What are the problems of universalisation of primary education? Discuss fully. (1997)
Universalisation of primary education is not one target but four: universal provision, universal enrolment, universal retention through the full cycle, and universal achievement of a defined level of learning. India wrote the goal into Article 45 in 1950 and made it a fundamental right through Article 21A and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. The first two are substantially solved; the problems lie in the last two, and in the social structure schooling enters.
Provision and enrolment: the easier half
UDISE+ 2024-25 records the teaching force crossing 1.01 crore for the first time, a foundational-stage pupil-teacher ratio of 10:1 and retention of 98.9 per cent. Yet 1,04,125 single-teacher schools remain, and government schools, 68.5 per cent of all schools, hold only 48.1 per cent of children — an average of 118 pupils each, too small to staff or supervise properly.
The continuing problems
- Retention and transition. Retention falls from 98.9 per cent at the foundational stage to 82.8 per cent at the middle stage and 47.2 per cent at the secondary stage. Universal entry has not produced universal completion of even the elementary cycle.
- Schooling without learning. ASER 2024 found only 23.4 per cent of Class 3 children in government schools able to read a Class 2 text — up from 16.3 per cent in 2022, but still a minority. Enrolment-driven administration and what Krishna Kumar (Political Agenda of Education, 1991) calls the “textbook culture” reduce primary education to rote coverage of prescribed matter.
- Exclusion inside the classroom. Seating practices, mid-day-meal segregation, teacher expectations of Dalit and Adivasi children and instruction in a language alien to tribal learners turn formal access into daily discouragement. Pierre Bourdieu‘s point applies here too: the school rewards dispositions the home must already have supplied.
- Household demand and opportunity cost. Myron Weiner (The Child and the State in India, 1991) argued that India’s long refusal to enforce compulsion reflected elite convictions that the children of the poor belong at work, rather than poverty alone. Child labour, sibling care, seasonal migration and early marriage still empty classrooms.
- Financing and teaching capacity. India spends about 4 per cent of GDP on education against the 6 per cent recommended by the Education Commission (1964-66) and reaffirmed by the National Education Policy, 2020, while vacancies, contract teaching and multigrade classes weaken the input that matters most.
- The lost common school. Private unaided schools now enrol 40 per cent of Indian schoolchildren (2025-26) and 71.4 per cent of pre-primary children, and households spend ₹2,863 a year per child in government schools against ₹25,002 in private ones (Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education, 2025). Universalisation through two unequal circuits reproduces class at entry. The Education Commission’s Common School System was never implemented, and the Right to Education Act’s 25 per cent quota in private schools needed a Supreme Court direction in January 2026 to frame enforceable rules.
Conclusion
Universalisation has been pursued as an administrative target — children enrolled — rather than a social one: comparable learning for every child regardless of birth. The remaining distance requires equalising the quality of what is provided, which is finally a question of political will rather than educational technique.