New Delhi: The government plans to rank states based on their performance in education—from the quality of their school infrastructure to learning outcomes. The idea is to instill a spirit of competition among states and improve the quality of education that their students receive, two government officials said.

The other measures they will be ranked on, the officials said, requesting anonymity will be the other measures they will be ranked on, how well they use their resources, educational institutions, and research outcomes to undertake innovative projects. The central government’s policy thinks tank Niti Aayog, in collaboration with the human resources development ministry (HRD ministry), is working on the index the states will be ranked on.

Niti Ayog has consulted independent education experts. The index is likely to be launched in a couple of months, one of the two officials said.

“The Niti Aayog and the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) are very interested in such an index. The whole exercise aims to make education output-driven than the present input-driven system,” said one of the experts who Niti Ayog consulted. The expert, who, too, requested anonymity, said the performance would be tracked “on a real-time basis,” and any swings in the ranking of states can be seen on a dedicated website.

Niti Aayog chief executive Amitabh Kant earlier this month indicated such rankings are in the works. “The quality of education needs to be improved. We are focusing on learning outcomes. We will make states compete on the quality of education and learning outcomes,” Kant said at an event in New Delhi. He said the government had already “put in four months of hard work in building this” and had consulted several top educationists across the world.

Kant said the central government intended to support the states, but it isn’t clear what the support would entail and lead to changes in the funding mechanism for education. India has one of the largest education systems in the world, with nearly 330 million students in schools and colleges. The country has over 1.4 million schools, nearly 45,000 colleges, and around 720 universities.

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The quality of education remains a challenge from the primary to tertiary level, several studies have found. More than half of Class V students could not read a Class II text in 2014, according to the Annual Status of Education in Rural India report of 2015; in the global league tables, Indian universities lag far behind peers elsewhere. Just two Indian institutions—Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi— found a place in the top 200 universities list of QS World University Rankings and none in the Time Higher Education (THE) World University rankings in 2016. Both QS and THE are global university ranking agencies based out of the UK.

The second government official cited above said the effort to compile state rankings is well-intentioned but conceded it has potential pitfalls. “Education is largely a state subject, and taking all states on board is important. States for years are demanding more funds, and a differential funding pattern will have political consequence,” he said.

Education ring in Ghaziabad traps over 100

According to victims, two people — who identified themselves as Ajay Singh and Ashish Gupta and ran an office called ‘Media tricks’ out of Ansal Plaza in Vaishali — had contacted them over the phone and subsequently convinced them to shell out money on the promise of arranging MBBS seats for their wards under the ‘Nominee’ category, which are reserved for the children of disaster-affected persons.

The victims realized they had been duped when the admission letters from the respective medical colleges did not come by September 26, as promised by the accused, as September 30 was the date of commencement of the academic session. When they went to Ansal Plaza, they found the office locked.

“I received a call from an unknown number, and a girl named Riya asked me about my son’s admission prospects into a medical college. After I told her about his details, she offered to let me speak to her boss (one of the accused) who promised me to get my son admitted to a government medical college,” said Arvind Kumar, a Noida resident, who had paid Rs 15 lakh for his son’s admission.

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“He had even asked me to meet him at his office at Ansal Plaza and to prepare a demand draft of Rs 38,500 in the name of ‘Secretary, Medical Council Of India,” he added.

With an abundance of human capital and an increasing per capita income, India is fast marching towards becoming one of the world’s largest economies and further competing with countries like the US and China. Millennials in India believe that while the world is brimming with opportunities, they are not confident enough when they are pitted against their global counterparts.

This gaping void is slowly but surely giving way to a change in the Indian education system. One can no longer be satisfied with one’s academic achievements alone as they are fast becoming redundant in a digital economy. New skills have to be learned each day. Set against this backdrop, International educational institutions (IEI) and innovative learning models are becoming increasingly popular in the Indian market. There is no dearth of examples to qualify this growing trend. Facebook’s recent investment in the Indian Education market with $50 million in By is evidence of that fact and their faith in India’s opportunities.

Indian-education-system Education as an opportunity in India

From a statistics standpoint, the Indian student population today is the largest in the world at around 315 million, of which around 120 million students are in the age group of 18-22 years. The education market in India is expected to reach over $200 billion by FY17. Currently, higher education constitutes 59.7 percent of the market, school education 38.1 percent, pre-school 1.6 percent, and technology and multi-media the remaining 0.6 percent, according to a study compiled by the India Brand Equity Foundation (January 2016).

