The Indian education system faces several pressing challenges, despite notable progress and reforms like the National Education Policy 2020. Here are some key issues:
1. Access and Equity: Disparities in access to quality education persist, especially for marginalized groups in rural and economically weaker regions. Gender parity has improved, but girls still face challenges in continuing education beyond primary levels.
2. Quality of Education: A significant gap exists between enrolment numbers and the actual quality of education. Issues such as rote learning, outdated curricula, and lack of emphasis on critical thinking and creativity remain problematic.
3. Digital Divide: The shift toward digital education exposed the lack of infrastructure in many government and rural schools. Unequal access to devices and the internet has left many students behind, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
4. Insufficient Funding: India spends around 3% of its GDP on education, which is lower than the recommended 6% by UNESCO. Limited funding affects infrastructure, teacher training, and the introduction of innovative practices.
5. Teacher Shortages and Training: Many schools face a shortage of qualified teachers. Additionally, teacher training often lacks emphasis on modern pedagogical techniques, further impacting learning outcomes.
6. Hyper-politicization of Higher Education: Increasing interference by political entities in universities undermines academic freedom and intellectual discourse, affecting the overall quality of higher education.
7. Focus on Examinations: An overemphasis on marks and standardized testing discourages holistic development and creativity among students. This results in stress and limits skill-based learning.
Addressing these challenges requires comprehensive reforms, including increased funding, better teacher training, infrastructure upgrades, and policies to bridge the digital divide. The government is taking steps, but sustained efforts are needed to make education more inclusive and effective.
References
Chat GPT
By, Pashupati Sah, 7th Dec 2024.
As India ramps up its efforts to become a global semiconductor manufacturing hub, one of the most critical challenges it faces is building a skilled workforce that can support this rapidly growing industry. People may think India already has a huge work-force, but the key issue they ignore is that almost none of the workers have any experience in this industry, as it simply did not exist in India before now. (With sole exception of the government-run Semi-Conductor Laboratory in Mohali, but it is now under the Department of Space).
There are many websites who seem to be tracking the various projects initiated and planned for this mushrooming industry in India. I also try to do it on my site, but it is limited to the final approved projects.
The demand for specialized talent in semiconductor design, fabrication, and testing is enormous, and meeting these demands will require significant reforms in education and workforce development.
Key Challenges in Securing the Required Workforce
Limited Domestic Expertise in Semiconductor Fabrication While India has a well-established base of engineers in IT and software development, the country lacks a significant pool of talent with experience in semiconductor fabrication, a highly specialized field that requires expertise in physics, materials science, and advanced engineering disciplines. As semiconductor fabs begin construction, there will be a pressing need for thousands of skilled workers who understand the intricate processes involved in chip manufacturing (India Today).
Gap Between Industry Requirements and Academic Curriculum A significant challenge is the current gap between what is taught in academic institutions and what the semiconductor industry demands. While India has a strong presence in electronics and engineering education, traditional curricula have often focused on broader engineering disciplines without delving deeply into semiconductor-specific areas such as VLSI (Very-Large-Scale Integration) design, semiconductor physics, or chip fabrication technologies. This creates a skills mismatch, with graduates often requiring further training before they can contribute to the industry (IBTimes India).
Global Competition for Semiconductor Talent As the global semiconductor industry booms, India will not only need to create a domestic talent pipeline but will also have to compete with other countries for skilled professionals. Established semiconductor hubs like Taiwan, South Korea, and the U.S. are also seeking talent, and this global demand adds to the complexity of building a sustainable workforce in India.
Rapidly Advancing Technologies Semiconductor technologies evolve quickly, and staying up to date with the latest advancements in areas such as AI chips, quantum computing, and 5G semiconductors will require constant learning and upskilling. The lack of continuous learning mechanisms in Indian institutions and industries could slow down progress unless proactive steps are taken to encourage ongoing professional development.
Government Initiatives and Educational Reforms
To address these challenges, the Indian government has introduced several educational policy changes aimed at building a pipeline of semiconductor talent:
Introduction of Specialized Semiconductor Courses In recent years, the government has encouraged Indian technical institutions to introduce specialized courses in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Institutes such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) have begun offering advanced courses in VLSI design, microelectronics, and semiconductor technology. These programs aim to train students in areas critical to the semiconductor industry, including fabrication, chip design, and testing (Business Today).
Semicon India Program and Skill Development Initiatives As part of the Semicon India Program, the government has announced plans to train 85,000 skilled professionals to meet the industry's demands over the next few years. This will include technicians, engineers, and researchers who are industry-ready. The government has partnered with academic institutions and industry leaders to develop curriculum frameworks and create state-of-the-art training programs that align with the needs of semiconductor manufacturing(India Today).
