India’s Teaching No Good

In a recent statement, Barack Obama said that he does not want US companies to look for skilled and educated workers in India. Well, the problem highlighted by US president was followed by a solution to it. USA is investing big time on revamping country’s education system so as to produce much better talent.

Short-lived Joy

If the US president asserts that US has been losing to competition with Indian talent, our people can certainly celebrate the lauding. India’s accomplishments since independence in terms of literacy, spread of institutions, participation and equalization of educational opportunities have been quite significant.

There has been a phenomenal increase in the number of educational institutions, faculty, in teachers and students. The 1991 census saw India across the 50 per cent literacy mark, and by 2011 the literacy level has reached 74.5 per cent.

But the situation is and has never been that simple and glorious. The educated Indian population is divided into better educated and worst educated. Sorry state, latter is in majority.

Only a few weeks ago, World Bank Director Education Elizabeth M King while talking to media on the sidelines of World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) said, "It's not enough that you are putting more children into schools and colleges each year, you will have to bring them at par with international standard."

Cream and base

King said the World Bank expects India to have ambitions to compete with the best in the world. "Though India has some good institutions like IITs and IIMs, they are not as tall as institutions like MIT and Leeds in terms of quality of education provided," she added.

According to World Bank, India has all the resources to formulate an efficient education policy, inequality in distribution of resources are the roadblocks. "Most of the people who come to even IITs and IIIMs have to be from well-off families, where are the opportunities for the poor? Government is not using the funds appropriately," King said.

Pratham, a well-known civil society organization undertakes ‘annual assessment of education' and brings out a report identified as ASER. The seventh such report with reference year 2011 throws much light on the conflicting scenario. It says that practically all children 5-14 years are enrolled in the schooling system, over one quarter of them attend private schooling, but a substantial proportion of children in government schools have very low levels of learning in terms of language, comprehension and numeracy.

IT is bleak too

Unfortunately, another study by NASSCOM reveals that 75% of engineering students in India are not employable. According to the study report, 75% of engineering graduates and 90% of college graduates are rejected by IT firms in India since they are not competent enough for receiving training.

The main problem with these students are that they are not capable of applying their knowledge for practical purposes and as a result become ineffective for carrying out jobs of the companies. Students coming from well known engineering colleges even, face the same problems. These reputed institutions give more stress on acquiring theoretical and academic knowledge by the students rather than the job skills and practical knowledge.  As a result, when a student having secured brilliant marks in exams joins a good company, ultimately fails to carry out the practical job which the company needs from him. For curbing this problem, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) experts are expressing their views to change the system.

The non availability of competent persons, are compelling the reputed companies like Infosys to arrange for giving training to new comers and duration of training is being extended up to four to five months even after getting the job.

Seeping danger

Abusaleh Shariff, the Chief Economist, NCAER, and Executive Director (Designate), US-India Policy Institute, Washington DC says, “While there is something to cheer about in terms of enrolment efforts, with the private sector doing its bit, there are serious problems in the process, impact and outcome of the education sector in India.”

The quality of schools and schooling is poor in the government system, although the government-appointed teachers are well educated compared with the purely private schools.

The private schools, can also be of unsatisfactory quality, and tend to appoint poorly trained and poorly paid teachers. Thus, overall the situation is akin to sowing seeds on the land, with no crop to reap at the end of the season.

The root cause of the quality crisis — one where a child in Class V cannot deal with study material meant for Class II — is the collapse of standards in government schools.

The decline in quality of government schools can be traced to the exit of middle-class children since the mid-80s. It seems that the coming up of a number of private schools, marking the end of ‘common schooling', contributed to this critical transition.

The degrading system of education in India may play dampener. To keep the success wagon moving, an overhaul to education system as a whole appears to be required urgently.