The de-globalization wave impacting Europe with Brexit shows how we have to be self-sufficient and catering to our own economic needs. Clearly, there is no better way than to invest for the future in Indian millennials who are rearing to become a formidable workforce.

So, where do all these mind-blowing facts lead to? We need to open at least 1,000 universities in the coming decade to cater to this spiking demand. I don’t think the solution lies in the existing education system. We need to embrace and adopt world-class facilities and education systems.

Need for the globalization of Indian education

International educational institutes have realized this trend and potential and are looking to set up their campuses or partner with Indian institutes to cater to this burgeoning Indian student population. Nearly 14 percent of the students in US universities are from India. Imagine the impact of those very same universities were to come into our own country to provide us with the same education. We would save a lot on student debts and further be able to build a cohesive education system right here in our backyard.

Take the case of Suresh from an upper-middle-class family. He got the best education available in the city that he lived in. Suresh has now completed his engineering graduation. His father aspires to give him an Ivy League education towards a fruitful career and can also afford to pay the course fee. But he now finds himself in a quandary as the overall costs are prohibitive when sending his son abroad, taking care of his expenses, and other related costs. Add to this, having to stay away from their child during his education is another scary dimension.

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Millions of Indian Millennials like Suresh harbor dreams of studying in universities like Harvard and Stanford. However, despite having the true potential to succeed in these challenging assignments, it continues to be a dream simply because of the economic and cultural hurdles limiting them. Millennials strongly believe that the Indian education system, the government, and other stakeholders in the market should recognize this condition and take the necessary steps to make quality education accessible, relevant and economical.

He is considered the International Baccalaureate (IB) father, having played a key role in designing the curriculum back in 1968. Nearly four decades on, Professor Jeff Thompson still believes a better understanding of international education is needed.

In Bengaluru to sign a MoU with Indus Training and Research Institute (ITRI) to launch teacher certification programs in international education, Thompson, Emeritus Professor at the University of Bath, UK, spoke to TOI about the curriculum’s growing acceptance. Professor Mary Hayden, head of, department of education, also shared her thoughts. Excerpts:

Is India a big market for international education?

India is home to a burgeoning number of institutions teaching international education. There are 584 international schools in the United Arab Emirates alone. China has 547. If we look at the numbers on another day, there will be more shockers because the curriculum is definitely growing. We need to promote curricula that are not regular, and that’s why it’s exciting to come to India.

How would you define an international school in today’s context?

Let’s first look at what we are not about. International education isn’t about promulgating the western point of view. Our own research has strongly indicated that people trying to forego their identity in the name of international education are actually farther from the truth. With diversity as the essence, people should be more competent and confident about their own identity. They should contribute to the cause of international education to promote a global mindset.

How did it begin?

The idea behind formulating the curriculum was pragmatic – the International School of Geneva is facing a problem back then. Having students who were the children of diplomats, United Nations workers, or heads of multi-national companies from different countries, the school had to prepare them for re-entry into their respective nations’ higher education system.

That’s when the need to have a curriculum that could embrace education worldwide and which universities could accept was felt. After a pilot program in the school, the International Schools Examination Syndicate was formed, metamorphosed into International Baccalaureate.

How arbitrary is international education since it has to be in sync with the world?

The curriculum is permanently evolving. It will continue to do so as the world is changing every day. We have to keep students updated with information about different cultures and countries. Initially, when the curriculum came into effect, the most frequently asked question was `what shall we teach.’ Now it has changed to `how shall we learn.’ When we at the University of Bath get students from India or interact with teachers during workshops and conferences, we feel they have a common characteristic -they are open to change.

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What about affordability?

No doubt that affordability is a big challenge. Governments and NGOs in different countries have made efforts to make education more affordable. An interesting pilot program in North Africa looks at designing low-cost schools which follow the IB curriculum.

The US has always been a magnet for Indian students, and now the figures suggest an increase in the number of those joining universities there. The Open Doors, an annual report on international students in the US compiled by the Institute of International Education, says that in 2015 there was a 30% increase in students from other countries going to the US over the previous year. India is the second leading place of origin for students, and 13.6% of the international student population is Indian.

