According to law, Article 21A states, “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine.”
Quality education should be the right for all rather than only a privilege for the rich.
Our country is making efforts to achieve education for all by using a lot of different levers such as RTE, Sarv Shiksha Abhiyaan , EWS schemes etc. These schemes are focused on one part of the mammoth goal or to provide education but we are losing our view on quality education.
In all these programs the biggest barrier is the cost and how to provide the quality in that budget. The best way to do that is to use technology. We need innovations in education to focus on distributed learning systems. With such a huge number of education technology start-ups innovating, there is no dearth if people who want to work for it or ideas in that direction. It is absolutely the right time for the government to play a role by proving impetus to such efforts. These efforts help making education much more accessible by advancements such as bringing it to mobile devices or making certain education related sites and apps free for access.
One of the other big challenges is to retain students once they have been enrolled. Lack of Retention is attributable to many factors such as severe lack of quality, no infrastructure, non existence of separate toilets for girls etc. We need to identify the issues that make it unviable for the children to attend the school and solve them. If the atmosphere in the school is not amenable, there is little chance that students will sustain their motivation to go to school and study.
There is a significant percent of dropouts every year. As of today “fail” in one subject means a repeat of the entire year. If we can somehow make education more modular, it will not mean an unnecessary loss of time. If one has failed in one subject out of four, he/ she should be allowed to take four new subjects/ courses and repeat the subject that he/ she has failed. This will enable the students to progress even if they have performed less satisfactorily in one subject.
Private schools have been mandated to provide 25 percent seats for economically weaker sections. If this can be implemented well, this is a really big lever for us to achieve quality education for all. The EWS scheme has been severely marred with scams in the recent past.
Admissions to government schools are an altogether different ball game. With such a dearth of the number of seats in the good government schools it is completely dependent on the references and recommendations. This makes government schools highly inaccessible for the unconnected poor. Rest of the government schools seems no good to even the parents and they prefer to not send them to school instead.
Significant Focus and limelight if the HRD initiatives needs to be ensuring enrolment and retention in primary and grass root education and focus less on establishing more IITs and IIMs. These institutes are able to benefit a very small percentage of population. Primary education reforms are much more far reaching and have a much larger impact.
Thus far, we have talked about the efforts made under the compulsory education scheme up to the age of 14 years. However, non compulsory education also needs to be worked upon. Government can make it easier for students to enroll by providing scholarships, work study programs, subsidies and stipends. Since parents see limited opportunity for their wards to further education after the compulsory years, they do not see the need to send them even for primary education. We need to fix the situation at the higher levels as well to increase enrolment and attendance at primary level.
We also need to provide access to funds in forms of collateral free lower interest loans and scholarships to meritorious children for them to study at the school of their choice. Education is one of the things that has a long gestation period and would therefore require a longer moratorium but if provided access to it can do a much bigger good to the countries and banks than the so easily accessible home and car loans.
There lies a mammoth task before the world to make education accessible and worthy for each and every citizen. Like Franklin D Roosevelt said “the school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize”
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