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Showing posts from August 28, 2020

India Needs to Shut Half of its Government Schools

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 How many schools do we have in India? We have 1.5 million schools in our country, yes 15 lakh schools and China just has 2.5 lakh. A country which is more populous than ours and is about three times our size China has only 1/6th of our schools. And when it comes to learning, Chinese kids are among the top 5 globally and Indian kids, unfortunately, they are in the bottom 5. More than 50% kids in India cannot read fluently and cannot do basic addition.  As a country we have one of the largest footprints of schools and one of the deepest learning crisis. Experts say that our learning crisis is linked to our footprints and so India needs to shut down half of its government schools. If we want to improve education in India, not for a few but for all of our kids we really need to shut down 5 lakh government schools in the country.  The picture above shows exactly what a government school looks like in the rural India, it has 45-50 kids and perhaps 2 classrooms, electricity and water are now