6 Focus areas that can lead revamp in education Maj. Gen K J Singh With the dawn of the Modi Government in India on 26 May 2014, expectations among the people have been running high. There are many challenges; one main challenge is a total revamp of the education system at all levels: primary, secondary, higher education and research. Good and purposeful education, which relates to our cultural traditions, socio-economic needs and the national environment, is foundation of development, progress and prosperity. Sadly the education sector has not kept up the pace needed to achieve the quality and standard required in modern times. India badly needs a good and robust education system which should bring out not only educated youth but also enlightened youth who would understand what is right and what is wrong and develop the courage to follow the right path. 1. The Foundation: Primary and Secondary Education Sound basic education is the foundation for lifelong learning and human development. On this foundation are built further levels and quality of all types of education and training. Primary and Secondary Schools nurture students from early childhood to adolescence. They are the raw products for higher education. If this base lacks quality and holistic education, the higher education products will also not measure up to quality. A vast majority of such schools are in poor or very poor state due to lack of infrastructure and good teachers. Nearly 400 million people are living in poverty with little or no opportunity of educating their children. They struggle to have even one wholesome meal a day or potable water to drink. About 20 million children in the country are out of school. Fulfillment of the right to free and compulsory education for children between 06 and 14 years of age is, as enshrined in the RTE Act, the responsibility of the Government which requires Schools with necessary infrastructure, pedagogy and modalities of education that effectively uses the modern education technology tools, to provide to students good knowledge and help them to develop qualities of good conduct and a holistic potential to become worthy citizens. Upgradation of these Schools ( mostly Government run) in terms of infrastructure, reasonably decent buildings and good teachers should, therefore be a high priority programme of action especially for the State Governments. 2. Vocational Institutions for Skill Training For development and growth of the country, skilled human resource well versed in the latest technology, is another necessity. There is a serious lack of skilled manpower. India needs about 480 million well trained workforce in about 2500 skills to be able to compete and match up with global industries and provide a boost to our economy. India has huge workforce resources but most of them lack relevant skills. In 15-30 years of age group, just 2% have any formal training and only another 7% to 8% have non formal training. Therefore, priority programmes are also urgently needed for good quality vocational Institutions awarding Diploma and Certificate level courses and a well planned periodical up grading training schedule to keep pace with the rapidly changing technologies. This would enable millions to earn their livelihood and not look forward to sops and alms distributed by Governments at the election times. Consider enacting Food Security Bill at highly subsidized rates to approximately two thirds of India’s 1.2 Billion population and free hot meals to children between ages of 06 months to 14 years and pregnant / lactating mothers at an estimated budget of Rs.1.25 lakh crore. One thought is to utilize this huge funding from Tax Payers money progressively to provide, basic housing facility, some agricultural land, water, electricity, Schools and primary health care centres so that people can live with some dignity. We must break the national culture of turning our people into multitude of beggars dependent on the whims and mercies of respective Governments. A sight which had a deep impact on me at the age of about nine years was that during World War II, a number of military special trains carrying troops were being run. Standing on a wayside small railway station was a multitude of the slave country, India. They were there on the platform and when the special military trains passed, the white soldiers would open the windows and laughingly throw packets of bread and biscuits on the platform and the crowd would rush to pick these up. Rather than continuing to perpetuate this culture after 67 years of Independence with dreams of Ram-Rajya, strong and effective measures should be taken to empower the people with appropriate education and training to lead a life with dignity having minimum necessities earned by them on their own without taking doles and alms. Spread of relevant livelihood earning vocational education and institutions would also reduce the burgeoning load on the costly higher education. 3. Higher / Professional Education The quality of higher education has been going through a steady decline. About 80 to 85 percent of graduates and post graduates are unemployable by India Inc. in a globally competitive environment. The rush of thousands of students each year to foreign countries for higher studies shows the inadequacies and deficiencies in our education system, apart from the big drain on the foreign exchange. These thousands of students spend four to five times more to get a Degree and eventually come back to India for their livelihood and jobs. On the contrary, our Universities should be able to attract foreign students and foreign faculty in large numbers which is one of the major criteria for world ranking. We already have about 650 Universities, about 67 Public funded Institutions of National Importance including 16 IITs and 13 IIMs. However quite a few of them still lack the desired infrastructure, professors and teachers and other resources to achieve excellence. Eight of the nine IITs sanctioned in 2008 and later, still have no campus and are functioning from temporary premises. Three main factors are important for sound planning of higher education for the future:- Estimate / forecast of the number of students for various higher education disciplines required in the perspective of next 10 to 20 years. Estimate / forecast of the number of skilled persons in over 2500 different skills needed for the growth of India Inc in a competitive world environment. At the same time meeting the aspirations of the youth from different socio-economic backgrounds. While planning with the vision for the future years, one must take the above factors into account in totality with an integrated approach. Do we need so many Higher/ Professional Institutions in the coming years once the required focus is given to Vocational training for large numbers of students to develop skilled workforce and earn a decent living on their own? efore planning for establishing new Institutions – Schools, Colleges, IIMs, IITs, Universities, the first priority should be to see what exists and how to upgrade them to achieve quality and evolve an integrated and phased development plan with the vision for next 10 to 20 years. Establishing new Institutes, IITs, IIMs, Universities etc. require huge funds. Since 2009 about nine new IITs, ten new NITs and sixteen new Central Universities have been set up, most of which still do not have campuses, appropriate infrastructure and quality professors / teachers. At least about Rs. 25,000 Crore is required for IITs and NITs alone to manage the escalating cost of Engineering and Management Institutes set up in the last five years. 