For a whole year before he started school, Raman Kumar dreamed of learning to read and write. The little bov had and write. The little boy had a grand plan: Finish school, go to college, then move to a big city and get a good job.
He was thrilled when his father finally signed him up, at age seven, at the government school in his village of Pure Gosai in Rae Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. "But day after day," says the 12-year old, "Masterji wouldn't come to school." When he did come to class, he would often order one of the boys to fetch him tea and bidis (hand-rolled cigarettes), then doze off -- or leave. "When the exams came around, he would write the answers on the blackboard," says Kumar. "That's how we cleared primary school."
Like nearly half (47 per cent) of all primary government school students, Raman cannot read fluently or do complex math.
A 2004 World Bank study found teacher absenteeism rates were lower in schools with better infrastructure and proximity to a paved road. Here, the 2004 World Bank study found 25 per cent of teachers missing and another 25 to 30 per cent not teaching at the time of three unannounced inspections at 3,700 schools across 20 states in India. The only country that fared worse on the survey was Uganda, with a teacher absenteeism rate of 27 per cent.
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