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IMPROVING OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

The Right to Education Act has not received the kind of success as was expected for there is no mechanism to monitor or measure the outcomes.

By Ahmed Kamal Khusro

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here have been recent reports about higher education at Indian institutes not featuring in top international rankings and Indian school students faring poorly at international examinations. While these cannot be seen as a verdict on the Indian education system, it does show some of its lapses.

According to the HT, one of the most challenging issues facing Indian education is the woeful state of its infrastructure. Estimates show that within a decade India will have a far younger population than other large economies.

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According to the National Commission on Population, the median age in India will be as compared with 37 in China and the UD, 45 for West Europe and 48 in Japan. So given the country’s demographic profile, India will have 40-45 million college ready students by 2020. India will need another 1000 universities and 50,000 more colleges, according to government estimates.

But before getting to college, these potential students have to get through school and India not only lacks in the number of schools (one

estimate suggests that India needs 200,000 more schools) but also lack of facilities in the existing ones.

While the physical infrastructure needs attention, quality of teaching and teachers, curriculum and delay in legislation are other hurdles to improvement in the Indian education system.

Faced with such drawbacks, the government’s goals, such as 30 per cent gross enrolment by 2020 and providing skills to 500 million people by 2022, seems too ambitious.

STAIRWAYS A concerted effort by both the government and private players are needed to help tackle these problems.

Investment is the crucial first step towards helping Indian education realize its potential. The government’s spending on education has been a meager 3-4 per cent of GDP and it is time to increase it to 6 per cent. Private players, too, have to invest in education to reap the benefits of educated manpower.

The newly amended Companies Bill states companies of a particular size have to spend at least 2 per cent of their average net profits of the past three years on corporate social responsibility. This will hopefully increase investment in education in India. While philanthropists such as Bill Gates and, closer home, Azim Premji and Shiv Nadar, have donated significant sums towards education, they are rare.

It has been three years since the much hyped Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulations and Operations) Bill 2010 was introduced and is still awaiting approval.

India not only lacks in the number of schools but also lacks facilities in the existing ones.

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According to an Assocham study, over 600,000 Indians go abroad and spend Rs 95,000 crore annually. With the passage of the bill, students can hope to receive quality education in India and spend less. The entry of foreign education providers in India could also partially help overcome both quantity and quality issues in higher education in India.

The Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill also proposes to empower the centre to initiate criminal proceedings against such private institutions that charge capitation fees or cheat students through other unfair practices. These bills, among others, which could change the way Indian education functions, also await legislation. The onus is on policymakers to think through the cost the country may have to pay with such delays.

The problem of capacity crunch in terms of physical infrastructure and quality teachers can be addressed to an extent through enabling technology.It is both surprising and ironic that a country such as India, which has exported the best technical minds across the world, leaves much to be desired when it comes to technology for education.

Efforts to set up a National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) to provide broadband connectivity to over 200,000 gram panchayats by the government, launching Akash tablets or setting up education portals such as Sakshat, to cater to the learning needs of more than 500 million people through a proposed scheme of National Mission in Education through Information and Communication Technology , are at a nascent stage.

The government has set itself a target of skilling 500 million people by

2022, a very steep one considering 2 per cent of its workforce has received and form of vocational education.

Around 18 ministries and the National Skill Development Corporation have been entrusted with the responsibility of achieving this target. Better coordination among ministries will help give coherence to this goal. Vocational education suffers from an image crisis, so awareness about the programmes and the benefits associated with it have to be propagated by the government.

While the government has introduced the STAR scheme during this budget to incentivize skill education, more such initiatives are needed.

The government sets up a lot of education schemes and programmes with substantial budgets but there is no monitoring mechanism. The Right to Education Act has not received the kind of success as was expected for there is no mechanism to monitor or measure the outcomes.

Budgets allocated are often not used or misused by institutions or officials and due to lack of monitoring; any act of misappropriation cannot be penalized, thus obstructing the funds from being channelized properly.

Regular audit of schemes and programmes is needed for their successful implementation.

Another major problem is that in higher education there is large gap between what the students learn and what the corporates expect from them after graduation. Many of the HR managers of corporates have complained of the lack of employability of those who pass out.

The curricula should be modernized and updated from time to time so that it is keeping with the growth and advancement of knowledge.