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Context

• The State of Elementary Education in Rural India report, was released by Union Education Minister.

Details

• The Report is based on a survey conducted by the Development Intelligence Unit (DIU), a collaboration between Transform Rural India and Sambodhi Research and Communications.

Findings of the Report

Access to gadgets

• The survey revealed that 3% of students in rural India have access to smartphones. However, among parents whose children have access to gadgets, 76.7% said the latter primarily used mobile phones to play video games.
• Of the students with access to gadgets, 6% used the devices for downloading and watching movies, while 47.3% used them to download and listen to music, the survey said. Only 34% use the gadgets for downloading study material, and 18% accessed online learning through tutorials.
• Of the 6,229 parents surveyed, 6,135 had school-going children, 56 had children who dropped out of school, and 38 had children who had never enrolled in school.
• At least 78% of the parents of girls and 82% of the parents of boys wanted to educate their children to the level of graduation or above.
• Students in Class 8 and above had more access to smartphones (58.32%), while students in Classes 1 to 3 also had access (42.1%).
• Questions on the learning environment at home revealed that 40% of the parents said that age-appropriate reading materials, other than textbooks, are available at home.

Parent participation

• The survey showed that only 40% of parents have conversations with their children around learning in school every day, while 32% have such conversations with their children a few days a week.
• The survey also sought to know the reasons for children dropping out of school from a subset of 56 respondents.
• As much as 36.8% of the parents of girls who had dropped out said it was because they were needed to help out with the family’s earnings.
• Additionally, 6% of parents mentioned their child’s lack of interest in studies, while 21.1% believed that their daughters had to take care of household chores and siblings.
• For boys, as per the survey, the key reason for dropping out from school was the child’s lack of interest in studies.
• As much as 71.8% of respondents cited this reason, while another 48.7% said the boys were required to help out in the earnings for the family.
• On parent participation, the survey revealed that 84% of parents stated that they regularly attend parent-teacher meetings at school.
• The top two reasons for parents not attending meetings were short notice and a lack of willingness.

Note: Use the Findings of the Report while writing answers for UPSC Mains.

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