• Chapter 5: The Centrality of Education, in An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, 2013.
• The National Education Policy 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2500 Journal of Public Affairs (2020)
• CESS-RSEPPG Research Brief Private and Public Expenditure on Education in India: Trend over last Seven Decades by Venkatanarayana Motkuri and E. Revathi (2020) Centre for Economic and Social Studies (ICSSR, Ministry of Education, Government of India)

• Freedom to understand the world
• Gaining economic opportunities
• Relief from insecurities
• Tackling health problems
• Build public perceptions and human rights
• Understand and use of legal rights
• Women empowerment
• Reduce inequalties based on caste and class.

• Emphasis on the role of state resources for public education by Adam Smith.

  For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourge, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.

• Europe and America have such government initiatives.
• Lessons from Japan too
  • Meiji Era (1868-1912)
  • Investment in Education between 1906 to 1911 was 43% of GDP.
  • Rapid progress of elementary education
  • By 1910, Japan was nearly fully literate, publishing more books than Britain and America.
  • Later South Korea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan followed suite.

• Expansion of school education remarkably slow in India

• Progress even slow for women and younger women.
• About 20% of children aged 6-14 not attending school in 2005-06.
• Exception of Kerala
  • Formed after independence (Travancore and Cochin)
  • Own domestic policies under British Raj
  • A history of pro education policies
  • Continued and intensified these policies after independence.

• Higher education as a western contribution to the world.
  • The oldest university: Bolonga in Italy founded in 1088, University of Paris (1091), Oxford University (1167), Cambridge University (1209)
• In India
  • Nalanda university (600 yrs older than Bolonga)
  • Pan-Asian university
  • Religion, law, history, linguistics, medicine, pubilc health, architecture, and sculpture.
  • Documents in Nalanda were burnt down by Bhaktiyar Khilji at the end of the 12th century.
• The achievements of the contemporary Indian universities have been limited.
• Very less or no universities in the top 200 list by the Times Higher Educational Supplement
• None from Asia in top 20.

• Steady increase in school enrollment for boys and girls
  • The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
  • The Right to Education Act 2010
    • Free and compulsory education for 4-16 years of children
    • Education as a fundamental right for children
• The Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE)
  • Shortage of appointed teachers
  • Absenteeism and breakdown of regularity maintained in schools
  • Effective teaching days = 100 per year
  • 50% of the effective teaching days without teaching activity.

• Two principal deficiencies
  1. Limitation of coverage
  2. Poor standard of education
• PROBE (2006)
  • 50% of pupils in classes 4 & 5 could not do single digit multiplication or a simple division by 5. See Table 5.2
• Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009
  • India at bottom 74 of the countries included in the survey.

Note: PISA is a worldwide study conducted by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the PISA test the students are assessed in reading, maths, and science, and try to understand ‘what they can do with what they know’.

• IHDS, ASER

• PISA and other tests are culture related and reflect western biases?
• Research based worrying aspects of public achievements in India
  1. Very slow improvement
  2. The outcomes are not too different between private and government schools.

• The IITs and the IIMs offer teaching and guidance of the highest quality.
• Indian firms also handle outsourced business from Europe and America.
• Indian education system is extraordinarily diverse:
  • A tiny group of privileged class enjoying high and outstanding education opportunities
  • A bulk of the population confined to poor and deficient education system.

• State sponsored education has helped the spread if literacy across the world.
• In India we see much reliance on private schools.
• The classic problem of school education in India has been that of underfunding by the state.
• The issue of salaries of teachers has been resolved to some extent.
• Average salary of a school teacher is 10 times more than that of an agricultural labourer.
  • The wage differential increases social distance between a teacher and a parent.
• Economic inequality has been enhanced over time by this system of pay fixation.

• Rising costs due to wage hikes \(\rightarrow\) stalling of recruitment in many schools in different states.
  • Hiring of contract teachers
    • less salaries, less qualification, less training than regular teachers.
• Contract teaching has lowered the teaching standards further at the cost of lowering expenses of the states/schools.
• Dualistic teaching cadare
  1. Laid-back permanent teachers (highly paid)
  2. Active contractual teachers (low paid)
• Middle path?
  • Decent salaries, security of employment (but conditional), etc.
• Little scope for expansion of such ideas, and less discussed too.

