When it comes to reading skills, students in government and private schools in rural Karnataka are almost on a par with each other. However, this is not so in the case of mathematics. According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2018, 32.8% of children in private schools in Class 3 can tackle subtraction. On the other hand, the figure is 23.5% among their government school peers.
Similarly, 23% of children in Class 5 in private schools can do division, but their counterparts in government schools are way behind as only 19.6% of the children of the same grade here can solve division problems. This gap increases in the upper primary classes where 47.4% of Class 8 students in private schools can do division, while the figure rests at 36.1% in government schools.
However, in upper primary classes, reading levels of students in government schools is better than that of their peers in private schools. While 19.4% of Class 3 students can read a Class 2 text in government schools, 19% can do so in private schools.
In Class 5, 47.6% of government school students can read a Class 2 level text. They are ahead of private school counterparts where only 41.8% can read the same. This trend sees a slight reversal as students enter the upper primary level. The data shows that 71.5% of private school students can read a Class 2 level text, while it is 70.1% students in government schools who can do the same.
An official of the Department of Public Instruction said that while teachers hired in government schools are better trained that those in private schools, it comes down to resources. “In primary classes, teachers have to teach all subjects, and mathematics may not be their specialisation,” the official added.
Another interesting trend points to how girls across all age categories do better than boys in reading and arithmetic skills.
Besides looking at the learning outcomes of students, Annual Status of Education Report 2018 also showed that although the school has many facilities such as toilets, libraries and computers, they were not being used or were in an unusable condition on the day of the visit. While all schools except 3.3% of the schools had toilets, more than 25.9% had toilets that were not usable. Similarly, 18.8% had girls’ toilets but these was locked.
Meanwhile, in about 46.8% of the schools that had libraries, books were not being used by students on the day of the visit.
Similarly, while 58.2% of the schools did not have computers, in 31.9% of the schools, computers were available but not being used.
