Just few weeks back there was a chant gone viral in India and the chant was “Ab ki bar Modi sarkar”, supporting Modi for becoming the next PM of India. But now when Modi had succeed in becoming the Prime Minister of India, we Indians are hoping for great reforms in the education sector, so that we can see more qualified Individuals in the field of education, but the question lies that will the reforms promised and planned will be enough for this transformation?
Nine is the no. of Nobel Prize won by the Indians in the field of education out of which only three of them are citizens of India in comparison to approx 250 recipients from USA and 100 from UK. This figure clearly shows that India needs huge reforms in the field of education the reforms should not only focus on increasing the quantity of colleges and university but also by developing the quality which is been provided in the existing ones.
“Ms. Smriti Irani India’s new HRD Minister approached the finance minister asking for grants to create eight new IITs across the nation. She announced her intent to create educational infrastructure and drastically raise the enrolment ratio in the coming 100 days. As an alternative, she chose to push for eight more IITs, despite being informed by the concerned departments about the problems with the existing IITs .“
(source: http://blog.askiitians.com/time-ms-smriti-irani-now-hear-say)
Students pursuing engineering and dreaming of getting admission in the IITs might be happy about this, but this is not such good news with context to education growth in India. Why?
Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are unarguably the best engineering universities of the country, at the same time, sadly none of the IITs could ever get into the main 100 world rankings. There are no. of factors due to which IITs are lacking behind by far.
Low Student- Faculty Ratio: IIT’s have a very poor student faculty ratio, currently at around 28 to 35 faculty per IIT. What’s more with the expanded number of IITs, it has gotten considerably more problematic to get quality staff. if government wants to attain the services of highly qualified PhDs and diplomats than they need to increase their funding and offer them salaries they can’t ignore.
Problems with foreign diplomats: The issue is that of the administration and government. It doesn’t permit lasting occupations to outside nationals, only 5 year contracts. Due to lack of job security highly qualified foreigners often tend to ignore teaching positions in government institutions in India.
Low Government Funding is the cause: Government ought to allot more finances to the foundations, which are in condition to catch up with the top 100 world rankings and which shows high potential for growth in near future. They should set objectives and increase the funding in these colleges to improve the infrastructures and facilities provided to the students.
Unknown around the world: International ranking heavily depends on the jobs and position secured by the graduating students. Any of the IIT sites today have old data, even of the workforce, and achievements of students and faculties are not mentioned in the site. Staying up with the latest technologies, having great approach in online networking, and building a sufficient mailing arrangement of academicians around the globe, will increase the visibility and also the ranking reviews score by a good percentage!
Ms. Irani ought to concentrate on how to put an end to the famously startling ragging in colleges all over India, uproot the corrupted controllers in the teaching segment, free the private schooling part from counter-gainful regulations, and decrease the caste based reservations of seats etc. Teachers recruitment scam done by Ex-Haryana CM should be taken into consideration and make sure no such action are repeated.
Primary and secondary school plays a great part in shaping the students for their future, and by keeping this in mind similar plans should be made to provide quality education in the rural and urban parts of the country and help the private investors with their problems.
Few steps which can be taken in context to this reform are-
Repair the broken school buildings across the country and check the conditions of school created by private investors and make sure the fees charged by them are worth it.
Create ‘schools on wheels’, and take these portable schools to remote towns where new school- building will be built eventually and captivate great teachers asap.
Install computers and internet connections with the assistance of it companies such as Wipro and Infosys. Keeping tap of all the facilities provided and make sure of proper financial management. Providing them with the e-resources.
“NCERT textbooks will be rewritten according to the aim and objects of the nation so that it inculcates feeling of patriotism among children. Modernity is not westernization. We want modernity with Indian base,”
– Dinanath Batra
After it was declared that ancient texts will be included in school syllabus. Irani has asked the HRD authorities to create material which demonstrates the commitment of aged India to different fields like science and math, while material being considered contains Hindu writings like Vedas and Upanishads. Such inclusion of Hindu Vedas might create a huge uproar among different religions in the country due to which the plan seems to be delayed. They have to think about the consequences of teaching about only one religion in a multi religious country like India. This country has already faced lots of criticism for its failure in containing religious riots. Students from Kashmir should be given more opportunities to show case there talents, as not using the talent of a whole state do create a lot of drawback while calculating literacy rate of the nation.
In last 10 years there has been only 11 % increase in the literacy rate in India, which is just satisfactory. If literacy rate is going to increase by this rate then it will take about another 25 years for India to compete with the US and European nations. When you look at the percentage of illiterates Indians its just 25 % but calculating this percent with respect to the Indian population it sums up to approx 30 crore.
Smriti Irani has announced that she will propose The Foreign Universities Bill, which will permit outside colleges to enter India. Previously this proposal was made by the UPA government but the party never reached the required no. of seats to pass this bill. The new Foreign Universities Bill is said to be high on the priority for Modi government. To make sure that there is a cut in brain drain in India. With these colleges entering India there will be huge decrease in no of students leaving abroad for further studies.
Government and Private College/University should be given equal priorities as 60% of college going students are enrolled in private university due to lack of good government college, apart from few of them the rest are providing very less scope for success in future. Students going to government colleges are preferred over private college students, while being selected for government job as they want to fulfill their placement quota which leaves many of the qualified students unemployed.
Introduction of Bell Curve method is one of the best ways to ensure that teachers are working efficiently. There are times when teacher teaching same course to different section have different marking criteria, which makes good student suffer due to the teachers negligence. But by following this method students are judged on their performance in relation to the average marks scored by everyone in that particular class. The grades are decided on the basics of student performance in each section rather than batch and grading system is followed which eliminates discrimination among sections due to the act of teachers making the grading system more reliable. This method has been proved very reliable in different European universities and we can hope that same will be the outcome in Indian colleges.
Guest Blogger-Vaibhav Banka
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