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Researchers have not been able to clearly explain how poverty at home took away a
mild from school. In a study from Karnataka, it was observed that the largest segment
of dropout occurred in the first year at school when the children were around 6 years of
age and could not have been of much labor value to the farnllles and only around one
flhh of the children who dropped out were occupied as eamtng laborers
IUNICEF,~~~~).
The lack of tnterest and poor performance ~n school seen In thls study IS slmllar to an
obsewation made by a survey from Tam11 Nadu In the survey 11 was found that the
main cause of dropout was that the chlldren d~d not ftnd the school tnterestlng, other
causes belng poverty and the need to help at home (Anonymous,l996) Poor
performance arid poverty were the maln causes of dropout ~n a study from Maharashtra
also whlle poverty was found to be the rnaln cause tn a study from Calcutta
banner)^ 1991. Pratln~dh~ et a1 1992) The poor performance IS generally reported to
be due to a large student-teacher ratlo poor qual~ty and lnappopnateness of the
education system ~n the local context That a large student-teacher ratlo was one of the
reasons for the poor performance of students was brought out In the focus group
dscuss~ons The studenl- teacher ratto In the village school was 52 4 for pnmary school
and 56 4 for rn~ddle and hlgh school whlch IS qulte hlgh In Indla, the student-teacher
ratlo has been worsening over the years It was 35 7 In 1950 and 60 5 ~n 1990
(UNICEF 1994b) In Tam11 Nadu the student-teacher ratlo was found to be 50 0 for
both prlmary and rn~ddle school and 440 for h~gh school (Anonymous 1996)
A
universal optlmum school stze w~th an optlmum student-teacher ratlo that IS appl~cable
to all regtons w~thln a country cannot be determtned (Baker,1994) It depends on the
avallabll~ty of teachers and vanous other factors In the Un~ted Klngdom the