92% primary enrolment does not give justice to south and east
The Prime Minister’s annual report to the parliament, presented during the last session, mentions that Bhutan has attained 94 percent primary enrolment in school in 2010. Punakha has attained 100 percent enrolment. And the government’s latest Bhutan Multiple Indicator Survey report states 8 percent of Bhutanese aged 6 to 12 are out of school.
Is there any discrepancy here? Of course. Both these report do not talk about illiteracy rate in the country and the right to education of the citizens. Both the reports are silent about continued attendance of the children in school and how many of them cross secondary and higher secondary or university education.
Half of the young people leave schools when they pass grade 6. According to the survey, among children above 15 years, the age for secondary school, only about 55 per cent of them are attending schools. More dramatic than in primary school, 24.8 per cent of secondary school age children aren’t attending school at all and one in five were found attending primary school, when they should be attending secondary school.
The report comes at a time people are raising questions over deteriorating education system in the country. The government is focusing on attaining 100 primary enrolment ignoring other important task of keeping educational standards intact.
Enrolment in primary school is not an indicator to measure the literacy rate of a country and development of human resources. It is not solely the issue of human rights, but also the reflection of a country’s human capital. For balance growth and overall national development, it is important to ensure that new generation is not only enrolled into schools but they continued higher education.
Limited seats in government educational institutions at high school level and absence of private schools force many young people either to pursue higher education in India or choose to return to villages and work as unskilled farmer.
The election commission conducted several literacy tests before local government elections recently. If the average age for these potential candidates is 40 years, one can easily visualise the educational system of the country of that time. Schools were dreams and government rather encouraged people to go monastery to be a lama than attend schools. And now the government is imposing criteria that a leader should be literate.
I am talking about enrolment. Is development measured through enrolment in one year? Most current ministers have already served as ministers and prime minister of the country in several occasions in the past. While Thinley’s government is taking credit for 94 percent primary enrolment in 2010, who is responsible for half the population remaining out of educational opportunities in the last two decades?
As a responsible leader of that period, the current government also has to bear the past responsibilities for failure and the devastation cannot be repaired with one year’s statistics.
For two decades the schools in south and east remained shut. Ethically, the current ministers are the culprits for these mischiefs. Today, NFE classes have begun in west and east, not in south. The southerners have to get NOC and SSC from the local authority to get their children enrolled in school, which is difficult to obtain when the family has any relatives in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal.
It is not about enrolment in primary education, it is about right to education, right to opportunities and justice. The system changed. However, the policies remained same, the leaders are same. Bhutan has changed its mask, not the face. And this inability to change still affects the southerners and easterners. While, adding up figures from northern districts gives aggregate at satisfactory level, southern Bhutan remains hungry to educational opportunities.
In the last two years, the government opened only a few schools in south. Thakur Singh Powdyal rarely travels south to see the status of education in his constituency and other southern districts. While I appreciate, critically, the government’s efforts to increase primary enrolment, this is high time to let the southerners feel they are equally treated. They need more primary and secondary schools, colleges and NFE classes in English, not Dzongkha.