Almost every child in the Telugu states is now enrolled in school. The harder question is whether they are learning. Independent surveys such as ASER have repeatedly found that many children in the early grades cannot read a simple text or do basic arithmetic at the expected level. A school that cannot teach a child to read has failed, whatever its attendance register says.<\/p>\n
The solution starts with the basics: a clear focus on reading and numeracy in the first years, teaching in a language the child understands, regular testing that is used to help children and not to punish schools, and teachers who are held accountable for results and given the training and support to deliver them. Principals should have more freedom to manage their schools, and parents should have clear information on how their school performs.<\/p>\n
Families should also have more choice. Where a government school is not delivering, parents should be able to move their children without penalty, and public money could follow the child to a good school.<\/p>\n
Critics of school choice argue that it can deepen inequality, drawing the best students away and leaving the weakest schools with the fewest resources. Teacher unions point out that vacancies, non-teaching duties and weak infrastructure are the real obstacles, and say that more public investment, not more competition, is the answer.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Almost every child in the Telugu states is now enrolled in school. The harder question is whether they are learning. Independent surveys such as ASER have repeatedly found that many children in the early grades cannot read a simple text or do basic arithmetic at the expected level. A school that cannot teach a child to read has failed, whatever its attendance register says.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bulletnews.in\/telugu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}