EU India Education

Forum

A step towards promoting the quality in our education system.

Introduction

Every year, new schools and colleges are being opened in almost all cities in India, but

quality education is still a long-awaited dream for millions of Indian students. In schools

and colleges, lots of attention is given to theory and books and practical knowledge is

completely ignored. When these students pass the exam, they forget all the things they

have studied due to lack of practical experience. In India, parents and teachers expect

their students to score high in the exam (rather than acquiring the quality knowledge)

and thus the education becomes a rat race. Practical knowledge and skill-based education

are still far away from the reach of students studying in schools and colleges.

We need to ensure quality in our education system. And there is a need to build up their

career not only proving the diploma & degrees. This can be achieved by involving them

into practical & problem-solving projects with the use of creative and critical thinking.

Our Education System

India is second-largest country by population with approximately 1.4 billion and India is

set to become the most populous country by 2030. In India. India, with more than ~1.4

million schools and more than 230 million enrolments, is home to one of the largest and

complex school education systems in the world along with China. Although India has

made phenomenal progress since independence in the field of education still the quality

education is a dream from every Indian.

But still, India is nowhere near the top 10 countries when it comes to economy but

according to the Legatum Prosperity Index 2015, India ranks 92 among 142 countries

in the Education, which is way behind the ranks of other developing countries such as

Philippines (76), Malaysia (51), Sri Lanka (59) and many more.

According to the 2011 census, the literacy rate in India was found to be 74.04 per cent.

Among the states, Kerala leads the literacy rate followed by Goa, Tripura, Mizoram,

Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Sikkim. The lowest literacy rate in India is seen in

the state of Bihar. India has seen a dramatic increase in the literacy rates over the past

decade when it was registered as 64.83 per cent overall.

More recently, two prominent policies of the Indian government—the Sarva Shiksha

Abhiyan (SSA) 2001 and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education

(RTE) Act, 2009 have seen education priorities rise amongst households and catalysed

improvements in educational performance.

Major Challenges

Reforms in the education sector have been one of the top priorities of the governments

in India. Constant efforts have been taken continuously to effectively revamp the

education system in India to provide equitable access to education. However, reforms can

only be possible if it is implemented properly and it is an extremely difficult challenge

for us. For a democratic country like India with such a diverse population,

implementation of a pan India reform becomes a tough task owing to its varied political,

economic and social situations. This calls for looking into the various barriers to

implementing educational reforms —

Interests and ideologies

While carrying out reform or implementing a policy, ministers and the ruling party, who

are the key players are highly influenced by their personal opinions, interests and

ideologies. Textbook and curriculum reforms have been difficult primarily because the

ruling government would insert their political and ideological views into the textbook.

This can be attributed to the government politics model of policy implementation which

takes into consideration individual behaviour — an important factor in decision-making.

Systemic and structural issues

Education reforms have been majorly ineffective because of the deeply rooted systemic

and structural problems within the system. These difficulties can be understood by

Elmore’s organizational models which can be applied to assess the implementation of

social programmes like education reforms. Education reforms are focussed on inputs

rather than learning outcomes as the performance of schools is assessed only by

infrastructure and midday meals. Moreover, teachers tasked with raising student

standards are burdened with administrative tasks, large class size, lack of training etc.

As a result, they resort to rote-learning techniques to cope up with the mounting work

pressures. Budgetary constraints and lack of manpower and technological resources can

be the other possible barriers.

Universalization of good quality basic education:

Almost two decades of basic education programs have expanded access to schools in

India. The number of out of school children decreased from 25 million in 2003 to an

estimated 8.1 million in 2009. Most of those still not enrolled are from marginalized

social groups. Two issues remain:

Reaching some 8 million children not yet enrolled and ensuring retention of all

students till they complete their elementary education (Grade 8)

Ensuring education is of good quality so it improves learning levels and cognitive

skills.

Also, India still faces challenges in providing quality Early Childhood Development

programs for all children.

Expanding secondary education and improving quality:

Secondary education yields social and economic benefits but constitutes the primary

bottleneck in the education system today. Access, equity, management and quality all

need major improvement. Things to consider:

While more than 95 per cent of children attend primary school, just 40 per cent of

Indian adolescents attend secondary school (Grades 9-12).

Curriculum and teaching practices need upgrading to impart more relevant skills,

such as reasoning skills, problem-solving, learning-to-learn, and critical and

independent thinking.

Public-private partnerships need to be expanded to tap into the potential offered

by the 60 per cent of secondary schools which are privately managed in India

Reforming vocational education and training:

More and higher quality vocational education is required to adequately prepare youth for

current jobs. This requires:

Expanding vocational training in high-growth sectors to overcome existing skills

shortages

Setting common standards for training and reforming institutional governance for

greater private sector involvement so that training can dynamically adapt to

changing labour market demand.

Ensuring accountability and good use of resources.

Expanding and Improving Technical and Tertiary Education:

India’s tertiary education system is one of the largest in the world with over ten million

students. Nevertheless, only 1 out of 10 young people has access to higher education, and

this is predominantly among the well-off. Tertiary education needs to be expanded,

especially among low and middle-income students. This will require reforms in the

governance structure of higher education, decentralization, and major investments in

faculty development.