Focus on Research and Development (R&D) The establishment of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation is another significant step aimed at promoting semiconductor research in India. The government has allocated Rs 1 trillion to foster innovation in semiconductor technologies, and this fund will be used to support educational institutions and industry collaborations focused on R&D, further ensuring that India stays at the cutting edge of the global semiconductor sector(India Today).
Collaborations with Global Institutions India is also looking to collaborate with global semiconductor leaders to enhance its domestic talent pool. Partnerships with international universities and companies are enabling knowledge transfers and creating opportunities for Indian students to gain exposure to the latest semiconductor technologies abroad, which will help build expertise domestically(India Today).
But really, what has been done so far?
The above references were from Indian media who were reporting what India's esteemed Prime Minister was listing out during the India chapter of SEMICON 2024. But let's see what's the reality on the ground.
It was only in 2023 that the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) released the “Model” Curricula both for a four-year Undergraduate in Electronic Engineering in VLSI Design & Technology and for a three-year Diploma course in IC Manufacturing, implying that, the first batch of Diploma holders would graduate no sooner than in 2026/7 and engineers by 2027/8, and that too from a handful of colleges at best.
The first semiconductor fab in India (TATA-PSMC) will be operational by end of 2026. As per sources (https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/tata-electronics-to-build-two-semiconductor-manufacturing-fabs-in-gujarat-124091600811_1.html), 4,000 to 5,000 employees will be working on-site in the fully functioning fab. So, even at a conservative estimate, TATA will require at least a couple of thousand employees by 2027.
Can we see the disconnect here now?
The Path Forward
The challenges are obviously significant. But India has some interesting resources. It has electronics engineers by the thousands from the hundred of engineering colleges that mushroomed during their golden era of the 1990’s-2000’s. While the government is trying to focus on reforming education, creating targeted training programs, and fostering international collaboration will be essential in ensuring that the country has the skilled labor it needs to power its semiconductor ambitions, it has some ways to go. Until then it will be India’s engineers who will be carrying out the jobs usually being carried out by non-engineers in fabs in other countries. Even that will not be an easy path. India’s engineers are never prepared to carry out hands-on work at the colleges, it is only once they enter the industry that they realize what needs to be done. And the fab companies will have to come up with unique solutions till then.
For example, Micron, which announced the first private semiconductor project in India with an ATMP fab operational by end of 2024 (!!!), recruited and sent over two hundred employees to its fab in Malaysia for on-the-job training.
India’s success in the semiconductor industry will depend largely on its ability to develop a well-educated, highly skilled workforce. By bridging the gap between academic training and industry requirements, encouraging continuous learning, and investing in cutting-edge research, India can position itself as a formidable player in the global semiconductor supply chain.
References
By, Pashupati Sah, 21st Sept 2024.
So, the NIRF 2020 was released in June and the usual chest-beating and we-are-better-than-you took place. But we are all aware that the history is littered with university ranking schemes, some notorious for providing rank-for-money.
The then Director of IIT Kanpur famously made the statement in 2013: “An amount of one lakh and fifty thousand dollars needs to be paid to get a good ranking in such lists”, when his institute was ranked 295 by the ‘QS World University Rankings’. It was argued by QS that the Director was confused with their ‘Star program’ (where a “5 Star Rating” is put next to the University rank after receiving a payment), but the damage was done in India. Their latest rankings put IIT Bombay as the highest rank at 162 for an Indian institute while IIT Kanpur is at 283. (Side note: the “Institute ranking” page on IIT Kanpur’s official website still carries QS World University Rankings as it is the highest when you look at all the different international rankings.) A Saudi Arabian university gets a 189 rank on the same list, must be a really good one. A 2009 World Bank report on “The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities” had a whole page about the IITs being centres of excellence.
Anyways, this strange and incomprehensible world of university rankings was only part of the reason the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) decided to initiate the NIRF, with the first rankings list being released in 2016. The main reason was that there was no quantitative measure of the quality of the government-funded institutions in the country which meant that the government had no idea how those institutions were faring. That does not necessarily mean that NIRF is the best solution to that problem, but it is definitely a start.
Before the rush of the new IITs and IIMs and other IIXs, a very simple rule was followed by the government; be proud of the IIXs in media and let the rest fend for themselves (with some exceptions made for the old and well-known ones). Also, there had been historically no effort in comparing the apples with the oranges (one wonders why…), i.e. how the technical institutes of 20th century India compared with the British Era universities. But more importantly, the institutions in the ignored parts of our vast nation had no way of knowing how they fared against the ‘mainstream’ institutes. NIRF does all that and more.
