Concept Paper
Just like leaders in business and industry, educators across the nation are trying to meet the fast-changing needs and expectations of the student community. In order to develop capable, ‘thinking youth’ –the future force of the nation, the role of educators is now gaining immense credence. Improving access and Quality at all levels of education is now the priority area not only with the central and state Governments but also the onus now lies with private institutions as well. Gandhiji once said ‘True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth’. While government has chalked out plans to scale up education programmes across the nation with many initiatives like SSA, RMSA, National Knowledge Commission, the introduction of Right to Education Bill etc, a few of the private institutions are actively pitching in also to reach out to those who are away from the mainstream. This has coerced CII Institute of Quality (CII-IQ) to look at bringing about a new perspective to enhance the Quality of education across the nation since last decade. It is time that Education sector moves into the expansion mode and is equally scaled up to be more inclusive so as to reach out to a larger chunk of the Indian population and achieve atleast functional literacy in the next few years.
Challenges
Few questions which always has been haunting the stakeholders of education mainly relates to :
- Providing Education for all
- While providing access retaining Quality
- Can assessments, certifications and accreditations assure delivery of Quality education in Institutions
- What are some of the models/innovations already tried across the nation and are being tried
- Can technology help scale up Quality education across nation
- What are scalable models tried in other sectors and the learning’s that can be emulated.
Some of reasons cited are the fact that immediately after New Economic Policy (NEP) reforms were introduced, the government allowed massive capacity creation with bare minimum Quality standards put in place. The capacity creation in the last 15 years has been phenomenal and quite unprecedented growth giving rise to a number of thorny issues. This important aspect should form the focus as to how excellence in primary/higher education sectors should become a mission in order to salvage the education sector and to also re-invent it holistically so that top-end human resource capital keeps pace with the high growth that India is currently positioned at. Another reason is India’s education sector suffers from a yawning gap in funds as also due to archaic regulatory mechanisms, poor Quality and low efficiency.
Education Policy also has been the biggest stumbling block to excellence in higher education. It is based on the Constitutional provision that education should be a charitable activity. While the government and philanthropic individuals take up the cause of education with deep pockets as a non-profit activity, the question whether education sector be opened to entrepreneurs as an ‘economic activity’ be liberalised, should also be pondered up to bring about a paradigm shift in this mission critical sector. Liberation of the sector to attract private domestic and overseas investments on a large scale is the key to access, affordability and equity. Worldwide experience indicates that capacity creation and Quality, happening in tandem, will serve the interest of the nation much better and moving in unilateral direction. Says C K Prahalad: “If India@75 fails to become a global leader the only reason for that failure will be Indians themselves. Nobody from outside is stopping us from succeeding. So this transformation is not about resources. It is about our confidence in building a new India. If we cannot imagine this India we cannot create it. Imagination and belief in India’s true destiny is what we need. We need the passion, the courage and certainly an enormous dose of humanity and humility.”
Precisely to address these very issues HRD Ministry has proposed several Legislative, Policy and Administrative initiatives in it ‘First 100 Days Document’ to bring about some semblance of parity and uniformity in the way education sector is imparted and governed in India. Prominent among them being the establishment of an autonomous authority for Higher Education and research based on the recommendation of Yashpal Committee and NKC and also propose a law for mandatory assessment and accreditation in higher education through an independent regulatory authority. On the Policy front the government is looking at setting up of a brain-gain initiative to attract talent from across the world to the existing and new institutions and also launch a new distance learning initiative. As far as Administrative initiatives are concerned the government is aiming at implementing academic reforms by reviewing semester system and regular revision of syllabi and also looking at opening 100 new polytechnics in districts without any polytechnics across India. Changes in the educational sector have to be effected quickly and seamlessly in the next 15 years if India has to compete and position itself as a “global player”. It has a yeoman task of preparing over 700 million globally employable workforce, comprising 200 million university graduates and 500 vocationally skilled people.
As a key beneficiary of the education services CII has embarked on many initiatives to bring about ‘Quality in Education in India’. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) works to create and sustain an environment conducive to the growth of Indian industry; partnering industry, academia and Government alike through advisory and consultative process. It aims to enhance the competitiveness of all the key sectors of the economy, which impacts the growth of the country.
One such concerted effort is from CII’s Institute of Quality, Bangalore which has been advocating the delivery of Quality of education in the nation for over a decade. In pursuance of this goal CII IQ, hosting its twelfth edition of the National Summit on Quality in Education at Chennai with the theme ’Quality Education: Scalable with Inclusiveness’.
With these deliberations the path for Indian education Quality journey can be tread with small steps but with a purpose of urgency.
“All education in a country has got to be demonstrably in promotion of the progress of the country in which it is given”
-/ Gandhiji on Purpose of education
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