What is the UDISE Plus Report
- UDISE Plus Report is a comprehensive study that provides information on enrollment and dropout rates of school students, the number of teachers in schools, and information on other infrastructural facilities like toilets, buildings, and electricity.
- UDISE (Unified District Information System for Education) was launched in 2018-2019 to speed up data entry, reduce errors, improve data quality, and ease its verification.
- It is an application to collect the school details about factors related to a school and its resources.
- It is an updated and improved version of UDISE, which was initiated in 2012-13 by the Ministry of Education.
National Education Policy 2020
- The NEP 2020 aims at making “India a global knowledge superpower”. It is only the 3rd major revamp of the framework of education in India since independence.
- The two earlier education policies were brought in 1968 and 1986.
- It aims to bring two crore out-of-school children back into the mainstream through an open schooling system.
- School governance is set to change, with a new accreditation framework and an independent authority to regulate both public and private schools.
- Assessment reforms with a 360-degree Holistic Progress Card, tracking Student Progress for achieving Learning Outcomes.
- Vocational Education will start from Class 6 with Internships.
Major Issues Related to the Education Sector in India
Inadequate Infrastructure in Schools:
- According to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) for 2019-20, only 12% of schools have internet facilities and 30% have computers.
- About 42% of these schools lacked furniture, 23% lacked electricity, 22% lacked ramps for the physically disabled, and 15% lacked WASH facilities (which include drinking water, toilets, and hand wash basins).
High Dropout Rate:
- The dropout rate is very high in primary and secondary levels. Most of the students in 6-14 age groups leave the school before completing their education. It leads to wastage of financial and human resources.
- According to the National Family Health Survey-5, not being interested in studies was the reason given by 21.4% of girls and 35.7% of boys aged between 6 to 17 years for dropping out of school before the 2019-20 school year.
Problem of Brain Drain:
- Due to cutthroat competition for getting admission in top institutes like IITs and IIMs, a challenging academic environment is created for a large number of students in India, so they prefer going abroad, that makes our country deprived of good talent.
- There is definitely a quantitative expansion of education in India, but the qualitative front (which is essential for a student to get a job) is lagging behind.
Mass illiteracy:
In spite of constitutional directives and efforts aimed at enhancing education, around 25% of Indians still remain illiterate, which also leaves them socially and digitally excluded.
Lack of Adequate Attention to Indian Languages:
- Indian languages are still in an underdeveloped stage, the medium of instruction particularly in science subjects is English, resulting in unequal opportunities for rural students.
- Also, standard publications are not available in the Indian language.
Lack of Technical and Vocational Education:
Mainly, our educational system is of generalistic nature. Development of technical and vocational education is quite unsatisfactory, due to which the number of educated unemployed persons is increasing day by day.
Unaffordability:
- Meagre incomes at rural level leads to education taking a backseat. Due to lack of awareness and financial stability, many parents tend to see education as an expense rather than an investment. They would rather have their children work and earn.
- When it comes to higher education, lack of good institutes in the vicinity force students to shift in cities, which adds to their expenses. This leads to low rates of enrollment.
Gender-Inequality:
Despite the government’s effort to ensure equality of opportunity for education for both men and women in our society, the literacy rate of women in India, especially in rural areas, still remains very poor.
