Moving Towards universalisation Of Elementary Education (UEE) Issues And Challenges

Preface

Being the foundation stone of human development, elementary education plays a very significant role in a democratic system. Our constitutional framers realized the value of elementary education as long back as the 1950s and made a provision for free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14. In fact, education up to this stage is regarded as general and basic education.

We in India have a responsibility to achieve this task, not only as the largest democratic country but also since our country accounts for 30% of the world’s illiterate population. The linkage between educational levels, literacy and development indices is well known. Achieving the UEE calls for dedicated efforts on the part of all concerned in the light of the “Rights of the Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009” India has joined the list of 135 countries that make ‘Right to Education’ a constitutional obligation. Now that the right to education has become a fundamental right, we the Indians hope to play our own rightful role in providing education to all the children who have been out of school from the mainstream of education all these years.

The present book includes most of the basic problems and challenges relating to the subject. The treatise has been particularly prepared in the interest of student teachers, teachers, teacher educators, researchers and educational planners and administrators who are the destiny makers in realising UEE.

In writing this book, I found a number of limitations, particularly in collecting the latest data: There was little time to update the data from different sources. The analysis in the following pages may be treated as a modest attempt to understand the present situation of elementary education in general. As in all studies, the present study is also a beginning of the problems, issues and challenges, we are facing in achieving UEE and not the end.

It is hoped that this book will serve as the starting point for students, teachers, teacher educators and educational planners and administrators in the backdrop of the promulgation of the Right to Elementary Education. The book