4. Regulating Higher Education versus Quality The higher education system is over regulated. Numerous regulating bodies have been created to improve quality, which, in fact, have turned into Inspection and Approval Organizations akin to License Raj with hardly any focus towards measures for improvement of quality which implies improvement in infrastructure, training of teachers, developing model pedagogies, creating a bank of teachers, etc. The University Education Commission, which was appointed in November 1948 with Dr S Radhakrishnan as its Chairman and luminaries like Dr Tarachand Ex-Vice Chancellor of Allahabad University, Dr Zakir Hussain Vice Chancellor AMU, Dr A Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar Vice Chancellor Madras University, Dr Meghnath Saha Dean of Calcutta University and five other eminent educationists, recommended : “Exclusive control of education by the state has been an important factor in facilitating the maintenance of totalitarian tyrannies. In such States, Institutions of higher learning controlled and managed by governmental agencies act like mercenaries. We must resist in the interest of our own democracy, the trends towards the governmental domination of the educational process. The respect in which the Universities of Great Britain are held is due to freedom from Governmental interferences, which they enjoy constitutionally and actually. Our universities should be released from the control of politics. The Government’s domination of the educational process must be resisted”. It is time now, as it is never too late, that the planners of higher education re-tune their mind-sets to evolve policies for achieving world class quality. This is possible only if Universities and Higher Education Institutions are given freedom and autonomy and not shackled by controls and regulations. This is how the advanced countries like USA, Europe, UK etc. have shown their superiority in the quality of education and research in their various Universities. No doubts, certain minimum regulatory norms and standards need to be laid down to ensure the minimum basic quality of education, but just that and nothing more. Higher Education should be free from politicisation and numerous regulatory controls and should be borderless and not restricted by jurisdiction controls of states or regions. Universities should not be discouraged from opening campuses for education and research anywhere in the country. The best quality check will be exercised spontaneously by the market response. Quality has two main ingredients – Cost and Competition: Cost of good infrastructure including facilities like library , laboratories and research facilities, good quality of teachers and other staff are growing up exponentially but the fee and the grants to the Institutions are controlled by the Government that causes constraints on creating matching world class infrastructure and its continuous upgradation. Competition implies innovative ideas of Institutions towards higher quality of teaching and research. However certain measures mandated by the Government have negated the above. One example is – establishing State Technical Universities - why hundreds of Colleges should be required to follow the same syllabus, same examinations, and same grading system and so on. This has led students to just passing examinations and getting Degrees most of which are mediocre or below par. Concepts of new initiatives and innovations as per the emerging market demands should be encouraged and the Schools, Colleges and Universities should have autonomy to introduce new ideas and pedagogies. The resulting healthy competition among Institutions would enable growth of quality and excellence as Institutions will then make efforts to compete to excel from each other. 5. Privatisation of Higher Education At present, India needs to invest in improving quality and upgradation of education at primary and secondary levels which provides the basic raw material for training and skills for higher education. This alone would place a huge burden on public funds. It is now, therefore, time to gradually pass on higher education to the private sector to share the burden of huge funds required by the education sector. The current latest estimate for creating infrastructure for the eight new IITs is about Rs. 15,600 crores, which does not include annual recurring expenditure. The private sector should, therefore, be encouraged to open Schools, Colleges and the Universities by giving them a level playing field vis a vis Government Institutions, autonomy in operations and other incentives including Government funding for creating and upgrading of infrastructure, laboratories , etc. for Research and Development. Research and Development is the key to economic development In the last decade or so about 170 State Private Universities have been established under State Acts and quite a large number of them have achieved high standards of quality with innovative ideas and are providing quality training infrastructure in the emerging technologies of the present and the future. 6. National Policies on Education Various Planning and Advisory Bodies for education have been constituted over the years for example Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT), National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), and others. The first National Policy of Education was promulgated in 1968 by the Government of India and the second in 1986, which was modified in 1992.In 2005 Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh adopted a new Policy based on “Common Minimum Programme” of UPA Government. However, somehow, the role of such bodies has remained limited to identifying the problem areas and advice but there has been little or no impact so far. The entire education system today still lacks content, quality and research of global standards. Conclusion These are some basic considerations towards revamping of education. There are many other factors such as e-learning, R & D, holistic model of education with multiple discipline options at the same campus, application oriented vocational and professional education, etc., which need deliberate thinking and an action plan after an assessment of the future needs of the country. South Asia represents the largest potential growth region for education and needs to move rapidly towards internationalization of education. Issues like global accreditation and recruiting and retaining world class faculty need consideration. India’s education policy should therefore aim at having top rankings among Institutions in Asia followed by top rankings at the global level. There is therefore a need to create a National Education Council under the Ministry of HRD with two Branches – One for Higher Education and the other for Primary & Secondary Education. The Council should have representatives from experienced and knowledgeable persons from Universities, Colleges and Schools including from Private Universities and Institutions and also selected representatives of Industry who need well qualified human resource to meet the competitive environment. The Terms and Mandates for this Council should not only be to evolve a practical Road Map or Way Forward to Revamp the education system but also an Action Plan in phases with targeted implementation based on available funds and resources and monitor the implementation in the true spirit of achieving required quality and quantity. It should therefore preferably be a statutory body under the Ministry of HRD.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 07:13:19 +0000
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