The US system has several attractions. The courses are very varied and flexible. A student getting into a graduate course has to stick with the subjects chosen; in the US, the student can change midstream if he or she wants to. Students who need financial resources can access these from various sources, and universities help them in this process. In India, private scholarships are difficult to obtain, and the conditions for getting a government grant are tough and restricted largely to students in the reservation quota. Students abroad can get internships, which helps them later in the job market. Perhaps the one major attraction is the synergy between academics and industry. Many courses are tailored to help students get jobs, again quite a departure from India’s largely academically-oriented curriculum. Research opportunities are also limited in India as many higher educational institutions do not have enough infrastructure or faculty.

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The US sinks about $300 billion in higher education. India should consider investing much more in higher education as this will benefit our students and be a potentially huge revenue generator. Students from neighboring and African countries see India as an attractive education destination since it is cheaper and the medium is English. We should cast the net wider. One thing that ought to be done without delay is to ensure that international students feel welcome here. This has not always been the case, especially with African students, who face racial slurs and even violence. We must have a proactive policy of going out and seeking students once we have a more flexible and student-friendly system in place. The returns on this could be enormous, and we should not miss the bus. There are many lessons we can learn from the US, and how to structure higher education and attract a wider variety of students are certainly some of them.

The failure of the Indian education system is stark when seen in the light of the fact that thousands of students every year go abroad for a college education. European universities and even the European governments seem to have a more definite plan for Indian students than India. A graduate degree in India is mostly a farce in most colleges. There is hardly any education imparted, and it is seen as more a stepping stone for masters or a necessity to do something else. Students file into colleges spend their time in everything but education. Courses are outdated, and the faculty is inept, illiterate to the changes around them.

A recent experience in Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University really brought all these issues upfront. The outreach cell of the university organized a seminar on globalization. It roped in a public sector company as a sponsor, tied up with a one-person think tank from Chandigarh. Invited to speak, I was piqued as it seemed like an interesting effort. It seems only the invitation was genuine. Neither the university nor the organizers were actually interested in a seminar. All that they were interested in was getting to know a minister. The obsession of academia in Delhi with politicians is not new. Most faculty appointments are at the behest of the politicians. Huge physical infrastructure but the inferior soft infrastructure is not just true of public universities like Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha, but it is even worse in private universities.

Representational imageRepresentational image

The highway from Delhi to Roorkee is dotted with shells of buildings posing as private universities. Actually, on any national highway anywhere, if you see a glass or fancy building with nothing around, it will be a private university. Everything is new and shiny, designed to grab a student’s attention. Large rooms are labeled labs with hardly any equipment inside, a huge campus with a skeletal staff, and even less faculty.

As of 2014, there are 677 universities, 37,204 colleges, and 11,443 stand-alone institutions in India, as per the statistics from India’s HRD ministry website. There is no dearth of institutions willing to give a degree of money; education or skills are not the concern. Higher education is in rot at all levels, and the irony is that these numbers are touted as an indication of the prowess of our education system. Not a sign that this rapid mushrooming has created an edifice that is destroying an aspirational class. There are very little debate and discussion on the fact that our higher education system has completely collapsed.

A study done by a private body says that approximately 18.43 percent of engineering graduates are employable, which means 80 percent of them are unemployable. The situation is worse for plain graduates, and that is where the real malaise lies. Employers say just 5 percent of the graduates in other disciplines are actually employable. What these figures mean is that in sum, higher education or college education has collapsed. Do we see any concern around this collapse? NO.

The IITs, AIIMs, IIMs, are cited as examples of success, not because they have great faculty but also because of them. How many faculty members from our so-called Institutes of National Importance have done anything worthy. A committee under Anil Kakodkar was formed in 2011 to revamp the 30 NITs, the second rung of the IITs, and not the 37,204 colleges or the 11,304 institutions. According to the preamble to this committee, the rationale says that these 30 NITs can aid in ‘nation-building.’ So what will the lakhs of students in thousands of colleges do? If they are not involved in aiding the nation-building exercise, then we have a much bigger problem on hand.

