Imperative short-term solutions
There’s a national consensus that the education system in India needs to be overhauled. Scores of articles in print and e-media feature discourses on what’s wrong with the education system, and how it is completely disconnected from the needs of Indian industry. But even as decision makers figure out long-term strategies and policies for the expansion and development of Indian education, there are some quick measures that can be taken immediately to stem the rot. India needed to start preparing for the current economic boom at least ten years ago. But since precious few efforts were made in this direction, some fire-fighting in the immediate future has become imperative.It needs to be frankly acknowledged that academic institutions across the country simply don’t have adequate infrastructure and faculty resources. Also, it is well-known that the best university graduates opt for high-paying jobs in industry and/ or emigrate abroad. These trends are likely to continue, which means that even fewer high quality teachers will be available in the future. This in turn means that colleges and universities must look beyond Ph Ds for a solution.
To make up for this imminent shortage of college and university teachers, corpo-rates and industry need to be encouraged to participate in teaching activities within their local communities. New age corporates, and this conjecture on my part is based on a few data points that I have, would be happy to deploy employees to teach as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. Individual employees can possibly be provided incentives to participate. Moreover what if an employee were to get an income tax break for volunteering say, ten hours of teaching time every year? Or what if corporates were given sops for participating in teaching programmes? If nothing works, the government could pass a law compelling industry to provide 1 percent of employees’ time for this purpose.
A Chinese seer once famously remarked that it is better to teach a person how to fish than to gift him a fish. If a critical mass of part-time teachers from industry can be aggregated, this bandwidth could also be utilised to train existing full-time teachers. For example, the overwhelming majority of teachers don’t employ technology to teach. The basic reason is that most of them are still wary about and unfamiliar with technology. Communication with industry managers will surely help them get over this technology hump.
Taking the concept of industry participation in education a step further, it’s high time the Central and state governments actively encourage graduates to become teachers. Of course it’s true that teachers earn less than professionals in industry and business. Therefore instead of finding ways to pay more, full-time teachers could be provided a tax holiday.
Next, there is an urgent national need to promote ICT-enabled education. Admittedly there is no substitute to classroom learning. But since there aren’t enough teachers to go around, it makes sense to supplement classroom teaching with ICT-enabled solutions. There is enough courseware and material available to implement this idea quickly. In fact, I have long advocated that the Union HRD ministry creates an Online National Learning Repository which should be accessible to any learner free of charge. Open standards can be published to allow content creators to add to the repository.
The argument that much of India still does not have connectivity is an excuse which has worn thin. In my opinion connectivity is available in much of India, but there are not many takers, since there is limited value proposition for broadband connectivity. However broadband penetration will accelerate only if there is good reason for people to be connected. And even in instances where there’s no connectivity, given encouragement small entrepreneurs will most likely download content from the repository, and distribute CD ROMs on a commercial basis to schools which lack connectivity.
A third imperative is to consolidate schools. Inane laws that require a school within a few km of every household need to be scrapped. Since the state and local governments lack resources to maintain quality standards across a large number of schools, they need to be consolidated into larger, more resourceful institutions. Quality rather than quantity must drive education. And lastly, given the magnitude of the challenge to create an education infrastructure for the world’s largest youth population (540 million Indians are below 24 years of age), encouragement must necessarily be given to private education initiatives at all levels — primary, secondary and tertiary. Private institutions will continue to create islands of education excellence. But the challenge for government is to upgrade the entire academic infrastructure. This will take time. But it’s not mission impossible. After all, government has created a nationwide PCO (public call office) infrastructure in record time.
Instead of being bogged down by why we cannot do something, let’s find ways to move forward.
(Anand Adkoli is the co-founder & CEO of Liqwid Krystal, a Bangalore-based software company)