• Can we rely on privatisation of education?
  1. Problem of affordability
  2. Issues of asymmetric information
  3. Lack of competition in the rural areas
  4. Critiques and demands raised by parents

• Right to Education Act, 2010
  • Automatic promotion guaranteed
  • School tests not prohibited but not encouraged as well
  • Urgent need to design proper tests, e.g. open book exam that can test comprehension rather than memory
  • The current evaluation gap is alarming

• Urgent need to give more attention to quality of education
• Accountability in school systems required
  • Created via teacher selection, promotion rules, parent-teacher interactions, grievance redressal facilities, etc.
• Financial incentives to teachers do not change outcomes in schools(research show). Other non-financial incentives to be used.
• Better system of pupil evaluation and school evaluation required.

1. Insights into the various contours of National Education Policy 2020 and how it aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 targets.
2. India’s role in meeting the targets
3. Major loopholes and execution challanges to be addressed to foster quality education for all.

• Article 26, Declaration on Human Rights of United Nations (1948)

  Education must be free and compulsory at least in the elementary stages to strengthen and protect the freedom of people.

• Right to Education Act 2009
• 25% reservation to the marginal sections of the society in India.
• In 2019 more than 30% of unemployed population comprised of undergraduates and post-graduates.
• Previous NEPs: 1968, 1986.

Trend of Expenditure on Education in India The World Bank Data

• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
• SDG4: Quality Education

  Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

• NEP 2020 to contextualise SDG4
• Structural reforms for inclusive and quality education:
  1. Education in local language
  2. Socially cohesive environment at schools
  3. Focus to socially and economically disadvantaged regions and groups.

UP school makes kids wash their own utensils, keeps dishes of SC/ST students separately India Today report on 27 September 2021.

• Emphasis on high-quality learning
• SDG4.3 National Educational Technology Forum

• SDG4.4: Enhance relevant skills for financial success
  • Increase enrollment in higher education
  • Internationalisation of higher education
  • Academic bank of credits
    • facilitate the academic mobility of students with the freedom to study across the Higher Education Institutions in the country with an appropriate “credit transfer” mechanism from one programme to another, leading to attain a Degree/ Diploma/PG-diploma, etc.

• Ministry of Human Resource and Development renamed to Ministry of Education.
• Top universities of the world will be allowed to open campuses and operate in India
• UGC and AICTE to be replaced by a single body the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI)
  • A single regulator
  • Other verticies for regulation: National Accreditation Council (NAC), the Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC), General Education Council (GEC) to carry out functions of accreditation, funding, and academic standard setting.
  • Enable a lighter and more transparent regulation as the objectives shall not be combined with its funding responsibilities.
  • ‘10+2’ structure to be replaced with ‘5+3+4+4’
    • Age 3-8: foundational stage
    • Age 8-11: prepratory stage
    • Age 11-14: middle stage
    • Age 14-18: secondary stage

• Setting up of National Research Foundation
  • Promotion of research and innovation in higher education. Read the draft here
• Setting up of Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities on the lines of IITs and IIMs.
• Introduction of 4 year multidisciplinary undergraduate programme with multiple exit and entry points.
  • Accommodate students to various environment scenarios.

• Students can exit and join industry and return back.
• Public investment on education to raised to 6% of GDP
• Target: 100% Gross Enrollment Ratio in secondary and 50% GER in higher education by 2035.

• Public expenditure on education (62nd rank) Data
• US, China, Bhutan, Korea and Kenya are doing better than us.
• Kothari commission had recommended 6% of GDP in 1964.
• Very long term targets
• Dilemma of creating specialists or education for specific jobs.
• Other challenges.

• District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) 1993
  • Universal primary education
  • Funding agencies: World Bank and UNICEF along with the Centre and the States.
• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) 2001
  • Make free and compulsory education to childre aged 6-14.
• Right to Education Act (RTE) 2010
  • Education as a fundamental right of evry child
• Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) 2013
  • Provide strategic funding to higher education institutions
  • Target to raise the enrollment ratio to 32% by 2017.