I used to believe that Indian education system is the best when compared to the rest of the world till I read about our education system in depth. Probably that could be due to the image that has been created by the media and newspapers.
I will share some facts that could help us to understand the real face of Indian Education. Before getting into the statistics let us look into the media gimmicks
· India is the second largest English speaking country
· India has the maximum number of schools than the rest of the world
· Sukanya Roy is the ninth Indian American to win spelling bee in the last 13 years
· India's higher education system is the third largest in the world, after China and the United States.
· India's improved education system is often cited as one of the main contributors to the economic rise of India.
"We can't afford our kids to be mediocre at a time when they're competing against kids in China and India who are actually in school about a month longer than our kids," Obama said.
"So even with the good schools, we have got to pick up the pace, because the world has gotten competitive. The Chinese, the Indians, they are coming at us and they're coming at us hard, and they're hungry, and they're really buckling down," Obama said.
These are the media face of Indian education system actually there are so many other statistics which reveals the real face of Indian Education system. First let us look into the pros of education system and the way it has started and grown.
Indian education system is one of the oldest and has rich tradition. India had great universities such as Taxila and Nalanda functioning successfully even before hundreds of year !!. Nalanda University attracted scholars and students from as far away as China, Greece, and Persia for their higher studies. Later Nalanda was ransacked and destroyed by the invaders in 1193. The great library of Nalanda University was so vast(nine storied building) that it is reported to have burned for three months after the invaders set fire to it, ransacked and destroyed the monasteries. On arrival of the British Raj in India, the modern European education finds its way into India. Literacy rate in India during independence was 21% and increased to 74.04% by 2011.The number of literate women among the female population of India was between 2–6% from the British Raj onwards to the formation of the Republic of India in 1947.
There are some good things about IES. Education has also been made free for children for 6 to 14 years of age or up to class VIII under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009. Free lunch system in TN has rose the literacy rate from 54.4 %(1981) to 80.3(2011), currently 120 million students receive free lunched in Indian school every day, making it the largest school meal program in the world. 94% of Kerala’s rural population has access to primary school within 1km. Surprisingly, North & Eastern states such as Himachal Pradesh has 97% school attendance, Mizoram’s literacy rate rose rapidly after independence from 31% to 88.8% in 2001. Even in Bihar the literacy rate is rising, from 47% in 2001 to 63.8% in 2011.
Despite of all these prides, only 15% of Indian students reach high school and just 7% graduate. Government statistics of 2001 also hold that the rate of increase in literacy is more in rural areas than in urban areas. Female literacy was at a national average of 65% whereas the male literacy was 82%. Six Indian states account for about 70% of all illiterates in India: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. However, because of poor quality of public education, 27% of Indian children are privately educated. The private education market in India estimated to be worth $40 billion in 2008 and will increase to $68 billion by 2012.
Volume does matters. 25% of Indian population are still illiterate, which accounts to 304 million ‘absolute non-literates’(2001). Which is just higher than the whole US population(307million as on Jul 2009). India currently has the largest illiterate population of any nation on earth. 25% of teaching positions nationwide are vacant. 57% of college professors lack either a master's or PhD degree. 2003–04 data by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration revealed that only 3.5% of primary schools in Bihar and Chhattisgarh had toilets for girls. Sanitation, hygiene, quality of education sucks in most of the government run schools.
Equally the safety of School students in India is in poor condition [http://www.newsflash24x7.com/?p=465]. The above mentioned issues are one aspect of the Indian education system which can be rectified by any good government and its wise educational policies; I would categorize this as easy to solve issue.
Literacy rate world
Actually, there is a different problem with the whole education system irrespective of the above mentioned stats. More than 80% of Indian kids are studying in rural schools, where either single teacher handles multiple subjects or multiple classes (1st, 2nd etc), which have students of different classes will study together. So there is nothing to feel proud or even argue about the rural government education system.
