Expansion,excellence and inclusion in Indian education system

Submitted by Prof. Deepak Sharma

Improving the Quality of Education

A quantitative expansion of the educational system will provide access to more young people, but it will not ensure that the education provided is of adequate quality to keep them enrolled or dramatically improve their capacity for social adaptation and achievement. Many of methods commonly adopted in the nation's schools are based on practices developed in the distant past that have outlived their value and utility. Simultaneous with the quantitative expansion of the educational system, there needs to be a concerted effort to experiment with new approaches to education that will increase the quality and speed of knowledge transmission. The qualitative change needed should include -

1) Shift from teaching to learning

The traditional emphasis on the teacher as the active source of knowledge and the student as the passive recipient who simply receives what is taught needs to be replaced by a pedagogical system in which the student is taught to actively seek knowledge through a variety of means from a variety of sources and the role of the teacher is as facilitator and guide for that process.

2) Shift from traditional academic to life-based curriculum

The current curriculum is a product of many different influences. Most of it was developed in countries with very different values and social conditions, some of it in earlier centuries when life was altogether different than it is today. The high drop out rates in India reflect that fact that the school curriculum is only distantly related to the knowledge and skills needed by most Indians for adaptation and achievement in life, especially in rural areas. The dawn of a new millennium is an appropriate time to begin formulation of an entirely new educational curriculum, one which will relate to the cultural, social, political and economic life of the country and the skills, attitudes and values needed for individual initiative, personal achievement and nation-building.

3) Computer education

Computer literacy is an increasingly important qualification for both for individual employment and growth of the national economy. It requires a minimum of 10 to 20 computers in order for the operation and maintenance of a computer laboratory to be economical. The consolidation of primary schools into clusters would facilitate investment in adequate centralized facilities to provide at least minimum access to computer training for all students. But teaching students how to operate computers represents only a tiny part of the benefits of computerization. The greater potential of computerization is as a medium and aid for teaching any subject. Experience shows that computer-based general education can be at least twice as fast and effective as normal classroom methods now employed in India.

4) Value-based education

The word ‘values' is normally employed with reference to ethical and moral concepts. But it can also be used in a much wider sense to connote principles that are essential for national development. Values are those attitudes which based on long experience society has come to recognize as most essential for individual and collective achievement. Values represent the quintessence of life wisdom about what is necessary for continued social progress. It is possible to identify a list of 20 or 30 work values that will be critical for the future growth and development of Indian society and its greater participation in the emerging global economy, values such as cleanliness, punctuality, self-reliance, self-respect, honesty in trade, entrepreneurship, systematic functioning, etc. As practical skills can be trained, values can be trained too. Rather than merely imitating the West, a study of India's most successful individuals, organizations and communities will reveal the core values that form the inner foundation for their outer accomplishments. Efforts should be initiated to identify those values that are most critical to India's future development and to evolve a curriculum to effectively impart them to students of all ages.

5) Model schools

Even while the effort is still underway to expand the school system to cover the entire population, a simultaneous effort is needed to introduce and experiment with new philosophies and methods of education more in tune with the needs and possibilities of the 21st Century. As a modest beginning, experimental schools can be established in every district to test and demonstrate new methods and serve as models for other schools to emulate.

6) Promoting indigenous knowledge

For learning to be relevant it must be tailored to local needs and encompass indigenous knowledge systems. Knowledge about indigenous techniques for water resource management, preparation of fertilizers, preservation of foods, utilization of herbal medicines for better health and nutrition, personal and community hygiene are essential elements of a complete education that should be incorporated in the school curriculum. The curriculum needs to be expanded to include traditional knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, Siddha and other forms of herbal medicine.

7) English language education

In this era of globalization, command over the English language is a precious asset. It significantly improves access to information and employment. There is enormous popular interest in learning English, but most existing teachers are not qualified to teach it and fear for their careers if it is given importance. As a consequence, the rich-poor divide only widens. Rich children learn English and monopolise high paid jobs and the poor are condemned to low paid ones. Without antagonising existing teachers, the government can encourage private initiative to provide supplementary courses in English and support it to the extent that it will be affordable by all families.

8) Community colleges

Education begins with literacy but should not end there. Adult literacy programmes should be augmented by post-literacy and vocational programmes to transmit knowledge related to the individual's the social and cultural environment. Drawing lessons from the phenomenal success of community college systems in Australia, Canada and USA in providing wider access to higher education to both students and adults, India should develop its own system adapted to the specialized needs of the country. India's model should include courses designed to meet vocational, professional and personal interest needs including subjects such as music, media, computer, agriculture, horticulture, banking, hotel management.

9) Social Systems for Knowledge Dissemination

In addition to the educational system, India can adapt from other countries and originally innovate a wide variety of other organizations to facilitate the generation and dissemination of Knowledge to the population.

10) Build a National Rural Information Delivery System

Knowledge is a catalyst for the development process. The gaps in practical knowledge that retard development can be identified and filled by creating new systems and institutions to transmit information that is not being adequately conveyed by traditional means. Several efforts are already underway in the country to utilize the Internet as a medium for delivering practically useful information to the rural population. Within five years, every revenue village in the country should be equipped with a web-based computer system providing timely information, including prices for agricultural commodities in local and regional markets, technical advice on issues such as pest alerts for local crops, advice on health and nutrition, announcements of government programs, credit schemes, school and college scholarship applications, and self-employment opportunities. Such a system can form the backbone of a national development information system that caters to a wide range of practical needs.

