Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD)
conducts an international test PISA
(Programme for International Student Assessment) to evaluate the mathematical
,English and science abilities of students at the end of compulsory education
once in three years. Nearly 70 countries voluntarily opted for PISA. India participated in 2009.OECD
randomly selected 16,000 students from 400 schools in Himachal Pradesh and
Tamilnadu for the test. Chinese students were ranked first in all the three
subjects, while Indian students did very badly. Most questions needed
comprehension and reasoning skills. Rote learning is the mode of education in
most schools in India.
Only a small proportion of schools and teachers facilitate learning through
questioning and innovation.
The paradox of our school education is that teachers (not
all) in government schools give least priority to teaching, though they enjoy
security of tenure, good salary and social security. In government- aided private
schools, the highest bidders are selected as teachers. For instance, a school
management in Kerala is reported to have taken 1.5 million rupees for a
teacher’s post. Reasonable says the beneficiaries. In unaided schools, teachers
are made to overwork for low compensation. Private tuition is quite common and
the teachers put in their best in the tuition centres while they take it easy
in the schools. In the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) conducted by the
government of Tamilnadu in July 2012, not even 1 per cent passed out of a total
of more than 6,80,000 teachers who appeared for the test. The re-test conducted
in October 2012 with an increased duration of three hours from the earlier one
and a half hours (to answer 150 multiple- choice questions) yielded only a
marginal increase in the percentage of results: just 3 per cent. What
analytical skills and creativity can these under- prepared teachers transmit to
the children? Years ago, a Malayalam movie depicted the state of education in
Kerala; an unemployed young man (Mohanlal being the protagonist) becomes an
English teacher in a private school in a village producing fake certificates (
not an uncommon practice) and greasing the palms of all concerned. When
students asked the teacher the English equivalent of “uppumavu or uppuma” (a
popular snack which is a mixture mainly of wheat flour / “rava”, coconut and
salt), the teacher impressed the students and his ignorant colleagues with the
translation “salt mango tree”. Even today this translation remains a popular
joke among the Malayalees, and a sad reality in many Indian schools.
A strong foundation is essential for a strong edifice.
Otherwise the super structure will collapse. India’s educational pyramid has a
very weak base. From primary to higher secondary levels, the education offered
to the young children is generally of low quality. Lower the educational level
poorer is the quality of education. India’s education industry is
massive with the private entrepreneurs reaping enormous profits with low investment.
The pre-school sector is almost in the hands of private profiteers.
Schools in India
vary from the elite to the egregious. A large number of schools lack basic
infrastructure, teachers and other facilities. Many private schools in the
country are run without any recognition from the state governments. For
instance, in Tamilnadu, a developed state,4.35 million students are in 10,896
private schools of which 2,600 are unrecognized schools, that is, more than one
in four (2012) .Recently, Ministers in Rajasthan were heckled by the girl
students of a school en masse because of shortage of teachers and lack of
facilities. The Supreme Court ordered in September 2012 that all schools in the
country should provide toilets (particularly to girls) and drinking water
facilities within six months. It is to be seen how far this order would be
complied with seriously and sincerely.
The Right to Education (RTE) Act is a watershed
constitutional amendment. But the private schools, which are the custodians of
the exclusive system, are determined to keep the poor and the disabled off from
their “holy” precincts despite the Supreme Court verdict upholding the validity
of the Act. The road ahead in realizing the vision of the RTE Act is full of
hurdles and roadblocks. The government should be uncompromising in its goal of
providing good education to our children, which is their right. It is
irrational for the state to bear the heavy burden of higher education, when the
focus of the state should be on school education, with a well- designed, complementary
vocational stream. Kendriya Vidyalayas and similar schools should be set up in
all parts of the country under the auspices of the government, instead of
state-funded IITs, IIMs and such other institutions which can be in the private
sector. It is an irony that not even a single Indian University
or IIT made it to the list of top 100 universities in global ranking. Further,
it is shocking that just 3.5 per cent of global research output was from India in 2010 according to the Thomson Reuters
study report presented to the Department of Science and Technology of the
government of India.
India’s
global share of research in economics was an insignificant 0.7 per cent.
Surprisingly, the share of research in computer sciences by India was a meagre 2.4 per cent in contrast to China (15 per cent) and South Korea (6.3 per cent).There is a serious
mismatch between these findings and India’s claim to be the future
knowledge superpower. The potential of our enormous human resources needs to be
fully tapped. Otherwise, India’s
demographic dividend will fall far short of our national expectations.
