The Mint newspaper dated December 30th, 2010 had a column by Anurag Behar (Co-CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation) . I quote him ..."because by 2006, 98% of habitants in India had a primary ( up to Class V) school within 1 km, and 86% had an upper primary ( up to Class VII) school within 3 km....
That means a a staggering increase of schools. At the time of Independence ,India had about 130,000 schools. Today we have about 1.4 million. About 7.0 million work in our school education system.This is by far the largest education system in the world"
On the other hand I have seen a presentation titled India's Future dated November 12th,2009 by Gurcharan Das, the former head of Proctor & Gamble in India .I think it is a well balanced presentation and talks about both the positive's and negatives of India. In one of the slides he mentions that 1 out 4 teachers in government schools are normally absent.
Perhaps Anurag Behar's above sentence should read " About 7.0 million are employed ( but not necessarily work) in our school education system.
Assuming that both are right, then the solution is not to build more schools, but to make sure that teachers show up and do what they are paid to do.
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