So, let’s try to understand what exactly NIRF covers…
The NIRF covers only centrally funded institutions/universities of the Government of India, which have a total of at least 1000 enrolled students.
Since 2017 the institutions are being given an overall rank as well as a discipline specific rank.
“Highly focussed institutions” with a single main discipline (Engineering, Medical, Law, Management, Pharmacy or UG degree colleges in Arts, Science and Commerce, etc) with less than 1000 enrolled students are given only a discipline specific rank.
Institutions are not automatically included in the discipline specific rankings as they need to register for it.
Open Universities and Affiliating Universities (State/Centre approved/funded) are not registered for ranking, however, if such universities have a teaching/research campus they are allowed to register only with the data related to that physical campus.
Institutions only which have graduated at least three batches of students are considered.
The onus is on the institutions to submit the relevant data to NIRF directly and post the data on their official websites, both being required. Data for parameters such as Research and Patents is taken from internationally available Databases (Eg. Scopus, Web of Science, the Indian Science Index, etc). NIRF has even been empowered to carry out physical checks on the institution records and audited accounts (apparently “where needed”) to ensure that the ‘principles of ethical behaviour’ are being adhered to.
In a recent article, a flaw has been pointed out in the NIRF marking scheme which, on the face of it, seems somewhat plausible. So, NIRF builds a single score from five categories: teaching, learning and resources (TLR), research and professional practices (RPP), graduation outcomes (GO), outreach and inclusivity, and perception. Focusing on these broad categories, in a university system, TLR is technically the ‘input’ and RPP and GO are ‘output’. Now, the NIRF adds the scores from all these five heads to obtain the final score. Hence this article claims that NIRF violates the basic principle of performance analyses: that performance is based on the input score and that quality is based on the ratio of output to the input. And also that “outreach, inclusivity and perception relate neither to academic nor research excellence, but these are added to the over-all score as well.”
My personal peeve is the “perception” score. What is this ‘perception’ all about? The NIRF document says that the ‘Perception Score’ will be created after “a survey conducted over a large category of Employers, Professionals from Reputed Organizations and a large category of academics to ascertain their preference for graduates of different institutions.” So, now academic politics is added into the fray.
Furthermore, Graduation Outcomes (GO) includes a factor directly related to the number of students passing the university examinations (GUE) and a factor for number of Ph.D. students graduating (GPHD). I agree with the criticism that at least GUE is definitely an outcome that cannot be used in ranking. Again, taking the example of IIT Kanpur of a couple of decades back, most national rankings gave it the top spot and it even figured highly on global lists. At that time it was notoriously difficult to get good marks in various technical courses there. It was not very uncommon that a number of students would have to stay an extra year (undergraduate). So, had NIRF been around at that time, it would rank IITK much lower.
On the other hand, there are some excellent additions to the NIRF system. The Outreach and Inclusivity (OI) score is unique and definitely required in India. It includes factors like:
Percentage of Students from Other States/Countries (Region Diversity RD)
Percentage of Women (Women Diversity WD)
Economically and Socially Challenged Students (ESCS)
Facilities for Physically Challenged Students (PCS)
For India the above are an excellent idea to have. Someone looking at the OI score can get a good idea on where the institute stands w.r.t. these important social issues. Although why PCS is not a separate score beats me.
So, what do we find in the latest NIRF?
The original five IITs and IISc make up the first six ranks.
Seriously?
Does that mean that decades of supporting all other institutions has yielded little to no result? Or, have the same institutions kept up their standards over the years. If the international university rankings are taken even on a relative basis, they tell a very different story.
The below summarizes the global rankings of the highest ranked (only top 500) Indian institutes as per the four most popular world university rankings:
QS rankings: IIT Delhi (182), IISc (184), IIT Madras (271), IIT Kharagpur (281), IIT Kanpur (291), IIT Roorkee (383), Univ. of Delhi (474), IIT Guwahati (491)
T.H.E. Rankings: IISc (301-350), IIT Ropar (301-350), IIT Indore (351-400), IIT Delhi (401-500), IIT Kharagpur (401-500), IIT Bombay (401-500)
CWU Rankings: IISc (435)
As far as trends go, there is only one. That the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore is the top ranked Indian institute (as per these global rankings).
Even in the US News top engineering colleges ranking, no Indian institute features in the top 100. IIT Delhi at 106 was the top ranking.
