22 July 2024 – The Indian Express

Reforms needed in the Education Sector of India

• India will have the world’s youngest population by 2030; however, this demographic advantage will only materialise if the country’s youth has the necessary skills to enter the labour. Good education will be essential to it. However, there are significant obstacles facing education today, including inadequate infrastructure, low government spending on education (less than 3.5% of GDP), and a 24:1 student-teacher ratio in elementary schools nationwide, according to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE). Thus, it’s imperative that the Indian educational system be adjusted to meet international standards and implement cutting-edge, pertinent, and responsive teaching methods. In addition, provide National Education Policy 2020 more energy so it can be implemented.

What is the Indian education system’s current state?

Past:

• In ancient India, there existed a kind of schooling known as “Gurukul,” when students, or shishya, lived in the same home as their guru. The world’s oldest university system is located in Nalanda. Indian knowledge systems were attracting students from all around the world.
• With the Hunter Commission Report, Woods’ Despatch, Macaulay Committee recommendations, and the University Education Act of 2004, the British government implemented a number of educational changes that had a significant social impact.

The state of education in India right now:

• In India, the gender disparity in literacy started to close in 1991, and the progress happened more quickly than expected. UNESCO (2015) estimated that India’s current female literacy rate still falls well short of the world average of 87%.
• Moreover, India’s 74.04% overall literacy rate is lower than the 86.3% global average. Many Indian states are in the average range, with a literacy rate that is marginally higher than the national average.

Various Constitutional and Legal Provisions:

Lawful Requirements:

• As part of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, the government has introduced the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) for elementary school students (6–14 years old).
• With the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, the government has expanded the SSA to secondary education at the secondary level (age group 14–18).
• In order to meet the requirements of higher education, the government addresses higher education at the undergraduate (UG), postgraduate (PG), and MPhil/PhD levels through the Rashtriya Uchhattar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA).
• The Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan plan now encompasses all of these initiatives.

Articles of the Constitution:

• Within ten years following the Constitution’s adoption, the government was required under Article 45 of the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) to guarantee free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of fourteen.
• Furthermore, Article 45 was modified to include early childhood education and care for children younger than six.
• The 86th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2002 included Article 21A, making basic education a fundamental right rather than a directive concept, in response to the failure to achieve this goal.

What Problems Does India’s School Education System Face?

Election-driven Government Priorities:

• The impoverished have more negotiating power during elections, which makes them more focused on pressing necessities like assurances and freebies. People are suspicious of the government’s commitment to improving living circumstances, health care, education, and other areas even if they want more basic entitlements and financial stability.

Crisis in the Education Sector:

• Because of careless politicisation and commercialization, the education sector is in trouble. It substitutes sound investments in high-quality education for quick fixes like technology, lacks a well-thought-out plan, and lacks national agreement.

Edutech’s limitations:

• The shortcomings of technology in mending the flawed educational system are emphasised in the book “The Learning Trap”. Edutech start-ups that prioritised the need for qualified teachers over technology solutions, like Byju’s, failed to live up to expectations.

Effects of the Education Sector:

• With a valuation of more over Rs 58 billion, the tuition market is growing quickly. The government’s devaluation of high school diplomas and emphasis on national exams as entry points for professional careers fuel the expansion of this alternative education system.

Inclination towards tuition centres:

• Parents are favouring tuition centres over traditional schools more and more, which is causing pupils to suffer from mental health issues and suicides brought on by stress. The gap between pupils with higher levels of education and those with lower levels is growing.

Variance in Quality in Schools:

• Poorly qualified and compensated instructors have a hand in the growth of tuition centres, and India’s public and private schools differ greatly in quality. The government ignores monitoring and quality improvement in favour of managing its own schools.

Growing Educational Disparity:

• The gap between rich and poor students’ educational attainment is growing, and the latter group of pupils is having difficulty navigating an ineffective system. The government’s approach to educational materials is antiquated and does not deal with the escalating problems.

Insufficient Social Involvement:

• The Indian environment lacks the notion that education should be primarily the province of the government and instead be a social concern.
• Expanding civic engagement, promoting voluntarism, and holding educators accountable for outcomes are some of the solutions.

Spending too little on education:

• India spends much less on education than is suggested by the Education 2030 Framework for Action, with spending on education stagnant at 2.61% of GDP. For true growth and development, more funding and adequate attention are necessary.

Fiscal Ingenuity and Political Leadership:

• Genuine progress and advancement rely on the financial ingenuity and dedication of political leadership. Given that India continues to spend less on education, a fundamental change is needed to confront the difficulties and take the country to the forefront of the global education movement.

Inadequate School Infrastructure:

• As per the UDISE report for 2019–20, hardly 12% of schools possess internet connectivity, whereas 30% have PCs.
• A little over half of these schools had no furniture, twenty-three percent had no electricity, twenty-two percent had no ramps for the physically impaired, and fifteen percent had no WASH facilities (which are restrooms, drinking water, and hand wash sinks).

High Attrition Rate:

• At the basic and secondary levels, there is an extremely high dropout rate. The majority of pupils in the 6–14 age ranges drop out of school before finishing their coursework. It results in the waste of both human and financial resources.
• The National Family Health Survey-5 indicates that among 6 to 17-year-old boys and girls, 21.4% and 35.7%, respectively, stated that they were not interested in studying as their reason for leaving school before the 2019–20 academic year.

What Are the Long-Term Fixes for India’s Educational System?

Moving Towards an Experiential Learning Method:

• To give students practical learning experiences and better equip them for the working world, it is necessary to include courses in problem-solving and decision-making in the school curriculum.
• The capacity of experiential learning to elicit active participation from each student can be its greatest asset, as this in turn activates their emotional intelligence and puts them on a path towards self-learning.
• Creating a connection between artificial intelligence and education will also help with experiential learning.

The National Education Policy’s implementation:

• The NEP’s introduction could assist in rousing the educational system from its hibernation.
• By switching from the present 10+2 system to a 5+3+3+4 system, which isn’t being implemented consistently in every state, the pre-school age group will be formally included in the educational system.

Employment-Education Corridor:

• India’s educational system needs to be improved in order to guarantee that kids are directed in the proper way from the beginning and are aware of job prospects. This can be achieved by integrating vocational learning with mainstream education and offering appropriate mentorship at school (particularly in government schools).
• Although they lack the proper mentorship, students in rural areas are highly driven to learn and have enormous potential. This will help close the gender gap in education because it is necessary for both the parents and the children.

 Lowering the Linguistic Divide:

• Even while English is still used in education for international understanding (EIU), other Indian languages should also be given equal weight.
• To ensure that all Indian students, regardless of their language background, have equal opportunities, special publication agencies can be developed to translate information into many languages.

Observing the Past to Predict the Future:

• It is critical to maintain our long-standing roots while yet looking to the future.
• The ‘Gurukul’ system of ancient India, which emphasised comprehensive development beyond academics centuries before the subject became a trendy phrase in contemporary education, offers much to learn.
• The foundation of learning in the traditional Indian educational system continued to be ethics and values education. Self-reliance, empathy, inventiveness, honesty, and other values are still important in ancient India and are applicable today.
• Grading theme knowledge was not the only way that education was evaluated in the past. The abilities that students acquired and their ability to apply practical information to real-world scenarios were evaluated.
• Analogous assessment methods can likewise be developed by the current educational system.