Another Brick in the Wall...!!!

Like the Pink Floyd song “Another Brick In The Wall”  the Indian education system produces graduates who are almost similar in their skills and thought processes. There are several problems that affect the system including the proper and strict enforcement of compulsory education (The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE), which was passed by the Indian parliament on 4 August 2009, describes the modalities of the provision of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the act came into force on 1 April 2010, complete one year and 2011- Literacy Rate =74%), the lack of the reach of good education and the expectations of the students from education.

In India everybody wants to become an engineer or a doctor sometimes the decision is made by them and sometimes the decision is made for them. A decision made by an impressionable teenager would more often than not be something that would look cool in the eyes of his peers and elders. This leads to the rush for admission to several engineering colleges in the country. And having chosen engineering as their profession these teenagers also have to select the stream to specialize in – again the choice is made with job prospects and coolness factor in mind and this leads to a glut of software and electrical engineers while traditional streams like civil and mechanical suffer. Throughout this process very little thought actually goes into deciding if the young man actually likes any of what he is doing.

Before this farce of engineering college is another tedious period through school. In most of the schools, students are forced and pressurized into memorizing every last bit of detail in the books so that the schools can continue advertising their 100% success rate and attract more students. Most of the students who graduate from schools have little or no knowledge what they actually learn. Alternatives like Sports and Cultural activities are given very little attention. The students are conditioned to believe that they matter very little leaving us with a nation of talented people not pursuing their interests.

The other serious issue is the reach of our education program – providing quality education to the masses. Only when this happens can the Bharat out there be connected to the India we all know. Actual enforcement of the compulsory education is very low leading to several kids missing out on education year on year which gives no way to climb out of their poverty. Even those kids who manage to go to school don’t get a good education as the teachers at the government schools do not take much interest in the actual education that happens in the class.

How can we solve this? a large-scale revamping of our primary education is in class. To provide a wholesome education that includes sports, cultural and scholarly aspects should be designed. The government should promote inter-school activities on a nationwide scale so that these extracurricular activities get due importance. Apart from this we can leverage our Internet and Communication Technologies(ICT) to deliver quality education to the rural areas and the rural government agencies should be made responsible for ensuring that the compulsory education is actually enforced in the last mile. The arts and sciences should be promoted on an equal scale to engineering and medicine so that people realize the importance of these streams too.

How would this help our society? Education is the primary tool with which anyone can access the employment opportunities and personal betterment. It is the solution to the age old caste and religious divisions that exist between various groups in the country. An educated person and someone who contributes economically to the society would only add to the society as a whole.

Praveen Kumar Desabandu

'Putting a Price Tag on the ‘Right to Education'

By Tripti Lahiri

According to a new estimate put out by a government spending accountability group, getting existing Indian government schools to meet education rules that came into effect last year could cost 152 billion rupees, or about $3.4 billion dollars.

And getting India to fully meet what that law mandates—free and compulsory education for all children between the ages six to 14—could cost well over triple that amount, or about $11 billion.

According to a report only 11% of government schools have the infrastructure they’re supposed to have under the new Right to Education Act.

Presently only 11% of government schools have the infrastructure they’re supposed to have under the new Right to Education Act, according to Accountability Initiative, which put out a report last week tracking a portion of educational spending that contained the estimate of complying with the law.

“We thought it was important to get to grips with what the implications of the Right to Education would be. If you just look at the norms, the [law] is quite focused on different infrastructure, facilities and other requirements in schools,” said Yamini Aiyar, director of the Accountability Initiative, in a recent interview.

The law, which was passed in 2009, sets standards for schools on teacher salaries, classroom size and facilities, which should include a head teacher’s room, a playground and a boundary wall, among other things.

The public spending audit group arrived at the 152-billion-rupee figure by working from answers to a questionnaire on whether schools were Right-to-Education compliant. This was part of a larger survey carried out in about 13,000 schools last year with Pratham, a child-focused nonprofit group that assesses children’s learning levels on an annual basis.

The group estimated the cost in each state for adding more teachers, or a playground, among other things, and multiplied that by the number of schools in each state that would need that work done.

The expense of adding a headmaster’s office (which doubles as a storage room) made for the largest share of the $3.4 billion cost. That was just over a third of the total, or about $1.2 billion dollars.

Teacher salaries (which would be a recurring expense, however) for additional staff to meet pupil-teacher ratios came to a quarter of the total, while walls and fencing would cost a little over fifth of the total.

However that costing exercise only took into account existing schools and existing enrollment. Absorbing about 2.2 million out-of-school students between the ages of 6 and 14 into new schools, could cost another 335 billion rupees ($7.4 billion).

The government hasn’t yet said how much it expects to have to shell out to properly implement the law, said Ms. Aiyar, but the group will be watching for that.

“It’s a good thing to have citizen-led costing,” said Ms. Aiyar, saying they could then compare actual government budgeting to these estimates, and see “whether they’re going to make the allocations to live up to the promise they themselves have made.”