Why is the Indian Education system so bad? Ft. @But why?

 Rukmini banerjee is the in charge of an organization called Pratham 


that aims to improve the quality of education in India


As part of its efforts, Pratham runs an annual survey,

 called the Annual Status of Education Report 
that is- ASER

For their 2018 report, Pratham's staff 
surveyed more than 5 Lakh school children 

from nearly 600 districts in rural India

In these surveys, Pratham asks students to undertake
 tasks to measure their reading and maths skills

For example, for reading, students from Grade 1
 to Grade 8 are asked to read this paragraph

For maths, students are asked to perform such subtractions

Unless you have actually spent a lot of time
 in schools in rural India, 

then Pratham's findings would shock you

They found that nearly 50% of Grade V students
 who were asked to read to Grade II's text, 

failed to do the same

Let me say that again-

50% of Grade V students could not read a Grade II text!

For maths, only 24.5% of Grade V students
 who were given the subtraction task

were able to complete

And this is very surprising because

 it's not as if children are not going to school

In fact, only 4.4% of kids don't go to a school

So that means that children are going to school, 
they are just not learning

Now, some of you might think that

such things happen only in
 government schools in rural India

But that is not so

The same problems persist in the 
schools in urban India 

And this will be clearer when we 
discuss about these problems

that are responsible for this issue

"What's surprising is that topper Ruby is 
unaware that 12th class exams

are of 500 marks - not 600."

Now problems with Indian schools education
 can be bucketed into two categories. 

First, is the design of the education system itself

 i.e. how students are taught. 

Second, is governance i.e. how schools are run. 

We'll talk about both these problems in this video

Let us first start with the design 
of the education system

This issue is well explained by two economists, 
Karthik Muralidharan and Abhijeet Singh

Similar to Pratham, they also made students
 undergo a test

 to understand what is their level of learning

Their results weren't too different from what Pratham found. 

See this graph that shows the students' math results. 

On the x-axis is the grade of the student 

and on y-axis is which class should the student
 be in based on his or her test result

They found that among 6th grade students, 
the scores of only two students 

showed that the learning levels
 belonged to the 6th class

There were many, who actually should have been in
 5th, 4th, and even the 1st grade

Think about it yourself! 

Imagine a class of 6th standard- 
Where only two of students

are able to understand what is 
being taught in the class

While the learning level of other students is
 that of 5th, 4th, and even 1st grade!

According to the researchers, most of the students 

are below curricular standards

with the average grade 6 student 2.5 years behind in maths!

2.5 years!

So while the performance of Indian students 
should be this,

 it actually is this

"The fear of the whip makes even the
 lion learn to sit in a chair

But such a lion would be called well trained
not well educated!"

Now the main question- 
why is this happening?

Kartik Muralidharan and Abhijit Singh say that 
an education system can serve two purposes 

First is to impart knowledge and skills. 
To do human development

Second is to filter students for
 colleges and universities

And you can guess what the Indian
 education system is meant for

Indian education system acts as a chalni (sieve). 

The system is designed to set a really high standard

 to produce children who can pass those standards

and will perform well in competitive exams

It basically means that this system 
benefits these students, 

at the cost of these students

And to be honest, no one should
 be really surprised with this argument

Our education system doesn't focus
 on human or skill development.

 It is actually a one-size-fits-all system, 

in which are the students are pressurized
 to pass through the filter 

even if they haven't learnt

This pressure is what forces students and their families

to take  steps like bribing and cheating 
so that they can pass exams

"... of those taking these exams, not hesitating to even climb
 school or college buildings to pass on chits to the examinees..."

And such a system is not only present in schools

but also in colleges and universities

This is why a lot of people graduate with degrees

but do not possess the requisite skills

Which is why, many surveys have shown
 that engineering graduates in India 

are not fit for engineering jobs in the private sector

Now, it may not be possible to develop
 skills in the education system,

"There is one building that houses both the 
High school as well as the Middle school

The High school has 65 pupils that are
 taught all the subjects by 2 teachers"

Now let's discuss the second problem i.e. 
how schools are run in our country. 

 the story of Sangeeta Kashyap, who is 
a government teacher is very interesting

In 1990, she was recruited as a biology teacher 
in Government Ahilya Ashram School in Indore

But in 2014, she became famous. 

 Because she made a record for being absent for 23 years!

 While Sangeeta Kashyap may have made a record
 but there are many others like her

A 2010 survey by Karthik Muralidharan and others found that

In India, 23.6% of teachers had
 remained absent from schools

which costed the Indian governments nearly 
10,000 crore rupees every year

Checking on teacher absenteesim was one reason 
why the Delhi government installed CCTVs in classrooms

Some though argue that the teachers 
aren't to be blamed for this absenteeism.

To an extent, the system is also responsible

Analaysis by Azim Premji Foundation found 

that 18.5% of teachers were absent from their duty

But out of those, only 2.5% of teachers
 were skipping their duty. 

While 9% were on-paid leave and  
7% were on some official duty

Teachers are basically spending a lot of time
 doing administrative tasks

According to the Right to Education Act,

teachers are supposed to teach 220 days in the year

 But a report found that in 2015,
 teachers only taught 42 days,

 spending nearly 81% of their time in non-teaching activities

A government school teacher from 
Rajasthan's Dholpur village in an interview, said

 "When officials visit the school, 
they check whether milk has been served 

and whether the midday meal has
 been prepared and served at the school. 

The emphasis is not on whether the 
Math or Hindi classes took place on the day or not"

Due to these admin duties , some teachers
 even risked their own lives this year

"More than 700 teachers lost their lives

and the reason for this is not some kind of violence

but it is the non adherence to COVID 19 
protocols in the election process

Recently, many teachers passed away due to COVID in UP, 

as they were forced to do election duty 
during the height of the pandemic

So, to summarize the two problems: 

The students are going to school-
 but they are not learning 

And whatever learning potential is left, 
also becomes challenging 

because teachers need to do administrative tasks

So then what are the solutions?

For the first problem, we need to design a system

 that customises learning for students. 

And thankfully, such innovations are taking place in India

For example, Pratham designed a 
Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) program

As a part of this program, Pratham organizes Learning Camps,

, where students are taught not based 
on what grade they are in 

but rather based on their learning level

And this program has proven to be effective
 in helping students learn, according to research

Based on this, the government can also
  expand this approach in the country

The government also recognizes this problem, 
to be honest

That's why it took the right decision of 
reversing the "no-fail" policy it had implemented. 

Earlier, according to this policy,  
students couldn't be failed till Grade 8,

 which meant that even if students hadn't learnt,
 they would be promoted, 

widening the learning gap between students

The solution to the governance problem is quite obvious. 

The admin time of the students should 
be brought down to as little as possible

This could involve using technology
 to reduce manual tasks of officials 

 And could even mean hiring other
 officials to do admin tasks

For instance, they need not hire teachers for poll duty

We think that the India government is too bureaucratic. 

But surprisingly, that's not because 
there are too many government employees

In fact, India has too few government 
employees relative to other countries

But rather it's often because 
the processes here are extremely inefficient

And if we resolve that,

then atleast one problem of the 
Indian education system can be solved

 and we could be a step closer to designing an education system

 that our students deserve...