The yearly round up of the Education sector in India for 2017 is quite grim. According to the ‘World Development Report 2018: ‘learning to Realize Education’s Promise’, India ranks second after Malawi in a list of 12 countries, wherein a grade two student could not read a single word of a short text or perform two-digit subtraction. The schooling system in India today continues to focus rigidly on memorisation rather than on nourishing intellectual creativity. This deficiency is even more pronounced as benchmark studies by Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading literacy Study (PIRlS) suggest, creating a skills deficit and making graduates non-competitive and/or unemployable in the jobs market.
The positives were that there is a lot of education focus on CSR activities of various companies. It is one of the top spending areas among companies according to most surveys. But that spend was largely focused on non-academic activities (focusing on infrastructure building in schools, distribution of bags, books etc) rather than on improving the quality of education in the K-12 space. In the past year, we have witnessed a huge explosion in the digital content space with Digital Digitisation the trending keyword influencing the inclusion of digital content in the learning modules in schools.
But still, there is still a lot to be fixed in the current education system in our country. There has been a short supply of content that addresses middle schools, which have been largely ignored. From here on, the gaps begin to appear which has long-reaching effects. Despite the proliferation of huge content, syllabus continues to very dry and not fun for students.
Simultaneously, teacher training is entirely missing as a focus area from CSR initiatives. Very few programmes exist to assist teachers. The formal colleges offering BEd focus entirely on pedagogy with the assumption that subject matter expertise is present. This assumption, for the most part, is incorrect. Also, the quality of teachers entering the profession seems to be dropping. The primary reasons for choosing the profession seem to be for “convenience”. This compromises the quality of teaching in the classroom. The enormous effort and money spent by the Government and private agencies on teacher training have limited impact because the quality of talent entering the teaching profession is suspect.
In 2017, not much has changed.
The writer is Rajesh Rao, founder & CEO, Connecting The Dot