Less dropouts, better english

The Annual Status of Education Report 2007 has some encouraging news...

The Annual Status of Education Report 2007 has some encouraging news, some negatives too

•59% Class V students in rural Kerala can read simple sentences in English, the survey says, adding that “from the Hindi-speaking belt, Himachal Pradesh matches Kerala…while Haryana and Bihar also perform relatively well with 47.9% and 41.2%”

• The dropout rate has dropped to 4.2% from 6.6%, but still only 74% of children on the roster are attending classes

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• 89% of Class VIII students in government and private schools in rural areas of West Bengal attend tuition classes. The national average is about 25%

• 83.3% of Class V students in West Bengal took private tuitions. Orissa was next with 50.9%. Less than 5% of the students took tuitions in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Himachal

•But on the flipside, 58% of Class V children cannot divide a three digit number by a one digit number. “Maths learning continues to provide bad news”, the report says, adding that maths learning ability of students in rural areas is not improving

• 40% of children in Class II cannot recognise numbers beyond 10

• 28% rural schools do not have water, 45% don’t have toilets