The NDTV Dialogues: Status of Education in India

We discuss the latest Annual State of Education Report (ASER) released by the independent NGO, Pratham, for the year 2014. The big picture is that 96 per cent of India's children are in school. However, the question is, what are they learning in school? According to the ASER, even in Class 8, about 25 per cent of children can't read a Class 2 text. Simple subtraction and division are still a huge problem, with only 25 per cent of children in Class 3 able to do a two-digit subtraction. What are the lessons that India's policy makers, educationists, and parents must learn from this? Joining the discussion are Rukmini Banerjee, the head of the ASER Centre, Abhijit Banerjee, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the book, 'Poor Economics', MM Pallam Raju, the former Union Minister for Human Resources Development and BJP spokesperson Sanjay Kaul.