in first Covid-19 pandemic year

Govt data: 4 million students moved to govt schools in first Covid-19 pandemic year
Featured Times
Spread the love

[ad_1]

Close to four million students shifted to government-run schools in the 2020-21 academic year, according to a new ministry of education report, which captures how the pandemic affected learning and access to learning during a period when classes went virtual and millions of parents are believed to have lost jobs or wages.

Overall, the enrolment of students in classes from pre-primary to higher secondary dipped by 77,585, showed the report released on Wednesday, based on data collected via the government’s Unified District Information System for Education (UIDSE+).

Among the key consequences were drops in admission of students in pre-primary and first grades, as well as of children with disabilities, which the report said indicated that many pushed back admission due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

It also found that nearly 75% of schools in India still did not have internet facilities and 59% had no computer facilities in the year 2020-21, when most learning took place remotely for those who could access it.

The UDISE+ 2020-21 report covers data reported by private and government schools. The overall enrolment of students from the pre-primary grades to class 12 in more than 1.5 million schools across the country was 264.5 million in 2019-20, declining declined to 264 million in 2020-21.

The bulk of this decline was in the early classes: enrolment in pre-primary and the first grade fell by 2.9 million and 1.9 million respectively, when compared to 2019-20. In children with special needs, the decline in enrolment was 3.55% compared to 2019-20.

“Although the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is cross-cutting, this is particularly noticed in the enrolment of young and vulnerable kids like pre-primary, class 1 and Children with special needs (CWSN) may be attributed to postponement of admissions due to Covid-19,” the report released by the union ministry of education stated.

The data shows that the number of students enrolled in private schools decreased from 98 million in 2019-20 to 95 million in 2020-21 while enrolment in government schools rose by 3.97 million during the same period.

The government report found that enrolment in classes 2-12 rose by 2.8 million when compared to 2019.20. “It shows that the overall enrolment declined only because of the fewer admissions at the pre-primary and class 1 level,” said an official at the ministry.

Educationist Meeta Sengupta said, “The enrolment data released by government in UDISE report validates the anecdotal evidence in education where parents of very young children are risk averse and postpone their school start. The shift to government schools also reflects the economic uncertainty due to the pandemic.”

The findings echo that of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey released in November by the nonprofit Pratham, which found a sharp movement of students from private to government schools. While the UIDSE+ does not go into minute details, the ASER report cited financial distress precipitated by the pandemic, free facilities at government schools, inability of privately-run schools to conduct online classes, and migration caused by Covid-related lockdowns as the main reasons cited by respondents to its survey when asked about the reasons behind the switchover from private to public schools.

The report also showed that the dropout came down, to reach 14.6% at the secondary level (Class 9-10) from 16.1 percent in the year before. At the primary level, the dropout rate in 2020-21 was 0.8 percent, down from 1.5 percent in 2019-20.

“I would like to believe the reduction in drop out rates is because the pandemic forced educators to take learning to students, rather than force students into school based learning boxes. This is a vote for hybrid learning, for innovation and a commitment to continuity by both students and educators,” Sengupta said.

The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) , which measures the general level of participation of students, improved in 2020-21 at all levels of school education compared to 2019-20. “Level wise GER in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20 are: 92.2% from 89.7% in upper primary, 99.1 % from 97.8% in elementary, 79.8% from 77.9% in secondary and 53.8% from 51.4% in higher secondary respectively,” the ministry said

“Over 122 million girls were enrolled in primary to higher secondary in 2020-21, showing an increase of 1.1 million compared to the enrolment in 2019-20,” the ministry said in a statement.

The number of teachers engaged in schools across the country stood at 9.7 million in 2020-21, higher by 8,800 in comparison to 2019-20, the data stated.

While there have been some anecdotal evidence of private schools closing due to the economic impact of the pandemic, the UIDSE+ reported a slight increase of 3,320 in the number of private unaided schools in India in 2020-21.


[ad_2]

Source link

Tags:

85 thoughts on “Govt data: 4 million students moved to govt schools in first Covid-19 pandemic year”

  2. The aim of this study was, therefore, to reassess the biokinetics in infants undergoing 99m Tc MAG3 renal scans based on an image based retrospective quantification and to derive organ absorbed doses as well as the associated risk for the related age group hearing loss from viagra J Clin Oncol 11 1 44 8, 1993

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *