Gloom and Doom primary education system in Manipur

Bishwajit Okram *

The vital source of a nation’s strength is education. A good education system is like a gold mine of the nation. Manipur is yet to discover this mine, unfortunately.

Education precedes development always. Elementary and primary schools of a nation are the stepping stones to a good education system.

Neglecting the system at the very first steps itself, and dreaming of 100% literacy one day, is like the story of a foolish dreamer kicking his milk pot.

Education is the heart of a nation. Our heart is malfunctioning at the moment; hence, we have all these social malaises.

By just mere analysing of few data, one can easily assess - there is a black hole in the primary education system in Manipur. The system is severely paralysed and dysfunctional. It is a mouse click away for anyone to understand the state of primary education system of Manipur.

The symptoms are palpable and can be clearly vouched from the lackadaisical nature of the education ministry’s website itself, just to begin.

Mr L.Jayanta Kumar who is still sitting there in the web page of the ministry of education as the minister, has been replaced by Mr DD Thaisii a year back. It is appalling at this advance informatics age; we can effect small change.

Apart from this, many of the information shown in the website are junk and irrelevant; it is very frustrating when one tries to access the web site for some information.

This website is the mirror of our education ministry which in turn reflects the system as a whole.

The inefficiency and the ineffectiveness of the ministry’s website are just the tips of the iceberg, manifesting the underlying fiasco of our education system. The purpose of this article is to understand and analyse the over view of this fiasco.

UNESCO found in its reports, only 83% of eligible elementary school pupils of India are enrolled in elementary schools in the year 2009.

But, for Manipur, it is 96%, according to a report, ‘Education Profile of Manipur’, based on Government of Manipur official data. It is a bit weird and absurd, this author himself visited some primary schools in Manipur during the month of November, and all he found was no pupil or only a handful of pupils in every school he visited.

The Hindustan Times on 17 January 2011, ran a head line “Fake admission brings down enrolments in Schools across India.” This report unearth scandalous, fake enrolment list of school pupils in government schools across the country. What a shame!

This author’s own eyes have verified this in Manipur.

According to Assessment Survey Research Centre Report (www.asercentre.org) 2009, in all India level, 69% of enrolment level in school takes place in government schools and 25% in private Schools.

But it is just the opposite for Manipur. Manipuri’s enrolment in private school is 65% and in government school is 31%. The 2012 report from the same sources reveals – enrolment in government school has gone down from 31% of 2009 to 27% during the year 2011. It is plausible to think why!

At the same time the report says that there has been a surge in enrolment from 264019 pupils of 1991 to 285580 of 2001 and to 324096 of 2006, based on the Government of Manipur data. If this is to be believed, most of the enrolment are then happening in private schools.

The report, ‘Education Profile of Manipur’ added, “65% of the children who enrolled for class 1 never reach class V; 71% of them do not make it to class VIII”.

The Indian Express, a report in its 17 January 2011 print goes the heading “Half of class 5 kids can’t read class 2 texts”. The Hindu says, “Class III students do not know simple mathematics of subtractions.”

Amid these facts, Manipur government claims that literacy rate of Manipur is 70%. Something amiss and contradictory indeed; it does not conjure away with the flaws in the system.

This is can not be unique to other parts of India and exception to Manipur.

Is not it the time to re-define what literacy means? Crappy crabs needs to be churned out properly.

Let us assume for a minute, those pupils in 2001 were to write their class X exams in 2010. Then, only 34824 pupils matured to studentship out of the 285580 primary school pupils enrolled in 2001, as per the Board of secondary School’s HSLC exams record, 2010.

It tallied very well with the report that 71% of the pupils enrolled in primary schooling never make it to class VIII.

When it comes to the accountability, key stakeholders wash off their hands. Public scrutiny drive in this tiny state of 2.7 million people has been the epitome of the nation for years.

There are host of student bodies, NGOs, activists, advocacy groups, rights groups and pressure groups doing this scrutiny and fighting for the rights to proper education in Manipur for many years. Manipur is blessed with huge numbers of such types of volunteers.

One will wonders why cracks are still not mended in this system, despite so many policemen. Or is this the case of too many hawkish for this rate!

OR, Are they simply an impediment to a right system, not able to mitigate the ills, rather they compound the problem and become part of the problem than becoming a part of the solution?

Teachers, they are happy campers, free salary for doing nothing. Black sheep outnumbered dark horses.

ASER 2011 report says, 28% of enrolment in 2011 is with the government school and the figure could be safely presumed as about 100000 as round figure. Assuming 1:20 is true for pupil teacher ratio, then, there could be around 5000 teachers.

According to a National Salary data, on an average, a government teacher gets Rs.156,880.00 per annum as salary. Other perks, allowances, peons, chawkidars, helpers and schools running overhead cost, together (say 50% of the teacher cost) gross per unit teaching cost can go up to Rs200000.00 p.a.

It means, per pupil cost of a teaching cost per year is Rs.10000.00 which is way above the cost per pupil of private schools.(Assuming private school teachers gets on an average Rs.5000.p.m)

Johnny (name changed) from Khurai, Imphal, is an engineer by qualification but became a primary school teacher in Manipur. He said, “There is no student or very little students in my school of posting. For an ambitious person like me it is difficult to continue there, but I am paid, so I do go there for some hours every working day, sit there and come home”

Sonia (name changed) from Thoubal, a primary school teacher said, “There is no student to the school where I am posted at. So I don’t go to the school every day”

Anthony (name changed) from Chandel district says, “There is no student in the primary school of their locality. So the teachers don’t come there often. They pay some one to sign their attendant registers. This way many hill people are also get paid just to mind the attendance.”

When it comes to affordability and cost, government of Manipur is always at its knees.

Under the government of India plan, ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan 2002’, all children are required to complete five years of primary schooling by 2007 and eight years of schooling by 2010.

State has to contribute 10% of the total expenditure. But Manipur has been unable to pay this 10%, thus it is not authorised to use the balance 90% fully. Now, this ratio of expenditure sharing is going to go up from the IX and X plans onwards.

Another report says, Manipur still has many building less schools and teacher less schools. It is hard to digest to think of it in this 4th largest economy of the world, India.

According to IBEF report (www.ibef.org), 0.15% is the share of Manipur’s all India Gross State Domestic Products. Foreign Direct Investment inflow to Manipur is just 0.05% of all India figure during 2009-2010.

Scary enough, Manipur can not afford to teach its own children with its own money.

It shows how dependent we are to the government of India, even for our basic education right.

In the last five years from now, India’s education budget has increased from 152847 crore to 372813 crore, a jump of 244%. Out of this elementary education budget has increased from 7156 crore to 15000 crore. This is an increase of 210%.

Money is aplenty but the rider is- state has to contribute its own share as well. Education is a subject of state matter under Indian constitution. No doubt, salaries of schools teachers are paid every 3 to 4 months in Manipur.

No matter how rich India grows, for Manipur unless every player in the education sector does not do a soul searching and our own government is serious and genuine in its effort.

It may be through top-down or bottom-up approach or a mixture of the two, we desperately need an approach to find a solution to it. Better we start from the scratch and re-look for a new innovative ways to improve our primary education system.

Frederick The Great said: “An educated people can be easily governed.” Let us all understand this.