As per the stats, around 29 percent of students in the 6 to 14 age group in the country receive private education.
The RTE act has called for sufficient infrastructure, but less than 5% schools have all the 9 facilities mentioned in the act. Over 30 % schools had no toilets and over 60 % had no playgrounds.
As per the studies, among rural children of age 10, half could not read at a basic level, despite the high overall enrollment rate for primary education
Some of the reasons cited for the poor quality of education in schools include the absence of around 25 per cent of teachers every day.
A study of 188 government-run primary schools found that 59 per cent of the schools had no drinking water and 89 percent had no toilets.
The District Information system for education (DISE) data shows that only 6 out 10 schools in the country have access to electricity. Bihar is the worst offender with only 10 % of its schools having access to electricity.
India now has 1.4 million schools and 7.7 million teachers so that 98 percent of habitations have a primary school (class I-V) within one kilometer and 92 percent have an upper primary school (class VI-VIII) within a three-kilometer walking distance.
Nationally 29 percent of children drop out before completing five years of primary school, and 43 percent before finishing upper primary school. High school completion is only 42 percent. This lands India among the top five nations for out-of-school children of primary school age, with 1.4 million 6 to 11 year olds not attending school.
In many ways schools are not equipped to handle the full population – there is a teacher shortage of 689,000 teachers in primary schools, only 53 percent of schools have functional girls’ toilets and 74 percent have access to drinking water.
