Cool Bihari: Primary Education in Bihar

A recent report on primary education in Bihar presents the slow progress which the state has made in improving the infrastructure and support system.NTY reports on the odds which are faced by the school administration and challenges of imparting quality primary education in lathora,Bihar.

India has long had a legacy of weak schooling for its young, even as it has promoted high-quality government-financed universities. But if in the past a largely poor and agrarian nation could afford to leave millions of its people illiterate, that is no longer the case. Not only has the roaring economy run into a shortage of skilled labor, but also the nation’s many new roads, phones and television sets have fueled new ambitions for economic advancement among its people — and new expectations for schools to help them achieve it.

That they remain ill equipped to do so is clearly illustrated by an annual survey, conducted by Pratham, the organization for which Mr. Ghosh works. The latest survey, conducted across 16,000 villages in 2007 and released Wednesday, found that while many more children were sitting in class, vast numbers of them could not read, write or perform basic arithmetic, to say nothing of those who were not in school at all.

Despite these odds we have some encouraging news as well . A teenage girl's success story in educating herself against all odds while rearing honeybees for a livelihood has found a place in a school textbook produced by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).Anita Kushwaha, 17, has encouraged and inspired thousands of women in rural Bihar to be self-reliant.

NCERT has included a new chapter on the success story of Anita - titled "Anita and the honey bees" in a Class IV book on environmental studies called "Looking Around".The chapter describes Anita, popularly known as "queen bee", as a role model for students and others for her efforts in educating herself and taking to beekeeping to increase the family income.

The chapter is full of amazing but true stories of Anita, born to poverty-stricken parents. Both her parents work as agricultural labourers.Anita's determination to educate herself despite poverty has been termed in the book as a "great struggle".

Her determination to take to beekeeping has proved to be a turning point in supplementing her family's income and funding her school as well as college education. Later, dozens of women of her village took to beekeeping to earn their livelihoods and educate their children.