Pratham Report on Education sector

India's progress in the education sector has been quite slow. However, the recently, brought out Annual Status of Education Report by Pratham, a leading NGO in field of education shows that 96 % of children aged 6-14 years in rural India are now enrolled in schools, while the quality of education remains dismal. Pratham did a survey across 575 rural districts (out of 583) in India. The data covered 16,291 villages, 338,027 households and 6,91,734 children.

It was reported that only 69% of students from class I in the surveyed rural areas were able to recognise numbers between 1 and 9. It also says that the quality of instruction in subjects like arithmetic and English remains poor. One of the findings from the survey indicated that about half of the children in class V in rural areas are unable to read a class III textbook.