The inconsistency in the rankings clearly shows that the global university ranking system may not be at all accurate when it comes to India. It is either perception based or based on which institute filled out the relevant forms. And why not. These global university rankings were created for a reason, to lure international students to the top institutions. In fact budgets of many US institutions depend heavily on the fees paid by international students. The ranking companies, in turn, gain from these institutes. But since Indian institutions are not really in that situation hence these global rankings are not really focusing on Indian institutions as much. This gives a clear reason why something like NIRF was required. This gives a clear reason why something like NIRF was required.
NIRF has its flaws, some of which were briefly discussed in this blog. But any new complicated system has flaws and NIRF is, self-admittedly, correcting itself with every year.
The current rankings also may not indicate the good work done by many institutes other than the usual suspects who figure on the top, but I am hopeful that it will change.
As long as politics is kept out of NIRF and the main goal is clearly seen to be the betterment of the academic institutions, NIRF can really make a difference by giving an understanding of their shortcomings as well as their strengths.
References
http://www.iitk.ac.in/
The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank, 2009.
NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL RANKING FRAMEWORK, Methodology for Ranking of Academic Institutions in India Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, 2017.
https://science.thewire.in/education/a-flaw-in-the-nirf-rankings-and-a-fix/
By, Pashupati Sah, 17th July 2020.
In my 2-parter on “Science Education in Modern India”, I basically concluded that nothing could improve with regards to education in India unless more focus is on the teacher and the schools (instead of creating new systems). The ‘focus’ will need to be financial, the first step, as well as in the form of a clear political will of all the political parties of the country, and not just the ruling one.
The purpose of this blog is to review the current situation, the current framework and provide a small suggestion on the way forward.
In 2019, the Nominal GDP of India was $2.94 trillion. The budget for the Department of School Education & Literacy, or DOSEL, (which is, as the name suggests, also looking after literacy campaigns amongst the non-schoolgoers) was $7.8 billion, or 0.3% of the GDP. [NOTE: The current Indian government has been pushing to report GDP numbers calculated using PPP or Purchasing Power Parity, in which case India’s GDP number will stand at $10.51 trillion for 2019. That’s easy math to figure out how much less the school education budget % is.]
As reported in my previous articles, even this budget is split between 1.3 million schools and 300 million school-going children on one hand, and the literacy campaigns aiming to educate 253 million people. A tall task clearly.
So I wanted to further elaborate my research and thoughts in the direction of what framework we have in India for the teachers and what needs to be done.
A visit to DOSEL’s official website was an interesting experience for various reasons. The first text that one sees upon going to the “School Education” section says it all:
The Union Budget, 2018-19, has proposed to treat school education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12. Samagra Shiksha – an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class 12 has been, therefore, prepared with the broader goal of improving school effectiveness measured in terms of equal opportunities for schooling and equitable learning outcomes. It subsumes the three Schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
This sector-wide development programme/scheme would also help harmonise the implementation mechanisms and transaction costs at all levels, particularly in using state, district and sub-district level systems and resources, besides envisaging one comprehensive strategic plan for development of school education at the district level….
The reference to “transaction costs” being “harmonised” sounds that there is some kind of cost-cutting measure here. Despite an extremely low budget for education, apparently a cost-cutting measure was further required. Remember, this was not in a post-COVID19 period, but a period when Indian coffers were doing quite fine.
Otherwise the idea is made to sound very holistic, and that is quite alright. To further understand the focus on teachers, I proceeded to go to the NCTE section of the site which gave me the tidbit:
The National Council for Teacher Education as a statutory body came into existence in pursuance of the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993 (No. 73 of 1993) on the 17th August,1995.
1995 sounded very recent so I moved ahead with my research and clicked on the link to the external website for NCTE. I got nothing. Interestingly the link was incorrect [NOTE: As of 7th July 2020]. But fortunately, a quick Google Search directed me to the correct site.
The NCTE site gave a slightly better idea about the idea behind it. It seems that NCTE, in its previous form, was a department within the Department of Teacher Education at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Since it had no teeth, it was rightly thought that making NCTE an independent body with statutory status and necessary resources would be a first step for overhauling the system of teacher education and, maybe, lobbying for more resources and budgets. And hence it came into being in 1995.
However, it is a body which covers all kinds of teachers of education in India, and not just schoolteachers.
The main objective of the NCTE is to achieve planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system throughout the country, the regulation and proper maintenance of Norms and Standards in the teacher education system and for matters connected therewith. The mandate given to the NCTE is very broad and covers the whole gamut of teacher education programmes including research and training of persons for equipping them to teach at pre-primary, primary, secondary and senior secondary stages in schools, and non-formal education, part-time education, adult education and distance (correspondence) education courses.
