Everybody but people in government at the Centre and in the states, seems to be aware there’s a crisis in Indian education, especially public institutions of learning. Preschool education is yet to appear on the radar of most education ministries, government primary-secondaries lack basic facilities and are uninviting, teachers who bother to show up for class go through the motions, the joy of learning is sucked out, and children’s learning outcomes are abysmal. All this despite every official paying lip service to the nostrum that (quality) education is the foundation of national development.
Against this official inertia, proved by the pathetic provision made year after year in the budgets of the Union and state governments for public education — and don’t expect any departure from this norm in the Union Budget 2017-18 scheduled to be presented to the nation next month — the silver lining is a multiplying number of brave edupreneurs who are exploring and adapting revolutionary digital technologies to catapult India’s moribund education system into the 21st century. Inevitably, their initial target is the country’s 150-200 million middle class which is acutely aware of the transformative upward mobility of high quality pre-primary to postgraduate education, and have enrolled their children in private schools. But it’s only a matter of time before these new genre edupreneurs scale their operations to cover public education institutions. In the first cover story of the new year, we have featured some of the most innovative and promising edupreneurs hell-bent on leapfrogging Indian education into the 21st century.
There’s much more in this somewhat over-engineered first issue of the new year. As usual in our end-of-year special report feature, managing editor Summiya Yasmeen reviews the sound and fury in education which amounted to nothing of significance. In the eyewitness report, we describe the launch of the EW Foundation’s Mission Million Memorial Libraries project starting with a modest en famille effort which we hope will serve as an inspirational model to 999,999 households countrywide. Don’t rule it out!
Also check out the expert comment column contributed by the knowledgeable and insightful T.S.R. Subramanian, hitherto chairman of the Committee for Evolution of the National Policy on Education 2016, and the inspiring interview with Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, promoter-president of the world’s largest — and undoubtedly most active co-curricular education — K-12 school worldwide, as acknowledged by Guinness World Records.
On several counts, 2016 has been an annus horribilis. In 2017, I call upon the public to help us attain our mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”.
Happy New Year!