The state of education in india

The state of education in India

·         Primary and Higher education in India

Educational transformation

·         In India and around the world, there existed a tradition of home or community schooling, often centered on the teacher.

·         However, since industrial revolution, there has been a visible gradual transformation from teacher centered schooling to educational institution centered human supply chain schooling system.

·         Moving towards the informational age, the world is now thinking about what should be the next transformation in education, whereasIndia is still battling older challenges.

Primary education in India

·         The 20^th century challenge still remains the current challenge of Indian educationà quantity and quality of its primary and higher education systems.

·         After more than 50 years of independence, India realised the deficit of primary schools.

·         Since then, the quantity problem in primary education is being tackled. (increasing enrolment in primary schools pan-India through RTE)

·         Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has been a consistent and reliable source of information on the quantity and quality of primary education in India.

o    It is conducted annually since 2004 and covers more than 90% of India’s districts.

o   Enrolment- from 2006 to 2014, there is a decline in children not enrolled from about 4% at the beginning of the period to about 2% now and  Increase sing dropoutsation 

o  Private schooling- the children have increased from 20% to a little over 30% over the period from 2006-2014 that’s means govt increasing privatization of education and reducing skill of education.

o Education quality- Quality of reading, arithmetic and English are disturbing, efficiency of education is very low.

o    For example- children in Class III who can read at least a Class I text has dropped consistently from about 50% to about 40% and children in Class III who can do at least subtraction has dropped from 40% to 25%.

o    Private schools are doing better than government but there still exists room of improvement

o    There is significant variation among states in both quantity and quality.

Problems

The basic problems pertaining to primary schooling, whether rural or urban areas are-

 Inadequate inputs- lack adequate infrastructure, shortage of teachersand poor quality of institutional support for teachers’ professional development.

 Low learning levels-the focus is on completing curriculum and not structured education. The result is children of higher standards are not able to even understand lower class books.

  Increased dropout rates- only about 25% of the children who enrol in primary education pass fifth grade.

Solution

 Teaching by level- instead of grading child’s education on age-basis, there should be promotion to next class on level of learning.

  Building basic skills-to invest and encourage in learning foundational skills like reading, writing, critical thinking, arithmetic and problem-solving in durable way.

 Public declaration- the states should publicly declare their learning goals and articulate concretely their plans for achieving higher learning outcomes for at least the next two to three years. This will induce accountability.

Higher education

There is no equivalent independent and rigorous survey of higher education quality in India like ASER.

All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE)- an annual survey by department of higher education in the human resources development ministry.

o    According to it, there are 38,000 colleges and 767 universities in India.

o    There are 1.4 million teachers and 33 million students enrolled in these universities.

o    Gross Enrolment Ratio– the percentage of population 18-23 enrolled in college, is 23.6% for India. It widely varies from 12% for Bihar to 44% for Tamil Nadu.

National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF)- maiden attempt by HRD ministry to assess and rank universities in India

o    IISc and IITs are ranked top institutions

o    In Asia, the Chinese universities dominated the rankings.

o    In global rankings, usually Indian universities don’t find place in top 100.

Problems

The most challenging situation faced in higher education are

·         Low rates of enrolment-decreasing enrolment in primary education also suffers higher education. Also there existinsufficient universities and quality teachers to impart knowledge.

·         Unequal access-disparities in access to education, especially in terms of economic class, gender, caste and ethnic and religious belonging is present. The expansion of the private, self-financing education sector, with its aim of commercial intent, has been another reason for the propagation of disparities.

·     Quality of education-most of the higher educational institutes fail to provide for top quality education and skills which inturnleads to less employability.

Solution

There can be two kinds of universities:

1.      Universal universities- focus on infrastructure, affordability, employability and adding value.

2.      Stellar universities- focus on merit and on strong gating functions for faculty and students.

·   Improved quality-brain drain is still a challenge and thus there is a need for world class universities to be established in India. Government’s recent step of providing 1,000 research fellowships a year to IIT graduate students is an encouraging and step in right direction.

·  UGC reforms-It has become increasingly difficult for the UGC to keep pace with the changing dynamics of higher education; recent decisions have been considered to be ill-considered, with a lack in research and no proper consultation with the stakeholders.

Higher education is all about achieving access, equality, justice, quality, inclusiveness and employability. However, all at the same time is not possible

1.     The overall quality of education both in primary and higher stages is very bad and has further deteriorated in last 10-15 years although there is an increase in the number of educational institutions.

2.     The discrimination against the weaker and marginalized children still persists in the Indian society and education system is not aloof from this aspect of education system. These children have equal rights as compared to other children as per RTE but there is no significant improvement in their educational status so far.

3.     The focus of educational institutions needs to be teacher oriented as they are the most important link between the institution and students. It has observed that teachers and their training are often neglected and more importance is given to directors, secretaries and higher authorities of the educational institutions.

4.     The Report has favoured for 6% GDP for education, a well-structured public system of education and strengthening of Right to Education Act. In India’s current state of development, a minimum of 6% of GDP, if not at much higher level, should be essential expenditure in the education sector as previously this has remained far below the expected level.

5.     Universities and colleges are temples of learning,some self-imposed restrictions surely should be in place to ensure that the primary work of the universities should be conducted without hindrance. Ideally the universities ought not to lend themselves as play grounds for the larger national rivalries, inequalities, inequities, and social / cultural fault lines; these need to be tackled by society as a whole in other forums such as parliament, courts, elections etc. There is a need to restrict political and other distractions in these institutions.
It is totally based on TSR Subramaniam committe report2016 "education policy of India"