Then I looked at the functions of the council and found that it was a body which laid out policies, norms and guidelines, give recommendations to the government. But the 3rd function (out of a total of 14) was also:
“co-ordinate and monitor teacher education and its development in the country;”
[I will definitely also copy over the last function just as a side:
“perform such other functions as may be entrusted to it by the Central Government.”]
NCTE is also the body which has the task of monitoring the academic programmes related to education, such as Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree, Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree, Diploma in Preschool Education (DPSE), and the sort.
To summarize my findings from the NCTE website, while it has been entrusted with teacher education, it’s role in formalized education keeps it quite busy. Can such an organization be used roll out new programs to elevate schoolteachers to the next level?
On paper, NCTE is supposed to be THE organization to carry out such tasks, but it would need a whole new mind-set to work on it. For a country the size of India, a whole new (temporary?) organization may be required for such a task. It could, however, be formed under the aegis of NCTE.
We have some of the best educationists in India and some of the best academicians. These educationists are not necessarily the armchair variety. The picture collage shown with this blog shows just a few of some amazing teachers modern India has. There are many many more. Such grass-root level educationists need to be involved in any new efforts as they will have insights no bureaucrat or politician could ever gain in a lifetime.
Forming a new body for the sole purpose of ‘taking schoolteachers to the next level’ is not only possible but, most probably, the only efficient way to go about doing so.
To shake up the status quo, radical thinking is required. The 2019 National Education Policy (NEP) got the media coverage due to its political items of pushing certain languages. However its real shortcomings were never really highlighted. Its primary focus seemed to be on vocational skills. Gone is the foresight of the early NEPs for basic education. [NEP 2019 has enough to justify a separate blog, hence I leave it at that.]
Maybe a separate entity IS the need of the hour.
Which brings us to the NEP 2019 mooted, Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA) or the National Education Commission (NEC).
[Maybe inspired by the extremely successful two-year temporary NEC, also known as the Kothari Commission of 1964-66 which had nineteen task forces, each handling a specific area of activity. It basically revolutionised education in India taking it from a British instituted system to an Indian system.]
NEP 2019 details out the formation of the new entity and multiple new ‘proposed’ regulatory bodies. However there is hardly any mention of the actual functions of RSA/NEC except that:
The RSA will be responsible for developing, articulating, implementing, evaluating, and revising the vision of education in the country on a continuous and sustained basis. It will also create and oversee the institutional frameworks that will help achieve this vision.
The remaining RSA section of the draft NEP 2019 deals with who its members will be (will be headed by PM), how many committees it will have and which other organisations it will be coordinating with. From the looks of it, no grass-root level educationists will find a place in the RSA.
This provides very little alleviation of the fear that the RSA/NEC is going to be no better than numerous other committees, agencies, etc one has seen in the past. Education is not a sector where one can jump in and fix a few problems here and there, even if a well-meaning person like the PM of a country is directly involved. If it is not a holistic action, it is as good as no action.
Hopefully when more details for RSA/NEC are thrashed out, this will be kept in mind and an effective entity will come into being.
The current situation wrt focus on education in India is extremely sobering, but we cannot afford to lose hope. Our leadership makes the right sounds and we should allow them more time to come around to looking at education reforms.
There is always money for war, but never for education….. And we need to change that!
References
https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/#5-india
https://mhrd.gov.in/ncte
https://ncte.gov.in/
By, Pashupati Sah, 7th July 2020.
A lot has been written about science education in India, and even more has been written about how we have got it all wrong in our schools. One fact is often quoted by those who are on the other side of the spectrum that India is the janmabhoomi for many a scientist and technologist who have made it big outside India. While some say it was DUE to the Indian educational system, the others say it was DESPITE it. I feel differently. I have come up through the very same Indian Educational System, but with a difference that I will elaborate later on, but first, a history lesson...
India has implemented some incredible educational reforms over the years. Back in the 1960’s, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was aided and funded by UNICEF so as to develop instructional material specific to the newly independent India. But during that time itself the National Education Commission (NEC) was established under the leadership of Padma Bhushan (later Padma Vibhushan) Dr. Daulat Singh Kothari, an eminent scientist and educationist who had learnt from the greatest minds such as Ernest Rutherford. He himself headed the Task Force on Science Education under the NEC. The NEC’s work led to the introduction of the existing 10+2+3 pattern of education in 1975. The National Curriculum Framework 1975 (NCF-75) also laid out a lot of details for the science education in India, such as
all subjects including science and mathematics to be made compulsory for all students up to Class X, as a part of general education,
at the primary stage, science and social sciences were to be taught as a single subject: ‘Environmental Studies’,
an integrated approach to be followed for the teaching of science at the upper primary stage as opposed to disciplinary approach (that was common till then)
science to be considered as one composite subject at the upper primary and secondary stages.
