By Derek Mountford
The Age of Disinformation distorts reality convincingly: for instance, the implication of repeatedly touting India as ‘the fastest growing economy in the world’ deflects from a marked slowdown in the Indian economy in recent times. Euphemistically brushed aside as a temporary ‘cyclical downturn’, the master narrative reads that all is well ‘fundamentally with the long-term structural story of India’, and this is based on the deceptively simplistic and sweeping assumption that India’s ‘Demographic Dividend’ will power India to a ‘Seven Trillion Dollar Economy’ and the ‘Third Largest in the World’ in the not-too-distant future. Thus, India’s youthful population, it is argued, will stimulate multi-decadal consumption and this, in turn, will spur the Indian economy to ever greater highs, inevitably and eventually positioning India in its rightful place as a global powerhouse in the comity of the developed nations of the world.
Thus, as never before, much appears to hinge upon the youth of this country and in this context, if sophisticated global scholarship in the matter is to be believed, there is a definitive link between the standards of education in a country and its successful journey to developed nation status. It is, therefore, the quality of the educated workforce that eventually determines the fortunes of a nation; alas, it does not require a discerning eye to comprehend that education – at all levels – has not been a national priority since Independence.
While the data on every technical parameter of measurement in education is genuinely distressing, what solicits even greater attention is the link between a poorly educated youth and employability: beyond the loudly lamented dearth of jobs in this country, is it also true that, where they exist, the educated youth lack the skills and competence to acquire and hold down gainful employment?
Thus, if it is true that historically no country has journeyed successfully to developed nation status with an inferior educational system and a consequent crisis of employability, we are confronted with the reality of addressing the Education Question on a war-footing.
In education, as in what Newton said of science, we stand on the back of giants: there is a vast body of accomplished research (and proof of concept) available globally on how to establish and run a superior national educational system and while it is not rocket science to customise these progressive models to the Indian context, it is worth reminding ourselves that education is the serious business of experts in the field with the intellect and training to devise and implement successful curriculum at various levels of education in our country. Regrettably, since Independence, this crucial aspect of national well-being has been hijacked by the political class, bureaucrats and businessmen, with the predictable result of not just prolonged disastrous educational outcomes, but also a dubious band of people who attempt to run a wholly illegal education business for profit. Thus, when phrases such as ‘the commercialisation of education’, ‘Education Business’ and ‘Education Mafia’ fall into commonplace daily discourse, alarm bells ought to have been rung long ago.
Alas, having absolved itself of the responsibility of providing high-quality state education, successive governments of all political hues for the last three-quarters of a century have effetely and deliberately presided over a poorly regulated private sector, rife with malpractice and corruption. Just as premeditated murder and accidental death are entirely different things in a court of law, although the difference is academic to the dead man, equally, to deflect from the failings of a poor state education system by patronising a marginally better private sector offering, does not minister to the youth of this country: in both instances, educational outcomes are compromised.
Yet, the well-heeled critic with a public school education in India would argue for decades that they have enjoyed a wonderful educational experience and while this may be true for a handful of well-run institutions, this is not the good fortune for the overwhelming majority in a population of 1.46 billion people on the Indian subcontinent. It may also not be entirely inappropriate to note here that the public school movement in India, as a colonial hangover, is not ‘State’ but, ‘private’, and thus accessible to only those with pockets deep enough to afford the steep fees.
In fact, despite loud protestations by vested interests, premier institutions, including heritage properties, are in systemic decline for a variety of reasons: malgovernance, poor leadership, the incapacity to attract and retain teaching talent, high annual attrition of pupils and an exorbitant fee structure that does not deliver concomitant results. In fact, having failed to reinvent themselves to stay abreast of modernity, most such branded institutions have not just become anachronistic, but are also the hotbed of campus politics and thus very far removed from the idealism that occasioned their founding decades ago. Indeed, as whispered in Boardrooms, despite lucrative pay, there is a very serious crisis of leadership in these institutions, with the best and most experienced in educational administration choosing to stay away from the mind-boggling complexities and dangers of heading such institutions.