It is looking no better in the so called 'Urban education' system either, where everyone is running behind the marks. If one did not score good marks they will tag that student as DUMB. If you take a class of 100 students, top 20 rank holders will get into their dream schools for higher education. The next 20-50 rank holders are called average people. They may either fall into the top colleges or not. The last 50-100 rank holders are categorized as waste. The teachers and the society calls them poor students and they are classified as not suited to continue their studies or at least cannot enter into their dream colleges. Coming back to 20-50 rank holders, few of them may get into good colleges. Few students irrespective of their rank are blessed to get good colleges by paying money. There is always a back door entry in Indian Education system. I wonder why we have payment seats and management seats in colleges; I wish it could have been stripped off from our education system. Even in Urban education we will get 40% quality (as measured by marks) students. Considering the overall 100% students of India ([rural 100 + urban 100] / 2 ) of globally competitive education system success rate is around 20%.
An education system which is having 20%+ success rate cannot be called as excellent. One nice fact to remember here is as we are from the second largest populated country our 20% quality scholars output may easily surpass developed countries 90% output :). We cannot ignore those 80% by-products left while manufacturing 20% quality students. Mostly our education system is designed to help students to find good job and make money. The goal itself should be revisited.
“Our university system is, in many parts, in a state of disrepair...In almost half the districts in the country, higher education enrollments are abysmally low, almost two-third of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters... I am concerned that in many states university appointments, including that of vice-chancellors, have been politicised and have become subject to caste and communal considerations, there are complaints of favouritism and corruption.
— Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007[40]
In case of other developed country, one good thing to be noticed is that they will make sure all the kids get proper and quality education. Government cares for the students and the school education is free. They won’t call students as dumb when they fail in just one subject. If a student scores good marks in science and fails in mathematics, they will appreciate that student for getting good marks in the science unlike in India even though a student scored 100% in science and failed in mathematics will be tagged as a Fail, no appreciations. We are reading news about students committing suicide just because they did not score good marks in exams.The whole exam system which in-turn weakens the student should be revisited. There is no importance given to co-curricular activities. In some colleges in Chennai there is rule by which the girls and boys should not talk to each other, actually parent are rushing to find a place for their kinds in that college, how immature is our education system. Those students coming out of these colleges wont have the guts to talk to female/male colleagues in their work place. Innovation and creativity are not praised, at times students are punished to be innovative, all you need is mark(a virtual number).
In India alone the social discrimination can easily finds their rooms into the schools, just think in US people are studying together irrespective of their color. In developed countries students won’t come out of school with the equivalent IQ of an India student, they may not know Pythagoras theorem or Murphy’s Law or even differential calculus. But they know how to face the society, they have grown with enough confident. They know the traffic rules, they know their fundamental rights, social responsibilities, how to express themselves. Confidence - This is root of success and will definitely help in entrepreneurship. Now-a-days the higher education systems in developed countries are becoming business, where money will get you the seats and quality sucks.
Indian education system should create confident leaders those who can rebuild the whole society without corruption, caste or religion discrimination.Each and every student should knowing their rights and should be in a position to distinguish between good and bad. Students alone can bring in changes to this country, just think of a day when a student questions his parents for spitting at common place, while violating a traffic signal, while bribing.
Jairam Ramesh about the quality of IIT & IIM
"There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT is not world class. It is the students in IITs who are world class. So the IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students not because of quality of research or faculty,"
Kabil Sibals reply to Jairam Ramesh saying,
“It would be unfair to make a comparison with the US which spends $250 billion every year on research to that of India’s meagre $8 billion. “We have to base our discussion on evidence, not on perception,”
On a related note, how many of us has the guts to quit our job and follow our own dreams. Why we do not have enough entrepreneurs? , in a country where climate favors farming almost though the out year and has lots of human work force and plenty of natural resources. I agree earning money is something essential but cannot be everything. Living a life with a fake identity and killing all our desires just to pursue money. Prime motto of our education system is creating money printing machines not the quality scholars.
Even after 60years of independence why our government schools are sub-standard? Why our so called cream & butter, IIT and IIM students are not working in India? Why fewer patents are registered in India? What is the basic reason for brain drain? ... Questions & dream continues ...
Literacy rate: The total percentage of the population of an area at a particular time aged seven years or above who can read and write with understanding. Here the denominator is the population aged seven years or more.
Reference Links