11) Compile an Internet-based Development Encyclopaedia

Over the past five decades, the pace of development has accelerated around the world. Changes that used to occur over centuries or decades are now occurring within a few years. Humanity's knowledge of development is accumulating so rapidly that it is difficult to keep track of all that has been learned or to access information on relevant experiences in specific fields.

The advent of the World Wide Web now makes it possible to create a compendium of development knowledge, information and experience, a well documented and continuously updated source of knowledge and practical experience on all fields of national development. This Development Encyclopedia could view every subject from the perspective of social development. It could catalog proven technologies, successful strategies and best practices in different fields, so that the information is readily accessible to people all over the country.

Compilation of the encyclopedia would need to be managed by a central editorial team, but the actual generation of material could be contributed by thousands of experts located around the country. All contributions could be screened and edited, placed in a central repository on the web and updated regularly for a fraction of the cost of printed sources of information. Since publication of new material would be progressive and continuous, the Encyclopedia could be launched and operative very quickly and continue to grow in value as additional material was added.

The Encyclopedia could contain both theoretical knowledge and practical information. On the theoretical side, it could examine topics such as the role of agriculture as an engine for employment and industrialization, the global growth of the service sector as the major source of new jobs, the impact of information technology on productivity and economic growth, the role of social and cultural values in development, the relationship between peace and development, the impact of rising levels of education on democracy and economic development, the relationship between education, prosperity and corruption, and the relationship between inflation and development. It could contain articles examining the factors responsible for the development achievements of different countries. It could formulate a series of scales and indices to compare the effectiveness of social organizations in different countries.

On the practical side, the Encyclopedia could document both in text and multimedia format methods to improve agricultural productivity, preserve foodgrains, conserve water, recharge aquifers, improve nutrition and health care, create low-cost housing, introduce complementary local currencies, stimulate entrepreneurship and job creation. It could catalog and evaluate alternative technologies for power generation, agriculture and aquaculture, various industries and environmental protection. It could compare the effectiveness of public policies and administrative systems in different countries and regions.

The Encyclopedia could also become a virtual forum for national and international debate on policies, priorities and strategies for national and international development.

12) Expanding the nation’s corps of school teachers

A tremendous expansion in the number of teachers will be required to support a quantitative and qualitative improvement in the country's school system. Eliminating primary school drop outs and reducing the teacher pupil ratio from the present high level of 1:42 down to around 1:20 will together require an additional three million primary school teachers, tripling of the number currently employed. Similar increases will be required at upper primary and secondary school levels. The training of such large numbers will require the establishment of additional teachers training colleges and much larger budget allocations for teachers' salaries.

13) Expansion of schools and classrooms

A tremendous expansion in the number of schools and classrooms will be required to support a quantitative and qualitative improvement in the country's school system. In order to achieve the best case scenario depicted in Table 8, total school enrolment would have to increase by 75 million students or 44%. That would require a proportion expansion in the number of classrooms. In addition, efforts to improve the quality of education by reducing class size would require further 20% increase in the number of classrooms. Together, this would require increasing the total number of classrooms by 65% within 20 years.

Current TPR is 1:42 for primary, 1:37 for upper primary and 1:31 for secondary level. An additional 9 lakh primary teachers will be required to support 100% net primary enrolment in 2016 (an increase from 79 million to 116 million students). To reduce TPR from 1:42 to 1:30, an additional 11 lakh teachers will be required, bringing the total to 39 lakh teachers, which is double the present number. An additional 5 lakh upper primary teachers will be required to support 100% net upper primary enrolment in 2016 (a net increase from 46 million to 66 million students). To reduce TPR from 1:37 to 1:30, an additional 4.5 lakh teachers will be required, bringing the total to 22 lakh teachers, compared to the present level of 12.5 lakh. Higher enrollment and lower drop out levels in secondary school could require a doubling of the high school teaching corps which presently consists of 15 lakh teachers.

 Computerizing general education & vocational education

Mere quantitative expansion in classrooms and teaching staff is an efficient way of tackling the nation's educational deficit in the age of computer. Recent experience has proven that computerizing education, i.e. utilizing computer and computerized teaching materials as instruments for general education, can dramatically increase the quality of education and the speed of knowledge acquisition, while dramatically decreasing dependence the knowledge and skill of teaching staff.

A fundamental policy decision should be made to fully utilize the capacities of computer for general education, not just for computer training, and to launch a major initiative to convert the entire school curriculum to computer-based, CD-Rom teaching materials.

The effort at computerization can be extended to include not only general school curriculum but vocational training on a very wide range of occupational skills, which can then be made accessible through private and public vocational training outlets throughout the country.

At the same time, a national campaign should be launched to develop low-cost teaching computers that can introduced into existing schools on a very large scale. A tie-up may be possible with major international computer manufacturers to provide long term credit for this investment as it will serve as model for other countries and expand the entire world market for educational computers.