Introduction: In all aspects of the school and its surrounding education community, the rights of the whole child, and all children, to survival, protection, development and participation are at the centre. This means that the focus is on learning which strengthens the capacities of children to act progressively on their own behalf through the acquisition of relevant knowledge, useful skills and appropriate attitudes; and which creates for children, and helps them create for themselves and others, places of safety, security and healthy interaction. (Bernard, 1999) Quality Education Includes:
Learners who are supported in learning by their families and communities, and are healthy, well-nourished and ready to participate and learn;
Processes through which trained teachers use child-centred teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms and schools and skilful assessment to facilitate learning and reduce disparities.
Environments that are healthy, safe, protective and gender-sensitive, and provide adequate resources and facilities;
Content that is reflected in relevant curricula and materials for the acquisition of basic skills, especially in the areas of literacy, numeracy and skills for life, and knowledge in such areas as gender, health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS prevention and peace.
Outcomes that encompass knowledge, skills and attitudes, and are linked to national goals for education and positive participation in society.
This definition allows for an understanding of education as a complex system embedded in a political, cultural and economic context. Quality in Education: School systems work with the children who come into them. The quality of children‘s lives before beginning formal education greatly influences the kind of learners they can be. There are many factors affecting quality in education, including health, early childhood experiences and home support. Education provides individual children with the knowledge and skills necessary to advance themselves and their nation economically. Socioeconomic factors, such as family income level, parents' level of education, race and gender, all influence the quality and availability of education as well as the ability of education to improve life circumstances.
Education is the process in which knowledge, skills and set of values are passed or imparted from a person to another. In the formal setting wherein learning is done in schools, the success of educators in imparting knowledge and skills depends on the quality of education they are providing to their students.
Generally, children who are fortunate in being born to educated parents or having caring, competent teachers do very well, and are able to find jobs demanding high productivity. However, the average is appallingly low. The results are low productivity, poor skills, and massive unemployment even after several years of schooling, or even college education. Various studies have shown that children coming from a deprived background do not have a supportive learning environment and feel alienated in schools. The government school teachers, even motivated ones, find it difficult to address their special needs. Therefore, increasingly it is being realized that only by improving the quality of education can the positive effects of growing enrolments be sustained. A child‘s exposure to curriculum — his or her ‗opportunity to learn‘ — significantly influences achievement, and exposure to curriculum comes from being in school (Fuller et al., 1999).
Good health and nutrition: Physically and psychosocially healthy children learn well. Healthy development in early childhood, especially during the first three years of life, plays an important role in providing the basis for a healthy life and a successful formal school experience (McCain & Mustard, 1999). Adequate nutrition is critical for normal brain development in the early years, and early detection and intervention for disabilities can give children the best chances for healthy development. Prevention of infection, disease and injury prior to school enrolment are also critical to the early development of a quality learner.
Family support for learning: Parents may not always have the tools and background to support their children‘s cognitive and psychosocial development throughout their school years. Parents‘ level of education, for example, has a multifaceted impact on children‘s ability to learn in school. Parents' education level directly correlates to the importance and influence of education in their children's lives. Parents with little formal education may also be less familiar with the language used in the school, limiting their ability to support learning and participate in school-related activities. Educated parents can assess a son or daughter's academic strengths and weaknesses to help
that child improve overall academic performance. The educated parent also sets expectations of academic performance that propel students forward in their achievement levels. However, even if educated, parents who struggled academically and do not think highly of formalized education may have negative attitudes toward education that can still hinder the child academically.
