Holistic School Education

Holistic School Education

With over 1.3 billion of population, India is having the largest chunk of young and school-going population in the world. India, with over 1.5 million schools, over 8.7 million primary and secondary teachers and more than 260 million enrolments, 1 is home to the largest and most complex education system in the world. Jointly managed at the national and state levels, many initiatives have been undertaken to improve access to quality schooling – particularly for those who are economically or socially disadvantaged. With growing competition from private schools, there have been explicit efforts within the government sector to offer parents and children what they most need and want: quality education leading to improved life opportunities.

Since committing to the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, India has made significant progress towards achieving universal primary education. The World Bank reports that between 2000 and 2017, elementary school enrolment increased by more than 33 million: from 156.6 million in 2000–01 to 189.9 million in 2017–18.

Two prominent initiatives of the Indian government, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA – ‘Education for All Campaign’ in Hindi) in 2001 and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, have promoted higher foci on issues of access, inclusivity and quality in education. The mean years of schooling of the working population (those over 25 years old) increased from 4.19 years in 2000 to 6.4 years in 2017. 3 India has also committed to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with the initiation of several further large-scale and ambitious programmes in recent years to help achieve these objectives.

The draft National Education Policy released in May 2019 further demonstrates an ongoing commitment to quality provision, revising a policy which was last updated in 1992.

Education is a fundamental human right, and it enables people to live better, healthy and productive. Now the basic question is whether the education's promise as above is being realized or not. Are we being very near to its promise or far and far away and in a deep crisis? 

A cursory look at the present education system and ways of its implementation and the passion with which we are taking it forward reveal a severe crisis. The crisis is three-fold viz. (i) quality of teaching, (ii) the children learning outcomes and (iii) the School /system Governance. The very purpose of education and its goals are not being realized as expected and not moving in that direction.

Following is the nature of crisis being revealed by many studies conducted by both inside and outside agencies.

1.      Enrollment and Dropouts:

 If compared to other emerging markets, mean years of schooling in India (6.4 years in 2017) leg behind to China (7.8 years in 2017) and Brazil (7.8 years in 2017). It is also reported that over 50 per cent of ‘ever enrolled persons’, particularly from socially disadvantage groups did not continue their study beyond the upper primary (5 to 7^th class). About 40 to 50 % of children have already lagged on the expected class-specific learning outcomes.

2.  Faulty Curriculum and Pedagogy:

The current curriculum is neither child-centred, nor life centred and also lacks activities. It should be activity-based and include activities for creative expressions. 30 to 40 % of children at primary and upper primary level are unable to perform necessary foundational skills of reading, writing and arithmetic skills.

·         Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) released by NGO Pratham found that nearly half of class 5 children cannot read a class 2 text.

·         Despite 97% enrolment in primary schools, drop out rates are high and quality of education poor.

·         Only around 30% of children enrolling in class 1 graduate from class 12.

·         A majority do not possess the requisite skills to be readily employable.

·         Teachers themselves struggle with subject knowledge and the ability to teach it.

·         The curriculum lacks relevance, particularly at the secondary level.

·         Almost half of the children in grade 5 in rural India cannot solve a simple two-digit subtraction problem.

·         Sixty-seven per cent of children in grade 8 in public schools score less than 50 per cent in competency-based assessments in mathematics.

 Still, even after many commissions and curricular frameworks, the traditional methods of teaching-learning are in practice in most of the schools, i.e. lecture method, reading and explaining where students are confined to passive receivers of information. There is no much change in the teaching-learning process though teachers are much trained in active pedagogies, under various projects for two decades, i.e. DPEP, SSA. The teaching-learning process has not moved away from existing rote methods of learning. Memorization of content matter and reproducing the same in the exams to secure good marks and grades has become a desirable way of practice in all most schools. It seems that schools are preparing children for exams rather than for life.

3.      Lack of Infrastructure:

There is a plethora of research that confirms that school infrastructure plays a major role in the education and development of a student. Quantitative research discusses the impact of lighting, class size, buildings, and many other facilities on students and their academic performances.

