Education Sub Plan for Tribal Areas of Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Education in tribal areas mainly suffers from the tribal problems of absenteeism, wastage and stagnation. According to the 1971 Census the poor literacy rate of 5.3% among Scheduled Tribes in comparison to State general Literacy rate of 24.6%. Several studies revealed that children do not attend the schools due to various socio-economic reasons. These socio-economic reasons consequently either they drop out from the school or do not join school at all. In the case girl education, parents do not agree to send their grown-up girls to schools after they puberty. Similarly, different other socio-economic reasons contributed to the high incidence of absenteeism and stagnation education in tribal areas. Another problem reveals in a study wad dismal as teachers very often stayed out of these villages due to various reasons. Study of performances of residential and non-residential schools has shown that wastage and stagnation are low in residential schools. While the percentage of wastage in non-residential schools is 73%, it is only 57.92% in Ashram schools and the stagnation index is only 32.85 in residential school in comparison to 45.75 in non-residential schools. Encouraged by the results in Ashram schools, the Government of Andhra Pradesh have decided to merge single teacher schools run by Tribal Welfare Department into centralized Ashram Schools. Enquiries into the performance of the reorganized Ashram Schools revealed that they too had not confirmed proper coverage. The girls education was not properly taken care of as there is no clear provision to admit them into Ashram Schools are started for girls. Consequently, in the Sub Plan and Integrated Tribal Development Project exercises in the V Plan period, a modified approach has been evolved to ensure enrolling of 100% boys and 80% girls of school age in the age group of 6 to 11 years. Ashram Schools have been proposed for clusters of small and isolated villages and primary schools for big villages with more than 300 population. Upper Primary Schools, High Schools and Hostels are proposed after estimating the flow of student population by deducting the probable drop outs due to absenteeism and stagnation. Specific targets of enrollment and special programme for achieving them in the year 1977-73. In the complete details of these enrollment and programmes are also discussed in this report.