The district’s most developed village Hamirpur and Bharwa sumerpur have better facilities in education field.There
is Degree college in both the blocks, there is roughly one
middle school per three villages Less than 10% of villages in the entire
District have a degree college.
One can find a large number of
colleges in rural areas in 'developed’ states like Om Harihar Mahavidyalaya,
Sumerpur and Swami Nagaji Balika Digree College, Dharmeswar Baba Sumerpur. Census 2001 figures
showed that in the entire Hamirpur region with over 250 villages, there were
only 15 villages with colleges.
The paucity of higher education
institutions is reflected in low percentage of literates with educational
attainment above middle school (see table below). Also notable is paucity of
technical training institutes.
As a result, a large number
unemployed people are in a position to take advantage of any opportunities that
would not come by from planned industrial investments, nor do they have the
skills to get higher wages in labour markets outside.
The Mid Day Meal scheme, introduced
across the country, has certainly led to increase in presence of children at
school, but a negative consequence seen across scores of village schools is
that all the attention of both the staff and the children is focused on the
meal. Practically no teaching takes place after meals are served; in many
schools across Hamirpur young children go to school only for the meals.
For the Improvement Several methods implemented in all primary schools in the district. The implement
included supply of creative workbooks,
desks, Supply School Dress and
sports-kits to transform the school environment, and motivation of parents to
take interest in the working of schools.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan provides a good opportunity to take forward these experiences. SSA
however does not tackle a basic problem faced by poor parents: while primary
education is free, there are high indirect costs associated with purchase of
uniforms, books and private tuition, to make up for incompetence or disinterest
of teachers.
Scholarships for poor/SC/ST children
helps meet some of this cost, but a large 'poverty and social monitoring’
survey (PSMS-II) conducted jointly by the UP state government’s Planning Department
and the World Bank in 2002-03 found indicated that in rural areas of UP Hamirpur,
50% of poor households did not get this benefit; in urban areas, nearly 90% of
the poor were not covered.
The SC/ST parents face a bigger problem: they are
forcibly prevented from sending their children to attend school by upper caste
village leaders. Families belonging to social groups that were classified as
`criminal tribes’ suffer the most. Another, more common observation is
that children from lower status social groups are routinely made to do unpaid
menial tasks in schools.
As in the rest of India,
English-medium private schools have
significant presence in small towns of Hamirpur, and are the preferred choice
of all families that can afford the fees. In rural areas, penetration of
private schools was low in 2002-03 according to PSMS-II data. Reviewing the
data for children from rural households between the age of 5 and 18 years, Only
7% of poor children in villages are going to private schools because there were
not enough money to manage the fees.
The number of private schools in rural
areas is increasing rapidly.Parents attracts towards Private School because the
classes are held regularly, teachers who don’t come to work don’t get paid, or
get fired.
Increasing presence of private schools creates two categories of children in villages: one the children who get free meals in
schools but little education, and others who get no free meals, but getting
better education. Poor households that desire to see their children in the
second category will need to increase their monthly income or make an
equivalent cut in other expenditure.