Furthermore, major guiding factors were outlined for the science teaching community. They included far-reaching ideas such as:
science is one; different disciplines of science are only tentative compartmentalization of the subject to facilitate the study of its different aspects,
there should be an attempt to link teaching of scientific principles with daily life experiences of the learners,
there should be more stress on the processes of science than the product,
teaching of science should lead to development of certain values,
curriculum should provide enough opportunities to learners to attain some basic levels of scientific literacy, and
the curriculum should provide ample opportunities to the teachers to try and apply a variety of methods of teaching to suit the needs of learners of different backgrounds.
Yes, all this had been clearly laid out back in 1975.
The next landmark was the National Policy of Education 1986 (NPE-86) which led to NCF-88. The teaching of science at the secondary stage was conceived for the first time as a single subject rather than three separate disciplines as had been the practice in the past. Thereafter NCF 2000 separated out Environmental Studies as a separate subject instead of being part of both, science and social studies.
It is clear that the leading educationists of early independent India gave science education a lot of focus which, over the years, seems to have been lost. It may be attributed to fear of criticism or a general lack of interest due to reduced funding of the education system. But I am not here to write about politics. I wanted to tell you why I feel that neither is everything bad about the Indian Education System nor is everything right about it. But what we simply cannot blame, is the fundamentals of the Indian Science Education System.
I grew up around those people who were part of reforming Science Education in India. When I was in secondary school, the new science books came out. These had a good print quality and seemed to have more figures and diagrams. I also saw the names of top scientists of the country in the Textbook Development Committee right after the Foreword. This included some names I was familiar with as I used to address them as ‘uncle’ when I saw them around the IIT Kanpur Campus, where I grew up.
The new textbooks were simply superb but were maybe a bit too radical especially for the Classes IX and X. And that is the reason that the teachers had absolutely no idea what to do with them. The focus was on providing a ‘well-rounded’ scientific education to the mid-teenagers who had, so far, been told that rote learning was the best policy. Most teachers floundered and ended up asking the students to stick to the tried and tested rote learning. Many might say they had good teachers but for a country the size of India, great ideas have often been implemented with horrible results.
I am sure there were teacher workshops and training programs organized by NCERT, but I doubt that the objective of the new books was properly conveyed to them. And since that was my experience in a school within the Campus walls of one of the most premier technical academic institutions of India, I am afraid to think what was happening elsewhere.
Things were far better for the XI and XII books. As some say, NCERT had/have some of the best science school textbooks in the world for those age groups. The only problem was, after Class X where a student was being taught the best nutrition and hygiene policies, how was he/she then supposed to suddenly understand cellular structure? Or someone who was idly being asked to consider the world around them to understand the physical laws naturally, suddenly be asked to grasp the complex topic of mathematics of superposition of waves?
The shock of going from Class X to Class XI was a bit too much for many science students of my time. But were the books to blame or was it that the teachers had no clue how to provide an appropriate segue for the students? [Note: This gap has been somewhat reduced in the latter years, but even today the X to XI jump is talked about.]
We know that, at the end of the day it is the teaching which builds a personality, however what about the love of a subject? Students will start loving science if one, they have a natural propensity for it, and two, if their teachers (whether it is the parents or school teachers or, dare I say, the ‘tuition teachers’ with whom many students seem to spend an inordinate amount of time) introduce them to the topics in a manner that will allay any fears they may have about understanding science.
References:
Position Paper, National Focus Group on Teaching of Science, 2006, NCERT.
Wikipedia Page: Daulat Singh Kothari
Face to Face with Professor C N R Rao, July 2019, Resonance.
By, Pashupati Sah (16th June 2020)
It is always a clichéd thing to say, “…but India’s problems are in its numbers.” Unfortunately, it is true in the case of education in India.
In ancient India, there were Gurukuls where the Gurus used to teach their chosen students. Education was in the midst of nature. That helped the students see the effects of the theories of science/philosophy prevalent at that time. The primary characteristic of such an education was the relationship between the Guru (teacher) and the Shishya (student). It was a life-long one (PhD students may somewhat relate to this!). This system continued until the British Raj in some form or the other, but then went on a steep decline as the British started spreading their brand of education throughout the Empire. I guess, around that time, Indians started having the feeling that west was the best.
Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of Arya Samaj, and Swami Shraddhanand, were the pioneers of the modern Gurukul system. Today various Gurukulam still exist in India. The focus in these Gurukulam is on Sanskrit, Vedic Mathematics, the Arts, Vedic Astrology, Jyotish Vigyan and Yoga. My personal belief is that, with the proper merger of the Modern Sciences in their curriculum (they can do away with the history part if they so want), they could become the best examples of education anywhere in the world. Unfortunately very few of these modern Gurukulam have managed to shine through the system.
And then, there are also the Gurukul “International” schools. Schools started either directly by a Swamiji of fame or by some of his disciples. These I will not comment on (as I do not have sufficient knowledge about them) and will move on to talk about the “Alternative Schools” of India.
“Alternative Schools” is the term given to schools which claim to give children an education which is “beyond textbooks”. They basically say that they do not adhere to the conventional methods of teaching and shun rote learning. Let us understand how that impacts science education in India.
Imagine you are a new student in an Ancient Gurukula on the plains of the river Ganga. Pollution is non-existent and what you see around you is nature at its best. At night, the clearest sky reveals millions of dots of lights. Your Guru asks you different questions which make you look at nature in order to try and come up with a logical response. No answer is considered stupid. Sometimes even your Guru is surprised with your answer and has to pause to rethink his own knowledge. There is nothing you cannot ask.
In Modern India, the “Alternative Schools” claim not only to encourage the same rational thinking and reasoning amongst their students, but also to impart occupational skills, and a deeper understanding of culture and art amongst the students. With respect to science, their approach is to give more weightage on experiments. Unfortunately or fortunately, these schools still need to adhere to the National Education Policies and hence cannot stray too far from the prescribed curriculum. Interestingly, majority of fee-paying students of such schools are from wealthy families. I guess many of these schools have a fee structure more consistent with those families. Also, socially it is more acceptable to send your child to a school where they train her/him to compete in the rat race of life in India and not look at nature and explore its mysteries.
One of the blogs I came across, while researching Alternative Schools, claimed that the main reason for the surge of such schools was that the CBSE and ICSE had “the most boring, unimaginative and badly written books you are likely to come across”. This could not be further from the truth, at least, when it comes to the Sciences (Ref: Part I of this article).
While writing this article, I got the opportunity to interview a student of an Alternative School in India. His school has been ranked the best boarding school in India multiple times, despite (or because of) being an Alternative School.
His assessment w.r.t. science education, while somewhat along the lines of expectation, was a bit sobering also. Up till Class 8th science education was fun. A lot of focus was on practical experiences. Experiments were conducted using every-day materials. Nature walks were conducted, a lot of discussion was encouraged, and rote learning was never required. But come Class 9 and the central board syllabus took over. Teachers were equally approachable, highly focused on each student and provided logical explanations for most topics, however, he still felt there was something missing. The focus was now on theory. Experiments were still part of the curriculum, but the ‘fun factor’ had diminished. It was a chore, and rote learning did seem like a good short-cut.
So are the National Board Curriculums to blame?
Before we get into the blame-game let us also talk about what other supporting solutions exist and how do they fare.
Try to carry out a Google Search on any Physics or Chemistry topic from an NCERT book. You will see a lot of hits from Indian websites. The sad part is that all these sites are catering to students from the Indian boards trying to learn these topics, and worse still, none of these do anything different. A majority of these sites explain the concept in a manner which is worse than the explanation in the NCERT textbook (again, I find the NCERT books just fine). Lately, some app-based “education solutions” have been regularly bugging us with their advertisements on TV and web. Are they doing something different?
On the surface the lessons on these apps look appealing and interesting. Their ‘hook’ is that they are colourful and their videos are slick, they ensure that your kid covers the syllabus and that you no longer feel guilty about giving a smart phone or a tablet to a ten year old. However, if you are only looking for slickness and the syllabus, there is always Khan Academy. And if you are a parent who is willing to dedicate some hours of your time every week to putting science material together for your kid, you can do a far better job than these apps.
Khan Academy, when I first heard about them over ten years ago, sounded too good to be true and I assumed they would disappear soon. After all, a company whose mission is to “provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere” cannot last in today’s material world, can it? Apparently (and happily), I was wrong. In 2010 Google and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided the first major grants to Khan Academy. Today, the Academy is thriving. They have single-handedly done more for education than any other entity has ever tried to do.
The Khan Academy recognizes the power of numbers and impact of good education for those looking for knowledge. It has a specific section for Science for Indian students. Hundreds of thousands of kids have taken advantage of it in India, but many still find it difficult…. because of the language, English.
