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THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT at the Centre has generated hope and enthusiasm in all sectors of the economy, including education. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s intent to invest “skills, speed and scale” into the national development effort is as applicable to the education sector as to any other, perhaps more so. As the new BJP-led NDA government which received a massive mandate to implement its progressive development programme embarks on this mission, it could draw some useful lessons from experiences of the past.
Submitting the Report of the National Commission on Education to the then education minister M.C. Chagla on June 29, 1966, the commission’s chairperson, Prof. D.S. Kothari, wrote a memorable conclusion: “In the rapidly changing world of today, one thing is certain: yesterday’s educational system will not meet today’s, and even less so, the need of tomorrow.” Five decades on, these words contain valuable advice to the new government which has inherited a disoriented and dysfunctional education system suffering serious loss of credibility.
Universal access to elementary education is perhaps the only achievement of Indian education these past 67 years, extending school education to over 90 percent of the country’s children. But access is of no value if not supported by adequate inputs to raise teaching-learning standards and improve learner attainments in the nation’s classrooms. India can justifiably claim to have a few schools and professional institutions of higher education on a par with the best anywhere. But the great majority of our schools, colleges and universities are deficient on almost every parameter.
The hard task of the new government in Delhi is to build and sustain an environment of faith and trust that a great change is indeed imminent in Indian education. Will the new government really budget the long-promised 6 percent of GDP to education? It’s mesmerising to visualise an India in which every school is functioning smoothly with adequate infrastructural support, qualified and committed teachers, and a supportive community! But for this dream to be realised the system has to be jolted out of its pervasive lethargy which scotches every initiative at the implementation stage, the Right to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 being a poignant example.
Teacher recruitment on a massive scale across the spectrum — from schools to universities — deserves primacy in priority delineation. But multiplication of model teacher education institutions is a necessary precondition. Moreover, special incentives are needed to attract brilliant youth to enter the teaching profession and portals of academia. We need to prepare teachers for the increased number of higher education institutions such as additional IITs, IIMs and Central universities promised by the new government. Elected representatives in village panchayats all the way to Parliament need to understand the education system and strive to remove its numerous deficiences. Private schools and institutions of higher learning, a significant number of which are promoted by politicians, need guidance and assistance. Even regulatory mechanisms require revision to become answerable to the aspirations of students and learners rather than of teachers, faculty and administrators.
Private investment in education is inevitable and necessary even as hundreds of institutions of management and engineering are facing closure. Yet paradoxically, the country needs more engineers and MBAs! This curious paradox is the consequence of the shady performance of regulatory bodies and massive commercialisation without concern for quality by a large number of education entrepreneurs who have entered the education sector during the past three decades. To offset the damage of the new tribe of greedy ‘edupreneurs’, who have given committed and bona fide private investors in education a bad reputation, the new BJP/NDA government needs to urgently decide on the issue of allowing foreign universities to establish campuses in India. The demand for meaningful higher and professional education has to be met and policies and processes to globalise Indian higher education need to be transparent, expeditious and pragmatic.
Indeed, this is a great opportunity for the new government at the Centre to set up a National Commission on Education, and based upon its report, formulate a New Education Policy. The last curriculum framework for school education was prepared almost ten years ago and deserves unbiased professional scrutiny for change. Meanwhile, the process of syllabus revision must be initiated under an independent group of scholars, academics and teachers.
In a welcome recent initiative, after obtaining the consent of all the state/UT governments, the Supreme Court of India has decreed environment studies a compulsory and independent subject in K-12 education, without increasing the curriculum load. If implemented in right earnest, this decree will create awareness about energy, environment and climate change within 230 million school children. These are the type of strategic reforms the newly elected BJP-led NDA government at the Centre — and governments in the states — need to design to rejuvenate India’s rapidly obsolescing education system.
(J.S. Rajput is former director of the National Council for Educational Research and Training and the National Council for Teacher Education)