Even more regrettably, the diverted footfall towards ‘New Age International Schools’ suffers an even worse fate: here, for an even higher fee, with staff fresh from training programmes at exotic locales, half the teachers cannot teach the advanced curriculum and another half of the pupils are wholly incapable of learning from it, and thus the only ‘international’ thing about such properties is the curriculum they buy from foreign soil!
Interestingly, most of these standalone properties are single promoter entities who flagrantly and openly conflate ownership with management: as a law unto themselves, they suffer from the unfortunate predilection of appointing usually uneducated and almost always unemployable relatives to key positions in management with predictably disastrous results and are just a shade better than most minority educational institutions that hide behind the cloak of constitutional guarantee to perpetuate an opaque administration.
Indeed, one of the most serious maladies of private educational enterprise in India is the lack of financial and administrative transparency in their operations: thus, for instance, while both publicly listed companies on the Indian Stock Exchange and private educational institutions draw revenue (shares / fees) from the public, the former is obliged, by law, to publish updated financial statements every quarter, while the latter zealously precludes the fee-paying parent from any financial information about the institution. Thus, you can make a more informed choice about the stock you wish to purchase in India than about the educational choice you wish to make for your child!
Into this heady mix must be added the inevitable parasites that attach themselves to the fattened bandwagon: ‘Career Counselling Agencies’ (whose raison d’être is buying an expensive overseas placement); ‘Trainers’ of various hues (the most exotic breed of which pontificates on the ‘Theory of Knowledge’ and whose lectures are most certainly likely to put children off both ‘theory’ and ‘knowledge’ for life!); the after-hours Tuition Racketeers (who tutor batches of children in makeshift halls for cash against a neatly calibrated Fee Structure for the CBSE, ISC and International curricula) and, of course, glossy educational magazines that generate all manner of school rankings based on ‘perceptual surveys’ that tend to go south if schools shrink their advertising budgets! That Education Fairs compete favourably with Cattle Fairs is a sign of the times ……
Clearly, then, the complicated juggernaut of the Indian Education System is not without its evils and there appears to be a serious crisis of fidelity to purpose in education, with habitual absenteeism of both teacher and taught from government institutions an accepted way of life.
There are several stakeholders in any educational paradigm – owners, administrators, teachers, parents and pupils – but, arguably, the most important cohort is that of the students and we owe it to them to purge the Indian system of malpractice, foremost amongst which is the deliberate ‘under-teaching’ in school classrooms and the consequent tuition racket that eats up childhood in India at one end, and coaching institutes for university placements that destroy lives at the other.
Without getting into the legalities of education being a Concurrent Subject for both the Central and State Governments to legislate upon in India, the overarching remedy for all this has, of course, been repeated ad nauseam: establishing an Education Ministry run by professionals in education; substantially increasing the budgetary outlay for education to improve infrastructure, equipment and wages; setting up of institutions for training teachers in Educational Administration as B.Ed/M.Ed degrees do not equip teachers on promotion to run schools; devising and adopting a progressive national curriculum specific to Indian culture and genius and that which, the chaotic New Education Policy notwithstanding, is far divorced from the overarching rote memory and mark-gathering examination system; encouraging innovation and creativity from the Early Years; establishing more top class institutions of higher learning; aggressively promoting Vocational Education to equip young people with the skills to make a living and, with Artificial Intelligence storming the citadel gates, the ever-more urgent need to establish sunrise technology courses that cater to the contemporary world.
Yet, all this requires not just bold radical reform of the entire educational apparatus but also, more importantly, a sea change in our collective mindset towards education as the foremost national priority. We also need to change our attitude towards the teaching profession: at all levels, it must attract the best talent in society and, as in some of the most developed and successful nations in the world, teaching must be rendered amongst the most prestigious and well-paid careers available in India.
The need of the hour is a well-educated workforce and it is only the skilled and devoted teacher who can fit the missing brick in the wall.
(Derek Mountford was educated at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and at The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. He has taught in and headed various schools in India and is an Educational Consultant)
