ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Rukmini BanerjiSubscribe to Rukmini Banerji

Challenging Bihar on Primary Education

A ground level view of primary education in today's Bihar and an attempt to understand what it means to "demand" or "deliver" development show the state government keen to bring about a major educational change with an increase in allocations and inputs. But is this enough to turn around a system of behaviour in government and among citizens that has evolved over a long period of time? It is clear that inputs and incentives do not automatically translate into higher participation in education. Within the system, "business as usual" is accompanied by apathy, while new opportunities and innovations seem to generate energy and can activate both citizens and front-line government workers to behave differently.

Can Information Campaigns Raise Awareness and Local Participation in Primary Education?

A central plank of public policy for improving primary education services in India is the participation of village education committees, consisting of village government leaders, parents, and teachers. This paper reports the findings from a survey in a rural district in Uttar Pradesh. Rural households, parents, teachers and VEC members were surveyed on the status of education services and the extent of community participation in the public delivery of education services. Most parents do not know that a VEC exists, public participation in improving education is negligible, and large numbers of children in the villages have not acquired basic competencies of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Based on the findings of the baseline survey, this paper also describes a set of information and advocacy campaigns that have been designed to explore whether local participation can increase, and future research plans to evaluate the impact of these interventions.

Poverty and Primary Schooling

A new and flexible approach to the schooling of children of the urban poor is imperative. Field studies in Mumbai and Delhi have yielded the insight that the reason for so many slum children not being in school has less to do with their families' economic circumstances than with the school system's shortcomings. The available evidence also suggests that the amount of learning the average slum family pupil in India acquires in primary school falls far short of what may legitimately be expected.

Child Labour and Children s Schooling

of fixed assets to be the measure of profitability, she investigates the relationship between growth and profitability. She finds that profitability is insignificant in determining growth in the low-CR industries and positive and significant in high-CR industries. However, the explanatory power of the equation is low in both samples. "More importantly, the constant term is significant and quite large, implying that a large proportion of growth in these samples is systematically caused by factors common to all firms".

Why Don t Children Complete Primary School-A Case Study of a Low-Income Neighbourhood in Delhi

A Case Study of a Low-Income Neighbourhood in Delhi Rukmini Banerji On the basis of a study in a low-income urban locality on the outskirts of Delhi as a case-study, the article explores factors to be heeded if universalisation of primary education is to become a reality. The author argues for a focus on local conditions affecting schooling such as allocation and use of resources, and teaching-learning processes in the classroom without knowledge of which the effectiveness of national or regional policies can get diluted. Further, the article asks for a shift from 'school-effects' to "teacher-effects' in understanding differences in survival rates of children within a school.

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