Quality learning environment: Learning can occur anywhere, but the positive learning outcomes generally sought by educational systems happen in quality learning environments. Learning environments are made up of physical, psychosocial and service delivery elements. Physical learning environments or the places, in which formal learning occurs, range from relatively modern and well-equipped buildings to open-air gathering places. The quality of school facilities seems to have an indirect effect on learning, an effect that is hard to measure. Schools include but are not limited to primary schools, secondary schools, sixth form schools, vocational schools, colleges and universities. But for these educational institutions to function well so as to expedite the learning process, educational facilities are a necessity. These facilities refer to all the structures as well as equipment used to facilitate learning in schools. These facilities include buildings, classrooms, conference hall, libraries, gymnasiums, and other structures and equipment. Without these facilities, students have to endure holding classes under the scorching heat of the sun or risk getting wet by torrents of rain. Without these facilities, students would not have a decent place to learn the knowledge and skills they need. Many young people around the world — especially the disadvantaged — are leaving school without the skills they need to thrive in society and find decent jobs. As well as thwarting young people‘s hopes, these education failures are jeopardizing equitable economic growth and social cohesion, and preventing many countries from reaping the potential benefits of their growing youth populations. The 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report examines how skills development programmes can be improved to boost young people‘s opportunities for decent jobs and better lives.
Quality in Higher Education: A number of environmental forces are driving change within and across countries and their higher education. Higher education environments across the globe are frequently described as turbulent and dynamic. Both global and national forces are driving change within and across individual countries and their higher education institutions. These changes have served to put the issue of quality management firmly on the agendas of national governments, institutions, academic departments and individual programmes of study. Despite the progress that has been made through research and debate, there is still no universal consensus on how best to manage quality within Higher Education. One of the key reasons for this is the recognition that quality is a complex and multi-faceted construct, particularly in Higher Education environments (Harvey and Knight, 1996; Cheng and Tam, 1997; Becket and Brookes, 2006). As a result, the measurement and management of quality has created a number of challenges.
Poor Allocation of Funds: The need for increased expenditure on education has been talked about since the late sixties. Anil Sadgopalvi, Professor of Education, University of Delhi, says ―the allocation for education as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been steadily declining since the promulgation of the New Economic Policy. This investment has continued to decline during the United Progressive Alliance rule as well in spite of the levy of the 2 per cent Education Cess and a substantial portion of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) funds coming from international agencies. The present level of investment is as low as the level achieved 20 years ago — 3.5 per cent of the GDP. The political will to mobilise adequate public resources for education has reached a low-ebb.‖
Statistics of literacy rate according to various states in India: Kerala is the most literate state in India, with almost 100% literacy, followed by Mizoram at 92.6%. Bihar is the least literate state in India. Though the literacy rate of Bihar is not up to the mark but the state shows a great improvement from 2001 to 2011 as the increase of literacy rate is highest in Bihar in the respect to others. Table 1 shows the statistics of literacy rate according to Census 2001, Provisional report of Census 2011 and NFHS – 3 (National Family and Health Survey) reports and the present increase of literacy rate from 2001 to 2011 also reflects in this table.
Rank State
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Kerala Mizoram Tripura Goa Himachal Pradesh Nagaland Sikkim Tamil Nadu Maharashtra Manipur Uttarakhand Gujarat West Bengal Punjab Haryana Karnataka Meghalaya Odisha Assam Chattisgarh Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir Andhra Pradesh Jharkhand Rajasthan Arunachal Pradesh Bihar India
Literacy rate (%) NFHS – 3 100 75.9 74.2 83.3 100 77.6 73.6 74.2 63.7 60.9 73.7 74.1 71.6 74 71.4 69.3 72.1 68.8 70.3 63.6 70.5 61.6 66.7 72.5 58.6 68 62.8 75.82 67.6
Literacy rate (%) 2001 Census 92.19 88.8 73.19 87.4 76.48 76.88 68.81 73.45 66.59 63.74 71.62 69.14 68.84 69.65 67.91 66.64 62.56 55.08 63.25 64.66 60.53 56.27 55.52 60.47 53.56 60.41 54.34 47 64.84
Literacy rate (%) 2011 Census 93.9 91.6 87.8 87.4 83.8 82.9 82.2 80.3 80.1 79.8 79.6 79.3 77.1 76.7 76.6 75.6 75.5 73.45 73.2 71 70.6 71.7 68.7 67.7 67.6 67.1 67 63.8 74.04
Increase (%) 1.71 2.80 14.61 0.00 7.32 6.02 13.39 6.85 13.52 16.06 7.98 10.16 8.46 7.05 8.69 8.96 12.94 10.42 9.95 6.34 10.07 13.43 13.18 7.23 14.04 6.69 12.066 16.8 9.2%
Table 1: Ranking of Indian states according to literacy rate published in the provisional report of Census 2011.
