This reliance on ill-paid teachers could be one reason why Delhi’s 86% literacy rate does not translate to real learning. More than 200,000 grade VI students, or half, in Delhi-government schools cannot read, according to a June 2016 government study, quoted in the Hindustan Times. Pratham, a nonprofit that publishes a benchmark Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), covered just one of 272 wards of Delhi, but its findings in 2014 match the government’s findings.
The problem of low learning outcomes is not unique to Delhi. One in every six teaching positions in India’s government schools–which educate the poorest children and provide an education to more than half of India’s 260 million school children–is vacant, as reported on December 12, 2016.
