Now, that some of the recommendations of India’s New Education Policy are out, there is need to see whether they will provide the right thrust to the education system for creating leaders, says Dr Prashant Bhalla
With the recommendations of the TSR Subramanian-led panel on India’s New Education Policy generating a lot of debate and discussion, there is much speculation on what final framework the Ministry of Human Resources Development will adopt to lay down new comprehensive guidelines for the education system.
With some of its recommendations already out in the public domain, we gauge that the panel has essentially laid down the need for a major overhaul of the educational infrastructure. The suggestions include substantially upping Indian’s education outlay to six per cent of the total GDP; transforming 1,000 institutes of higher education into world-class universities; streamlining admissions to colleges by holding a common national level SAT-like test; reducing burden on school students to make education stress free; as well as improving recruitment and teacher certification norms to bring about better quality of school teachers.
Why an overhaulIJ
It was three decades back that India last rolled out a National Education Policy, envisaging the need for reducing gaps in accessibility and equity. Having liberalised the economy in 1991, India has long left past the passive years of sluggish rate of growth to emerge as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This has given rise to a large aspirational middle class hungry for greater opportunities in higher education.
For a country now aiming to enter the ranks of the upper middle income nations like China, Brazil and South Africa, India has a dated and decrepit education system, with its total education outlay (as percentage of GDP) lowest among the BRICS nations. The IITs and IIMs notwithstanding, Indian Universities do not figure in the global top 200, even as other nations like China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have successfully established institutions of global standards.
Forget higher education, in recent years reports to gauge the reading and problem solving ability of school children have often found Class VIII students unable to read Class II text, putting a major question mark on quality of school education. This is particularly true of Government schools. Despite Right to Education being made a law, there has been little change at the ground level.
In this light, one of the most important recommendations of the education panel pertain to measures needed to improve quality of teaching in schools. The committee’s recommendations to make (Teacher Eligibility Test) TET compulsory for recruitment is welcome; so is the recommendation to make teacher certification mandatory and renewable every few years based on independent external testing. Both these measures, if implemented, will ensure improvement in quality of teaching. But, we need more substantial interventions to address the issue of teacher absenteeism in Government schools which is a rampant problem.
Quality education important
By 2030, nearly 140 million people in India are expected to be in the college-going age group. The demographic dividend that India expects to reap from this youth bulge will remain, but a distant promise, if not supported by adequate measures to cultivate this working age population into efficient human resource. Industry in India has long complained of a major void in qualification and employability of the youth. Graduates produced by colleges are not found to be industry-ready, requiring companies to heavily invest in training.
The success of some of the schemes like Make in India and Startup India also depend upon the quality and accessibility of education. While technical and vocational education is crucial to the success of Make in India, quality higher education that is able to incubate successful business ideas and nurture entrepreneurs is key to the success of Startup India.
Higher education also needs a fresh impetus to boost research and innovation; we need to produce more scholars, researchers, innovators and quality professors who can in turn become the vanguard of a new education and economic revolution. In this regard, a welcome suggestion of the education panel has been on the proposal to institute 10 lakh new fellowships annually for higher education; so is the recommendation to transform 1,000 institutes into world-class universities.
If we want to reap our demographic dividend, we must make sure our students get the best quality higher education right here in India. The proposal to allow top 200 foreign universities to open campuses in India, if implemented will also help in preventing the Indian brain drain.
Knowledge economy
According to a report by the Asian Development Bank, India can become a leading knowledge-driven economy given its youthful population and thriving information and communication technology industry. However, for this to happen, it needs to overcome several barriers in the regulatory, infrastructure and education domains. Advanced Asian economies have successfully shifted from agriculture to manufacturing to knowledge-based industries. On the other hand, India is still struggling to translate pockets of knowledge-based growth into a broader economic model. The World Bank report says that India’s great potential exists for increasing productivity by shifting labour from low productivity and subsistence activities in agriculture and unorganised industry to more productive modern sectors, as well as to new knowledge-based activities. This requires a major overhaul of the education system.
Will the New Education Policy provide us the right impetus, is yet to be seen.
(The writer is president, Manav Rachna Educational Institutes & Treasurer, Education Promotion Society for India)