Mumbai: Due to low learning levels in Mumbai's civic-run schools, at least fifty per cent of primary children studying in these schools cannot read or write a paragraph while 30 per cent cannot even recognise numbers, according to a report.
Mumbai has 97 per cent of primary aged children enrolled in public and private schools with 40 per cent going to private schools due to the perceptions of better quality education and greater job opportunities, says the report, Making the Grade: Improving Mumbai's Public Schools.
Poor families who cannot pay for private education send them to municipal schools that have been educating the most marginalised children where the midday meal and low fees boost enrolment.
Demographics
These are children of migrants, construction workers, street vendors, domestic help, beggars, waste pickers, sex workers, taxi and rickshaw drivers, small factory workers, plastic recyclers, automobile mechanics, repairers, laundrymen, embroiderers, leather and tanning workers who are all daily wage earners and many of whose children are first generation learners.
The report, compiled by Dasra, a philanthropy foundation, focuses on how the quality of education in public schools can be improved by strengthening the public-private partnership between non-profit organisations and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM).
The MCGM oversees the funding, management, infrastructure, staffing, implementation of national education schemes and finally delivering education in Mumbai's 1,612 public elementary schools, spending Rs2,270 (Dh185) per child per year. The city spends 8 per cent of the total municipal budget on education of which 80 per cent is for primary education. In 2008-2009, the municipality spent Rs13.6 billion.
If the quality of education is improved through its existing civic structures then the system can directly impact 600,000 children and create overall systemic change, states the report.
It points out to nine non-profit institutions in Mumbai that stand out as exemplary models of working with the public school system. These are Akanksha, Aseema, Doorstep, Life, Masoom, Muktangan, Naandi, Pratham and Teach for India.
