Correct Answer - Option 2 : primary level
Wastage – “The premature withdrawal of children at any stage before completion of the primary education is called Wastage.”
- While clarifying the meaning of this word in education Hartog Committee remarked the following: “By wastage, we mean premature withdrawal of children from schools at any stage before completion of the primary courses”.
- In Primary Education, the main objective is the attainment of stable literary through five years of schooling.
- If a child entering school leaves it or is withdrawn from school before completing class V, it leads to wastage in education.
- So wastage is the premature withdrawal of children from schools. A rough and ready method to measure wastage is to compare diminution in enrolment from class to class in a series of years.
Stagnation Meaning– “The retention of a child in the same class for a period of more than one year is called stagnation.”
- Stagnation is a major factor responsible for wastage in primary education, both directly and indirectly.
- The students at every stage of education are expected to pass the examination after finishing the whole course.
- But it has been found that in general practice many students are not able to pass the examinations in one class or in more than one class within the prescribed period.
- Thus, they fail and remain in the same class. These failed students repeat the same class and course whereas their other colleagues pass that class and study in the next upper class. This process has been called the process of stagnation. Thus stagnation, it is meant the stay of students in a particular class for more than one year.
- The problem of ‘wastage’ and ‘stagnation’ is primarily related to education's primary level (1 to 5).
Really it was the Hartog Committee (1929), which for the first time pointed out that the “massive wastage and stagnation are taking place in primary education. Primary Education is ineffective unless it at least produces literacy”.
Causes of Wastage and Stagnation:
The causes of wastage and stagnation are of 3 categories: economic, educational, and social.
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Economic Causes: At the age of 9 or 10, the child becomes an economic asset, because he can work at home or earn something outside. This is especially true of girls who have to assist the over-worked mother at home. The child is withdrawn from the school and thus he becomes a wastage case”.
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Social Causes: Class and caste distinctions prevail in India, the former in urban areas and the latter in rural areas. Especially in the case of girls custom of early marriages or betrothals stands a bar. There is an opposition to sending grown-up girls to schools especially to the mixed schools without women teachers.
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Educational Causes: Only educational causes are responsible for another 30% of wastage. The government of India admits this in the following words: “The educational institutions being ill-equipped, poorly housed and with the dull and depressing environment, unfortunately, could not exercise effective counter-acting influence”.
The increased number of single-teacher schools, inefficient teaching, lack of teacher-pupil contact, frequent transfer of teachers, and plural class-teaching disturbed the quality of instruction which ultimately cause much wastage and stagnation.
Hence, we can conclude that the right answer to this question is the primary level.
