Dr. Manasvi M. Kamat
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights why education matters for migrants and their host countries and how migrant education contributes to the achievement of various Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations.
In light of the above, the recent Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report 2019 by UNESCO points out the strange causal effect of migration on education in India.
Increasing migration leads to increasing number of children from seasonal migrant families being illiterate or not completing primary school. The GEM study shows that literacy levels in India decreases with seasonal migration. Given this finding, the ill effects on the country can be imagined by the fact that from 2001 to 2016 the number of people that migrated between states more than doubled to approximately 9 million in India.
The above report highlights that 80 percent of seasonal migrant children in 7 Indian cities lacked access to education, and 40 percent were likely to end up in work. It is also found that it is the construction sector that attracts more short-term migrants. The report warns of the adverse impact on education for children who are left behind.
Though India has taken steps to address the issue, it is still not fully addressed. The Right to Education Act 2009 has made mandatory for local authorities to admit migrant children, allow for flexible admissions, provide transport and volunteers to support with mobile education, create seasonal hostels with an aim to improve coordination between the states from where people are migrating to. However a lot of ground needs to be cleared, even as on this date.
It is felt that the problem primarily arises as few schools are located in slums and near informal settlements. Though the government tried to address the issue, it is unfortunate to see they yield very little success. For instance, the project for providing ‘out-of school education on the brick kiln sites’ by Government of Rajasthan suffered due to failure of involvement by the teachers and the students.
Similarly, the ‘Riverfront’ experiment in Gujarat reported 18 percent of the students being dropped out and an additional 11 percent with lower attendance.
Efforts by other States for instance, village authorities calling upon volunteers to provide after-school psychosocial support to children in Maharashtra, Odisha assuming responsibility of running seasonal hostels through NGOs and by Andhra Pradesh to work on improving migrant well-being did not do relatively good to promote education.
The impacting children did not seem to improve learning in a considerable way and the teachers complained of culture, language, lifestyle, cleanliness and clothing as the major barriers to learning. If the inbound migration (within countries) is found to affect education negatively in India as stated above, the outbound migration (across boundaries) helps more access to education.
Another report from the United Nations’ education agency claims that migrant workers in the developed countries and specifically in UK, send close to £8 billion a year to support families in their home countries.
This remittance sent from migrant workers in the UK to poorer countries often helps their children to stay in school and compares with about £13 billion, which the report said was the UK government’s total overseas aid.
According to the Pew Research Group in the US, more than £500 billion per year is sent worldwide in remittances. Such international remittances sent home by migrants becomes an informal and often unseen subsidy for educating families in less affluent countries.
One report from Funds transfer agency, Western Union believes that about 30 percent of transfers are intended for education. It is also found that in 18 countries across Africa and Asia, remittances increased education spending by 35 percent and in Latin America by over 50 percent.
In India, rural families receiving remittances spend 17 percent more on education than neighbours who did not have such cash being sent back by relations.
In the Philippines, the income from overseas was seen as a way of reducing child labour, allowing children to remain in education while in the Ecuador, money from remittances has become important to keeping girls enrolled in school.
The UK is in the top 10 countries for overseas workers sending back money with billions of pounds sent to the three biggest recipients Nigeria, India and Pakistan while from the US, remittances have been particularly important to countries in Central America and South America.
But UNESCO warns too much of this “hard-earned money” is being taken in transfer charges by finance companies. It says that people wiring money should only have to pay 3 percent in charges compared to the global average of 7 percent in actual practice with some costs for sending money to Africa rising about 20 percent.
The same report goes on to add that such transfer fees are too much and getting such fees down to 3 percent across the world would mean a saving to migrant families a sum of $ 25 billion (£20bn) per year, which the UN’s education estimates would lead to an extra $ 1 billion being spent on education.
Educating migrant children is essential required to meet the SDG #4. The socio-economic issue of migration and education are thus interrelated. While the interstate migration in India has a negative relation with migration, the outbound migration has helped access to education in the country of the migrants.
However the large and unexpected inter-state migration within the country can disrupt education systems but the outbound migration helps improve educational access.
For a developing country like India, we need to more concentrate on the former.
