For all the trumpeting over the Right to Education Act and the multiplicity of centres of higher learning, educational authorities across the country have been able to achieve precious little in terms of the fundamentals, if the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is an index to go by.

Despite the obsessive concern with science and technology since the early years in school — cracking JEE being the consummation devoutly wished — it is direly astonishing that 24 per cent (one of four) of Class one students in Bengal’s government schools cannot recognise the digits one to 9.

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A tragic comedown since the days when state schools were rated as among the finest. It is small beer that Bengal fares better than the national average of 39.9 per cent or that the relative figures in Kerala and Arunachal Pradesh are 10.8 per cent and 13.1 per cent.

The percentage points may be a matter of academic interest. What matters most of all is the gradual slide in the quality of learning. It would have been far more judicious for Bengal, for instance, to spruce up the learning skills at the primary level than to raise the retirement age of college and university teachers and — still more thoughtlessly — add to the number of universities.

Barely three kilometres separate Visva-Bharati from Biswa Bangla University in Bolpur — a logistically ridiculous proposition to say the least. It is a truism that a superstructure cannot thrive on a brittle foundation. Sad to reflect that this is the intrinsic defect of education in India today.

Small wonder that mathematical skills are appalling — 64.6 per cent of Class 3 students can’t subtract, 71.5 per cent of Class 5 students are strangers to division, and 27 per cent of Class one students can’t read letters. The message is deeply distressing, specifically that sub-literacy is almost institutionalised across the country.

Considering that the RTE Act came into effect in 2009, the slide has been particularly pronounced between 2010 and 2016. In comparison to Bengal, the scenario is scarcely better in Maharashtra, Kerala, and Karnataka, not to forget Bihar — a state that languishes in all the parameters of development.

It is almost beyond hope, beyond despair in rural Bengal where 17.7 per cent of Class 3 students cannot read capital letters in English, while 14.5 per cent are not familiar with the small letters, let alone words, grammar and sentences.

Not wholly unrelated has been the increasing dependence on private tuition, a booming enterprise that runs as a parallel system of schooling. A legislation to ban the system, introduced by the Left Front, is yet to materialise. The students suffer, while the coaching centres flourish. The ASER report calls for reflection by governments at the Centre and in the states.