Educational points

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.

Female Education | Basic Education | Higher Education | Employment |

Categories: Education