The key findings of the report titled Gloom in the Classroom: The Schooling Crisis in Jharkhand, prepared by Gyan Vigyan Samiti Jharkhand, released in December 2022, are as follows (please click here to access):
• The schooling system in Jharkhand is shot through with teacher shortages. Only 53 percent of primary schools and 19 percent of upper-primary schools in the sample had a pupil-teacher ratio below 30, as prescribed under the Right to Education Act.
• Out of 138 schools in the sample, 20 percent had a single teacher. In a majority of these schools, the single teacher is a male para-teacher. Almost 90 percent of pupils in these single-teacher schools are Dalit or Adivasi children.
• Para-teachers account for a majority (55 percent) of teachers at the primary level, and 37 percent of teachers at the upper-primary level. About 40 percent of primary schools in the sample are run entirely by para-teachers.
• In a majority of schools, teachers felt that “most” pupils had forgotten how to read and write by the time schools reopened in February 2022.
• Pupil attendance on the day of the survey was just 68 percent in primary schools and 58 percent in upper-primary schools.
• Not a single school in the sample had functional toilets, electricity and water supply (all three).
• Two thirds of primary schools in the sample had no boundary wall, 64 percent did not have a playground and 37 percent had no library books.
• A large majority (two thirds) of the teachers said that the school did not have adequate funds for the midday meal at the time of the survey.
• Many schools (10 percent as per teachers’ responses, more according to survey teams) are still not serving eggs twice a week, as prescribed.
• In most of the sample schools, little had been done to help children who had forgotten how to read and write during the Covid-19 crisis, except for the distribution of “foundational literacy and numeracy” (FLN) material.
• GVSJ survey of 138 primary and upper-primary schools in 16 districts of Jharkhand, SeptemberOctober 2022. The sample schools were selected at random within the 26 sample blocks, among those where at least 50 percent of pupils are SC/ST.