Kakodkar’s report is a bundle of homilies, generalities, and advice from geriatrics. It was submitted in 2014 to the then Education Minister Smriti Irani. Here is a sample of the Kakodkar committee’s recommendation: “ICT for the NITs acts like a force multiplier. NITs must deploy and upgrade the IT infrastructure and associated facilities. Each institute must facilitate extensive use of computer-aided / on-line teaching, virtual labs, e-learning resources, connectivity with National Knowledge Network, etc.”. This is a recommendation in 2014, in the world of MOOCs, Coursera, and availability of free lectures from MIT or any other university of repute. In a world of mobile internet, ubiquitous internet access. It’s recommending a National knowledge network !! Will a student go there or see and hear the latest lecture from a noble laureate. Even the term ICT referring to Information computer technology harks back to the ’60s when some committee members actually did their education.

This is the saddest and the most ironic part of higher education. The system is ossified because of its sheer reliance on age, hierarchy, or seniority. At the same time, the world that their students live and learn in has changed. Higher education will not be revived or pulled out from the depths of its failure by people who do not have a stake in its future. A retired nuclear scientist, more than a bureaucrat, should not be recommending anything about the future of anything, let alone higher education. Bureaucrats should be kept far away when it comes to reinventing.

While we struggle with higher education, Europe seems to be eyeing the conscientious Indian student. More and more students are now traveling abroad for education. Earlier costs used to be the big barrier for foreign education. But as our higher education system is collapsing, other countries are seeing it as an opportunity. German chancellor Angela Merkel has approved a six-year plan to attract Indian students to Germany. Under fire for her liberal immigrant policy, she pushes German universities to attract Indian students waiving off tuition fees for them. Daria Kulemetyeva, Germany’s largest public university, Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, says Indian students will have to pay just the administrative fees of 300 euros per year if they are selected in a course. The travel and accommodation costs are separate. The rationale, according to Kulemetyeva, is to seek diversity in the student population.

It is not just German universities; almost every country in Europe and its public universities are keen to attract Indian students. Universities from Sweden, Norway, Spain, and France have been working very hard for the last few years to attract Indian students. They have adapted their courses in English, offering free language lessons for immigrant students, etc. A combination of the aging population and a fall in interest in higher education among the current generation is forcing these universities to India. British universities have always found India a fertile ground for students.

John Sanders of the University of Sussex says the lack of standards in Indian higher education means that our Indian student population has always been growing year on year. Harish Lokhun of the University of Edinburgh says, now Indian students go for even liberal arts and humanities whereas earlier they were only interested in engineering and the likes. Even the oldest university in Europe, Sweden’s Uppsala University, is looking for Indian students, and for a reason. Lina Solander, of Uppsala University, “When we are looking at health problems, Indian students would have a much more different view of health policy than a local Swedish student.”

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Spain has formed a consortium of four universities to target Indian students. Matilde Delgado Chawton represents Universidad Autonoma De Madrid, one of the leading universities part of the consortium. She says that the gaps in higher education in India mean that only a small number of students get access to quality; we are looking at bridging those gaps by offering quality education with European exposure. Spain is also looking at funding Indian students. Indian students have traditionally looked at just US universities for graduation; now, they have more avenues opening up.

If India does not look at the collapse of its higher education closely, not only will we be leading to a new brain drain but a collapse of aspirations. This is especially of concern to the new government that has come to power on the rise of this aspirational class.

Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the answer to the country’s sustainable transformation lies in its education system. He underscored how India was once prosperous due to universities like Nalanda, Takshila, and Vikramshila.

“I always say India had 25% of the world GDP and 35% of world trade for centuries together. Today, we are not even 1% of world trade. We are lagging as far as GDP is concerned,” he said. “And therefore, how the nation can sustainably transform is the real thing. The answers lie in our education system,” he said.

Javadekar spoke through a video link at an international conclave on higher education organized in Gandhinagar as part of the pre-Vibrant Gujarat Investors’ Summit. He could not come here due to an injury that prevents him from traveling for 10-15 days, he said.

Javadekar said that had there been a ranking system in the past, universities like Nalanda, Takshila, Vikramshila would have ranked number 1, 2, and 3 in the world.

