As India celebrates 50 years of independence, the failure to achieve universal elementary education is bound to rank high among the unfulfilled dreams of that period. The Directive Principles of the Constitution urge all states to "provide free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years" within a period of ten years. Forty-eight years after this bold pronouncement, less than one third of all adults have completed eight years of schooling. Even in the younger age groups, educational deprivation remains endemic. According to the 1991 census, for instance, nearly half of all women in the 15-19 age group are illiterate.

A forthcoming Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) attempts to shed light on the causes of this failure. The report, prepared by a team of researchers based at the Centre for Development Economics (Delhi School of Economics) and other institutions, is based on a detailed survey of the schooling system in North India. The PROBE survey was cohducted in late 1996 in 188 randomly-selected villages of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, for over half of India?s out-of-school children. Aside from surveying all the schooling facilities in the sample villages, the PROBE team interviewed 1,221 households.

Myths
The PROBE survey subverts several myths that have clouded clear thinking about the causes of educational deprivation in rural India. One myth is that elementary education in India is free. It may well be free, or nearly free, in the restricted sense that admission fees in government schools are negligible. But that does not mean that education is free in the wider and more relevant sense that it involves no expenditure for the parents. The PROBE survey indicates that North Indian parents spend more than Rs. 300 per year (on fees, books, slates, clothes, etc.) to send a child to a government primary school. This is a major financial burden, especially for poor families with several children of school-going age. Thus, an agricultural labourer in Bihar with two Such children would have to work for about 40 days in the year just to send them to primary school.

A second myth Is that Indian parents have little interest in education. Contrary to this belief, the PROBE survey suggests that an overwhelming majority of parents, even among deprived sections of the population, attach great importance to the education of their children. For instance, 98 percent of all parents would like their sons to receive at least 8 years of education, find even for girls the corresponding proportion is as high as 63 percent Similarly, 80 percent of parents favour compulsory education for all children. This does not deny that pockets of indifference remain, especially when it comes to female education. It would be quite misleading, however, to regard lack of parental motivation as the main obstacle to the universalisation of elementary education.

A third myth is that economic dependence on child labour is the main reason why poor families are unable. to send their children to school. Contrary to this assumption, PROBE data on the time utilization of children show that out-of-school children only perform two hours of extra work per day, compared with school-going children. Further, the direction of causation does not necessarily run from child labour to non-attendance. In many cases, it is the other way round: drop-out children take up productive work (of their own choice or through parental pressure) as a "default occupation". Even among children whose income-earning activities are essential for the family, the time spent in these activities is often relatively small. Bearing in mind that school hours are short (at most 6 hours a day for 150-200 days in the year), the proportion of children whose work priorirties are incompatible with schooling is likely to be small.

Reality
What, then, prevents so many Children from going to school? The main problem seems to be that sending a child to school on a regular basis requires a great deal of parental effort (not only due to the significant costs involved but also in terms of the time and attention required to ensure the child?s sustained attendance and progress), and that the poor quality of the schooling system often discourages parents from making that effort. The effort required tends to be all the greater for parents from a deprived background, whose willingness to face the relevant demands depends crucially on what thay can expect from the schooling system. this basic problem is often compounded by other factors such as seasonal dependence on child labour, gender bias In educational priorities, and occasional parental irresponsibility. These aggravating factors, however, should not divert attention from the central problem of the disproportion between expected parental effort and the quality of schooling.

The PROBE survey highlights several inter-related dimensions of the low quality of schooling in India.

1. The schooling infrastructure is inadequate. The typical primary school boasts little more than two classrooms, a leaking roof, and some dilapidated furniture.
   
2. Schools are short of teachers: one third of the sample schools had a single teacher present on the day of the survey.
   
3. Cclassroom activity is minimal. In half of the sample schools, there was no teaching activity whatsoever when the investigators arrived.
   
4. Tthe stultifying nature of teaching methods and school curricula tends to undermine the motivation of the child. In these circumstances, it is no wonder that pupil achievements In rural India are abysmally low.

The PROBE survey even found a number of cases of children who were still unable to read or write after several years at school.

While the PROBE survey paints a grim picture of the schooling situation in India, there is a sense in which these findings are good news. If child labour or parental motivation were the main obstacles to universal elementary education, the government might have good reasons to feel somewhat powerless. On the other hand, much can be done, without delay to reduce the costs of schooling - (e.g. by providing school meals), and to improve its quality (e.g. by raising teacher-pupil ratios). The main challenge seems to be to build the political commitment required for a radical Improvement of the schooling system.