'We Need To Play A Global Game: India's Education Industry Paralysis'

The future of the nation is at stake. The most developed nations in the world are spending staggering amounts on the education of their future with India still fighting for its basic education needs with quality being a far sighted dream.

Taking the practitioner's view on the up gradation and synthesised ecosystem for an organised education industry, BWBusinessworld's 'The future of Education Summit 2017' bought together the industry experts to share their views and understand this burning issue.

Jis desh mai sikshak ki izzat nahi hai, us desh ka udhar nahi ho sakta'. On the issue of Quality, Amit Kapoor, President CEO, Indian council of Competitiveness says the less said is better!.

"The IITs and the IIMs are the biggest NPAs of this country. They are not thinkers but just preachers of other's research. They have hardly contributed in producing a significant number of students and the number of publications they have come out with in terms of quality is 120th of the Ivy League colleges. We just want to hide and nobody wants to see the mess", says Amit.

Taking the discussion further on skills and employment, Amit says the unemployment figures in the country are owing to the lack of proper skill sets amongst the workforce, not provided by the policy makers and says how the young generation is obsessed with certain set of degree culture.

Amit says we need to play the global game to improve on our quality of research and be a policy enabler and not controller.

Talking about the quality and more importantly measurement, Navin Bhatia, Founder & Managing Director at Navkar Centre for Skills raises the question of teaching quality in the country.

"Teachers are nation builders? We have over 79 lakhs teachers in India, out of which more than 60 lakh teachers have never in their lifetime received teaching training. We are building great nation?. With 1.47% out of 3.4% of the GDP, spent on the teacher's training and motivation, will we be able to create a great quality nation. The answer is undoubtedly no", says Navin.

Amita Sharma, Senior Technical Advisor IPE Global and former additional secretary, MHRD says how the state must invest in quality education which is not influenced by constrictive control, bureaucratisation and centralised prescription.

"We have evolved great education models within the country and within resource constraints such as the IITs for higher education and the Kendriya Vidyalaya or Navoday Vidyalaya for school that provide high quality education to students irrespective of their socio-economic strata- we need to learn what makes them work", says Sharma.

Avinash Agarwal, CEO & Founding Director, Learning 360 degree Education Service, says he is disheartened to see the cramming system in the country and the nation is back to the marks regime, "It's a pity to see the blind cramming amongst young children. Nothing has got translated and stupid assignments are not leading the students in any way".

He also states how the valuable systems once put in place such as the OTPA (Open text book examination), ASL (Assessment of speaking and listening), multi disciplinary project examination and others, have been abolished.

"In the race of marks we have lost the life skills. Skill building needs to happen at the primary level and higher", says Avinash.

A former civil servant, Pankaj Sudan, Founder ChangeMakers Society raises the issue of restriction in private players' participation in the education policy making. "I happen to check the HRD ministry website. Out of 19 discussion papers, not a single topic entails discussion on private schools except their role in PPPs in higher education. This is dismal. If you think the future of education lies in just the government schools, you are mistaken".

As an entrepreneur he says that they face their own set of challenges in the private education sector and the policy of the country is not supportive enough for private players. "The banks do not take school buildings and land as a valid collateral for loan as they consider education as a social sector. We had to pledge our own private property to start the venture", says Pankaj.