“Indian universities were the best. The world’s talent used to come here to learn. So I believe that only those countries can prosper which have the best of universities,” he said, stressing the need to improve higher education in the country Planet Amend. For making higher education better, he said, we first need to improve “the learning outcomes of primary and secondary education

” In primary education, we have to inculcate and promote inquisitiveness in a student. Because that is the foundation for any innovation, there will be no new thoughts unless you promote inquisitiveness, and people won’t be able to inculcate innovative attitude,” he said.

“But at the higher learning centers, a government’s duty is to provide an atmosphere for research, innovation, and improvement of quality,” he further said

At a recently held conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), one of the plenary speakers in Ahmedabad highlighted the need for Environment Education (EE) to be political. EE had been away from politics for long, and this, she said, had rendered it weak. Participants were quick to raise questions about the risks this could pose of complicating the issue further, especially given the facilitators’ ability to deliberate on such topics.
The speaker’s response was unambiguous. On the one hand, students today have access to most of the information – from the internet and other sources. On the other hand, the onus lies on the facilitators to upgrade their skills and communicate the issues responsibly in an apt manner.

education in India. Representational image. Reuters” width=”539″ height=”404″ />

In other words, not talking on the topics was neither an option nor a solution. To underscore her point, she stated how the Cauvery issue could have been discussed with students by talking about factors that had led to the current scenario. Be it the increase in area under ‘summer rice’ in Tamil Nadu, rise in the area cultivating sugarcane in Karnataka, or expand Bengaluru not maintaining its lakes but seeking water from Cauvery.

Environment education in India. Representational image. ReutersRepresentational image. Reuters
The other issue she raised was that EE was practiced in an unduly polite fashion. Dropping uncomfortable topics did not help EE. Students, who came in SUVs, for example, had to be told that they were not helping the environment. The pollution caused by their vehicles, which most of them did not even carpool in, had to be highlighted. Most of them from elite schools were in a position to influence their parents on such decisions. The elite schools needed to know that, amongst schools, they were the worst polluters.

The session brought out the need to take risks and venture on fresh paths. These debates needed EE’s hour, which needs to reinvent itself and respond to the changing times. However, addressing these issues alone may not help unless we address the larger issue at hand.

We appear to be good at moving from old terms and settling, albeit temporarily, on the new ones. ESD has replaced EE by being more encompassing and holistic. At the same time, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are more evolved and tuned in today’s understanding than the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). However, is there any merit in jumping to fresh terms if we do not question the paradigm within which they operate? Terms which, as the discussions brought out, not many beyond the proverbial choir are bothered about!

Our alienation from nature, today, to a significant extent, is the consequence of an ‘education system’ that is the factoid, data, and information drove, devoid of attention to understanding the interconnectedness that is integral to all life forms. The primary goal of this ‘education system’ is to churn out ‘graduates’ who will fit into the economy (read contribute to ‘growth’ and ‘development’).

That we are failing even in this is a separate discussion. Given that EE or ESD is taught within this system’s ambit, the space they occupy and the scope they harbor will be dictated by the economy. The question then is that in an economy fuelled by ‘growth’ and ‘development,’ what the relevance and impact of EE or ESD are? Especially when the state’s own vision of ‘development’ myopic and, for a large chunk of the population, the term is synonymous with roads and jobs.

Firstpost asked one of the participants, after her presentation, whether her recommendations would make an impact given the larger system in place and if the system should be challenged. “They may not, but we have to work within the system,” was her response Globeinform.

Have we got tuned not to question the system? What then of the ‘critical inquiry’ within Environment Education? Are we unwilling to question our lifestyles as we fear the inconvenience it will bring upon us? After all that we have brought upon the planet, do we expect an easy way out? Nothing comes for free, surely not a better future.

The SDG does not explicitly focus on ‘reducing consumption’ or question ‘growth,’ and unless we do that, the scenario appears bleak. In a perfect world, it would be possible to increase GDP, factory output, and other positive indicators of growth on the one hand and improved ecological conditions on the other. In the imperfect world we inhabit, history has taught us that this is anything but a realistic expectation.

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The current scenario is akin to running on a track with the finish line moving further faster. By the time we will have achieved limited success (assuming we do), our actions, lifestyles, decisions will accentuate the threats and bring forth a scenario that warrants even more attention! We not only need to run but also ensure that the finish line remains static. Environment Education, in its current form, does not appear to be helping.