Figure 1. The diagram showing an overview of literacy rate in India
Crude literacy rate in India during 1901 to 2011: In censuses before 1991, children below the age 5 were treated as illiterates. But now the rule is changed to any one above age 7 who can read and write in any language with an ability to understand was considered a literate. The literacy rate taking the entire population into account is termed as "crude literacy rate" , and taking the population from age 7 and above into account is termed as "effective literacy rate". Effective literacy rate increased to a total of 74.04% with 82.14% of the males and 65.46% of the females being literate.
Census Year 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011
Total (%) 5.35 5.92 7.16 9.50 16.10 16.67 24.02 29.45 36.23 42.84 64.83 74.04
Male (%) 9.83 10.56 12.21 15.59 24.90 24.95 34.4 39.45 46.89 52.74 75.26 82.14
Female (%) 0.60 1.05 1.81 2.93 7.30 9.45 12.95 18.69 24.82 32.17 53.67 65.46
Table 2. The table lists the "crude literacy rate" in India from 1901 to 2011
Figure 2. The diagram showing the uprising percentage of literacy rate from 1901 to 2011
Comparative study of literacy statistics: The table below shows the adult and youth literacy rates for India and some neighbouring countries in 2002. This shows that India is low enough in both adult and youth literacy rate from the neighbouring countries like China and Sri Lanka. Adult literacy rate is based on the 15+ years age group, while Youth literacy rate is for the 15–24 years age group (i.e. youth is a subset of adults).
Country China Sri Lanka Burma Iran World Average India Nepal Pakistan Bangladesh
Adult Literacy Rate 95.9% (2009) 90.8 (2007) 89.9% (2007) 82.4% (2007) 84% (1998) 74.04% (2011) 56.5% (2007) 62.2% (2007) 53.5% (2007)
Table 3. Comparative literacy statistics
Youth Literacy Rate 99.4% (2009) 98.0 94.4% (2004) 95% (2002) 88% (2001) 82% (2001) 62.7% 73.9% (2010) 74%
References: 1. Census India. "Census Of India". Retrieved 2011-03-31. 2. Census Of India | url= http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-provresults/indiaatglance.html 3. Census Provional Population Totals. The Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 2013-02-14. 4. Census report 2001 and 2011 published by Govt. of India. 5. Crossette, Barbara (1998-12-09), "Unicef Study Predicts 16% World Illiteracy Rate Will Increase", New York Times, retrieved 2009-11-27 6. Economic Survey 2004-05, Economic Division, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, quoting UNDP Human Development Report 2004 7. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Complete.pdf 8. National Family Health Survey (NFHS) released NFHS - 3 report on 11 Oct 2007. 9. UNESCO (2004). "Myanmar: Youth literacy rate". Globalis. Retrieved 2009-11-27 10. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Stats.uis.unesco.org. Retrieved 2012-08-14. 11. UNICEF. "At a glance: Myanmar". Retrieved 2009-11-27. 12. UNICEF. "Islamic Republic of Iran Statistics". Retrieved 2009-11-27. 13. World Resources Institute. "Population, Health and Human Well-being: Country Profile of the Islamic Republic of Iran". WRI. Retrieved 2009-11-27. 14. Worldmapper: Youth Literacy. Worldmapper. Retrieved 2009-11-27.