School infrastructure should include services that make the learning process seamless. It includes physical infrastructure like benches, books, doors, buildings, and playgrounds, and intellectual infrastructures like libraries and well-trained, qualified teachers. Then, there’s also social infrastructure like platforms that foster better interaction among students and teachers. The absence of functioning infrastructure and utilities leads to a significant loss of instructional time, ultimately affecting educational outcomes.

Necessities like toilets and drinking water are available in almost 95% of Indian schools. However, in this era of digitization where nothing works without basic electricity, only 60% of schools have access to electricity, and only 27% have access to computers.

However, despite the common knowledge that school infrastructure plays a crucial role in the performance of a student, its marked absence in schools, especially government schools, calls for a more in-depth analysis of the problem.

 

4.      The medium of Instruction:

The community in general and parents, in particular, are aspiring for English medium education for their children. As a result, many schools with mother tongue medium are being converted into English medium without realizing the capacity of teachers to teach the curriculum in English and students are migrating from vernacular medium schools to English medium ones. Now the students are facing a problem in two ways. Firstly the problem of the English language to make meaning of the textbook content and teaching and secondly the subject difficulty and understanding of the concepts. Language is the basis for understanding the concepts and enabling the students to think and express. Language is critical for fostering all higher-order thinking skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, analysis, imagination, reasoning, creativity Etc. The research studies conducted on language education across the globe showed time and again that children learn better and confidently in their mother tongue. The research evidence also shows that children who are better in their mother tongue can learn many other languages with ease.

5.      Teaching Vacancies and Teacher Education:

Teachers play a vital role in helping people to develop their talents and fulfil their potential for personal growth and well-being. They acquire the complex range of knowledge and skills that they will need as citizens and as workers. It is a school teacher who mediates between a rapidly evolving world and the pupils who are about to enter it. The success of a student depends most of all on the quality of the teacher. With the advent of standards-based reforms, the quality of teachers has become a major concern of policy-makers, college and university presidents, especially at the colleges of teacher education and the public in general. Every child deserves a quality teacher. In an era of increasing standards and accountability in education, teacher quality and teacher training will be more critical than ever. Comparable to the role of a thermometer in diagnosing fever, an assessment of the quality of teacher education can be a status check on the schooling system.

The weak and corrupt teacher Education system is at the core of India’s problems in school education. India has a shortage of more than 10 lakh teachers. Existing ones are poorly distributed. Teacher education is “predominantly in the private sector, accounting for about 92 per cent each of teacher education institutions and student intake. They are also producing poor-quality teachers. It is not uncommon to find several surplus teachers in an urban school while a single teacher may manage 100-plus students in a rural school. Apart from academic work, existing teachers are also engaged in managing midday meals, conducting surveys and in administrative and election duties.

There are 17,000-odd Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs) in India and could generate over 19 lakh freshly trained teachers every year as against the estimated annual requirement of 3 lakh teachers. Not only are these TEIs generating a surplus supply of teachers, but they are also producing poor-quality teachers, given inadequacies of planning, regulation, policy and organizational structures. Another core determinant of quality is the curriculum which must be regularly revamped and revised to ensure that our teacher education system is aligned to global standards. Ideally, given that teacher education requires a right mix of curricular inputs and good-quality pedagogy, experts are rightly advocating for a shift towards integrated four-year subject-specific programmes to be housed in multidisciplinary colleges and universities.

Other vital factors potentially influence the quality of school education

6.      Administration or management/ leadership skills of the Principals/ Headmasters

7.      Nutrition and healthiness in learning and cognitive development

8.      Community/parents ownership of schools and  its functional aspects and feedback to parents and community on children performance against expected learning outcomes.

9.      implementations of co-curricular areas like sports and games, art and crafts, cultural and community service activities

10.  Role of civil society and Govt. policies and funding for education

11.  Representation of sustainable development goals   in the proposed national education policy and into the new curriculum textbooks and teaching-learning practices, to sensitize children on significant global challenges to sustain life on earth

Because of the contemporary situation of the education system in general and children performance in particular as discussed above it is requested to suggest ways and means improve the current education system duly analyzing the selected reasons of the problem/ issue.

In this context, we invite participants to write original and pin-pointed opinions and suggestions on specific issues faced by the Indian Education Sector.