I have tried to sit a Government School student down in front of a laptop and make him go through some of the Khan Academy videos. It works perfectly when I am next to the student explaining by pausing the video every few minutes but, left alone, the student floundered. Mind you, the student was a bright one and did quite well in his studies ultimately. But many of the common every-day examples used by the tutors were completely alien to the student, and the accent was difficult.
Here we come to the ‘diversity’ part. India has 22 scheduled languages. Indian schools teach in at least one of those languages depending on the region. English, while crudely understood in vast areas of the country, is still not a language that can be used to teach in most parts.
In short, the only long-lasting solution to the problem of improving science education in India must involve schools and the schoolteachers.
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the Sciences themselves to get a flavour of what is missing. Let me exemplify with some Physics theories.
It was only when I was in my twenties did I realize that Albert Einstein had basically rewritten the Newton’s law of gravitation (in the form of General Relativity) in 1915 and that it had been proven just four years later. As far as Newton’s Laws of Motion were concerned, Einstein’s Special Relativity had been “proven to be the most accurate model of motion at any speed when gravitational effects are negligible”. Up until then “relativity” was an exotic and mysterious term to me.
So, why do kids AROUND the globe study only Newton’s theories and not the updates after that (just mentioning Einstein’s name and the name of his theories is not enough)? Because they are simple or because not many teachers would have an inkling on how to teach the newer topics? So, students remain less educated and science loses out on further big leaps because we cannot get teachers to explain some theories? I find this extremely hard to believe.
Take the example of Special Relativity. Which kid would not be amazed to know that when one sees an object in motion, then the apparent length of the moving object is shorter than when it was static?
Or take the example of General Relativity where the time passes at a slower pace closer to Earth than away from it. Wouldn’t the wide-eyed kid want to learn more? Why do we think that the logical thought experiments carried out by Einstein would somehow be impossible for the kids to understand? Because we adults cannot comprehend them? That would be stupidest logic, if so. The brain of a child is best suited to comprehend complex theories as long as the teachers pace the education well.
(I am not proposing that we do away with the old theories, mind you. Newton’s laws still help us do most of the calculations on Earth and they could be introduced to the students as simplifications/special cases of the currently accepted theories.)
Over the years scientists, starting from Richard Feynman to today’s Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bryan Cox and others, have shown how simply Einstein’s unique ideas can be visualized and explained easily.
In India, it was (Padma Vibhushan) Professor Yash Pal. On National TV he was the go-to guy for anything about science. He was a regular on the science programme Turning Point. He was also answering readers’ science related queries on the English Newspaper The Tribune. And, of course, he was, at various times, Secretary Department of Science, Chairman of University Grants Commission, the force behind Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and even the Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). As a kid I always waited for his TV show to see him conducting all kinds of experiments.
In my teens, I was also a big fan of Dr. Jayant C. Narlikar. I was lucky enough to attend couple of his lectures at IIT Kanpur. He was always allocated the largest Lecture Hall, and it always ended up over-crowded. He would transport one to the world of stars and galaxies within minutes.
All these popular scientists have some identifiable characteristics in common. They are all good orators, but they also come across as affable. And they all have a unique knack in relating complex topics with everyday observations. The amazing thing is that these unique characteristics are, in fact, not that unique. In other words, many schoolteachers can and do have these characteristics also. They may not have the PhDs and the star-power, but they are the ones influencing dozens of the next-gen every day.
Come what may, whether we look at internet based guides, app-based education solutions or the Khan Academy (yup, they are their own category), the conclusion remains the same, the schools and the schoolteachers need to be better prepared, and soon.
This will simply not be possible when a total of $7.8 Billion is allocated to the Department of School Education and Literacy for an entire year. How do we expect a department whose task is to combat illiteracy (most optimistic figures of 253 million illiterate people in India) and also sustain over 1.3 million schools and the education of 300 million school-going children to suddenly start thinking of improving the education system by providing an additional boost to the schools and the schoolteachers? So, yes, India is all about numbers.
India has not even reached the self-imposed target of 6% of GDP for the Education budget. Even when India reaches that target, the popular job-creation schemes will take up a large chunk as it does now. When are we going to focus on the schools and the students?
To fill the gap, a concerted effort on a national scale is required. Without the political will that simply won’t be possible. The current government seems to have made all the right noises about education, but the proof is in the pudding, and we are yet to taste it.
References
Educational Statistics at a Glance, Deptt of School Education & Literacy, MHRD, GoI, 2018.
Wikipedia (Dr. Yash Pal, Khan Academy)
www.khanacademy.org
By, Pashupati Sah, 19th June 2020.
Edits: 21st June 2016