Strategies for reducing educational disparities and ensuring equal opportunities for all students

Strategies for reducing educational disparities and ensuring equal opportunities for all students

By Giridhar LV

In India, 263 million – that’s the number of students and 37 million – the number of graduates (graduates, postgraduates, including engineering) and 2.5 million – the number of engineering graduates that join the workstream every year. And the number of institutions – 1.4 million schools, 1074 universities, 43,000 colleges and 4300 engineering colleges in India.

But what are the results like?

Only 45% of all graduates are employable. When it comes to engineering graduates, the number is close to 25%.

When you look at students in K12, the number of students with basic math skills is just 12%.

Our syllabus in schools and colleges is by and large good.

So, what are the ways to make this better?

Let me give an analogy here.

The house we live in is about 15 years old. It is developing a few leaks here and there. The engineer who built our house said that there would be no issues at least for 20 years. So, now at this time, we are starting to remember, that maybe the workmen weren’t skilled enough to pour the cement correctly, maybe the cement wasn’t cured correctly, or just someone hurried through with starting the painting etc.

The raw materials were all good, but there looked to be some issues in delivery. But it’s too late now. Whatever we do now, it is like applying a bandage on your knee, it keeps coming off.

The input parameters are good, but the output leaves a lot to be desired.

And the delivery is being owned by the schools, colleges, and the teachers. This gap has led to the mushrooming of “tuition” or “coaching” providers. In fact, the tuition industry in India is currently at 58000 crores and is expected to grow to 134000 crores in 2028, which is close to double in 5 years. A lot of this money is coming from families who cannot afford it but are correctly convinced that education is the only way for their children to lead a better life than theirs.

Well, we have done one thing right, inculcating into every parent that education is critical, but when they send their kids to get educated, sadly we aren’t meeting the requirements.

Let’s see if there are some solutions and ways to benefit from the opportunity if the number of “educated” students improves.

Let’s Start with K12, and here’s my point of view:

The tuition industry shows that there doesn’t seem to be a lack of educators in India, but most of them not be touching in schools but outside of it. Basically, build a parallel system altogether. What are the incentives for building a parallel system?

The current schools and colleges (private and government) aren’t delivering according to expectations.People are ready to pay for what they believe is “quality” education.

Here are a few solutions to consider:

Firstly, pay the teachers who are spending more waking time with your kids than you. How can that happen? You have heard about DBT or Direct Benefit Transfer and MNREGA, where the government is paying for either food or work. Why don’t we enable something similar for education? It’s not free education in a government school. But paid education where everyone, including the poor, can pay the full fees for a school. If the parents don’t feel the school is imparting good education, they will move away to a school that does. The government will not continue funding a system that is not meeting its goals.

Secondly, we need to address the epidemic of coaching. One way is what China did where all such coaching centres or apps were banned outright or made non-profit. A better way would be to allow these to fill the gaps for students where the school is not up to mark. But, the crucial thing, is the funding for this also comes from the DBT.

Thirdly, make our education less “rote”. Every subject that we learn can be made experiential. Be it the languages (with debates, skits, and dramas), Maths (with puzzles), Science (with experiments), History and Geography (with site visits) and fitness (with sports). Every week should have a mandatory day for experiential or learn-by-doing activities. A good blend of our ancient Gurukul education and the new age education, I think.

We talked about Roti Kapda and Makaan, but we need to Education or Padhai too.

If the government is serious about us reaping the demographic dividend, then it’s time to get the method right.

What do we about “Graduate” education?

The main problem I see is that it is just education by “rote”, but with bigger textbooks.

It’s time to tell our educators and the boards and whoever else sets the syllabus, that in the real world, work is not done by being great at “rote” but by doing it.

While in school, I recommended one day for experiential learning, in graduate studies, it should at least be two days. We, humans, are built to learn best when we do things, why don’t we capitalize on them?

Whether it is law, architecture, finance, or my field of engineering (civil, mechanical, electrical, electronics or computer science).

At least in the engineering field(my field of study), what does experiential learning look like? It involves spending time working in organizations that could hire you to do work that is like what you would do in a full-time role. If you are in Electronics, you should get to work on circuit boards, starting with soldering, and building simple systems. Look at broken circuit boards and learn how to fix them.

In computer science, while you look at learning how to code, start with open-source repositories, learn how systems are designed, learn how to contribute to open-source, and create your own open-source projects, well the list is endless, it’s only the intent to start that is missing.

Irrespective to the branch of engineering, spend your time in the labs or in the field, that’s where learning happens.

Finally, communication while English is the global language of communication and is used a lot for conducting business in India. Fortunately for English and any other language, it can easily be learnt by just listening to other people speaking it and then trying it out. My English lessons started with listening to the BBC. There are apps such as Duolingo that are also a good option now.

When we say only about 45% of graduates are employable or just 25% of engineering graduates are employable, it is because they have no clue of what the real world looks like.

The other elephant in the room is again the quality of educators. It’s not a big secret, that many of the teachers have chosen to do so because this was the only job that they could find. Let’s not penalize the new generation for the career choices of their teachers. Focusing on experiential learning where the students interact with a wider set of people/mentors goes some way in bridging this.

Like the house I talked about earlier, let’s not wait for 21 years to discover that the students are not ready due to someone’s career choice, the location of someone’s birth or waiting for a magical app to fix a fundamental issue. It’s upon us, the industry, and our governing authorities to do the right thing.

The author is the founder of Nuvepro technologies.