Evaluating the Dual Educational - versus the School-Based

System

It is generally found within cross-country comparisons that those maintaining a

substantial dual apprenticeship system, such as Austria, Denmark, Germany and

Switzerland, exhibit a much smoother transition from school to work, low NEET rates

and youth unemployment, and below-average repeated unemployment spells than other

countries (Quintini and Manfredi 2009; Quintini, Martin and Martin 2007). However, it

must be noted that labour market transitions of youths only provide partial evidence for

the relative performance of the training systems in the respective countries, with a causal

analysis clearly impeded by the co-variation of other relevant institutional factors.

Further problems arise from the absence of a unified framework for defining the

respective training options and collecting data on the costs and benefits experienced by

the state, firms and trainees (Hoeckel 2008).

A more extensive area of research exploits the co-existence of apprenticeships and other

types of vocational schooling within countries to generally infer about their relative

effectiveness and more specifically the relevance of firm-specific skills. For the case of

Germany, studies by Winkelmann (1996) and more recently Parey (2009) show that

participation in the dual apprenticeship has the particular advantage compared with

other options of the vocational schooling system of improving early labour market

attachment and faster and more structured integration into the labour market. However,

this advantage fades over time as other education participants find a foothold in the

labour market. Furthermore, the studies show that the fast initial transition does not

hinge on finding employment in the training firm, suggesting that firm-specific skills do

not play a major role in the German apprenticeship system. Investigating wage

differentials, Parey (2009) does not find any significant differences in return to the

training options in the early working life. A recent study by Adda et al. (2011) considers

the relative employment and wage profiles of participants in the dual apprenticeship

system and unskilled workers in Germany over 15 years following initial labour market

entry. They find that having participated in formal, work-related training (the

apprenticeship) leads to overall higher wages compared to pure on-the-job training

(unskilled) and a stronger labour market attachment, thus compensating workers for

initially low wages during the apprenticeship training.

Similar results on the performance of apprenticeship training versus school-based

training are found in studies by Bonnal et al. (2002) for France and Plug and Groot (1998)

for the Netherlands. Correcting for the negative selection of youths into the dual

apprenticeship, both studies find that apprenticeships perform significantly better in

integrating youths into their first employment relationship by the higher labour market

relation of their training. However, again this advantage is found to fade over time and

is not associated with higher wages. A recent study by Alet and Bonnal (2011) shows that

young people integrated into the dual apprenticeship system rather than vocational

schooling in France are more likely to successfully complete their final exam and

undertake further education.

In countries where the dual apprenticeship is not seen as a "trainer of last resort" for

lower-skilled individuals, the apprenticeship system is also found to partially act as a

mechanism to level the playing field for youths with low school performance. Exploiting

information on PISA test scores to capture differences in ability across students, Bertschy

et al. (2009) show that lower-performing youths in Switzerland tend to select into less

demanding apprenticeship occupations and are thereby penalized in the labour market –

however, their initial test-score (as signal of their ability) is no longer important in

determining labour market outcomes. The bottom line is that, once the selection is

accounted for, the dual system seems to offer an advantage of improving early labour

market transitions (measured in a variety of ways).

EU India Education Forum

Education continues to remain a top priority for the Government of India with rising

budgetary allocations. But being the most fundamental need of any developing country,

why the education system in India is worse and this is the known fact. We all know it;

but why?

Because our education system focuses more on theory rather than practical, basically

promotes rat race among our children. They have to read and mug-up the entire textbook

without any understanding of it. So a student who scores 90 out of 100 and comes first

actually remains a rat. According to a survey regarding the achievement level of the

students of government primary schools, it was found that the students of 5th standard

are unable to solve the mathematics of 3rd standard and so on. And this is the reality of

primary education in India.

On the one hand, children are not able to go to schools and on other hands, if they are

going then are not able to learn properly, innovate or solve the problems that the country

is facing. Hence, Children do not have any analytical skills that they must have needed.

To make things worse, our teachers themselves are not sufficiently trained to teach kids.

They do not have proper training that how they are going to impart values in children

that are going to change the future of the country. If they can teach properly then the

government does not have enough salary to pay.

Hence, to improve our education system teachers should be better trained and more

importantly better paid. And if you want a society should become a lot better than we

must develop a culture of looking at think critically and promote this at the school level.

Finally, I would say we spend only a few percents of our GDP on education and it is time

to change our education system.

The Europe India Foundation for Excellence incorporates all International educational

elements together to make the next generation of dynamic, well-equipped with the calibre

to excel in the global environment and come up with following ideas for providing the

students with the necessary international exposure. For that, the foundation along with

Europe India Chamber of Commerce created this EU India Educational Forum to address

the challenges in our education system and to promote quality education in India. The

Forum will act as a platform between India & Europe which aims to promote the quality

in our education system and bring the best expertise from all over the world especially

from Europe.

Goal/Objective

The goal is to ensure the quality education for our kids, link education with innovation &

hands-on training, encompassing research, deliver the best development outcomes to

resource in rural communities.

Scope of Work

Creating a platform between Europe & India with the aims of bringing the best

expertise from Europe to India in the domain of education, skill development, art

& culture, sports and Innovation.

Continuous mounting the delegation from EU to India and India to Europe for

sharing the knowledge, Know how’s, resources development, occupational

standards, certifications, and focusing in Joint ventures for developing & delivering

these programs in India.

Collaboration for Continuous organizing events, conferences, study tours and

roadshows in India & Europe to promoting the level of education, culture & art

training of the teachers, new curriculum formulation, certification etc

Conducting research & white paper and 0ther forms of collaboration for mutual

benefits.

Proposed Elements

1) Pedagogy & Teachers Training

Pedagogy is the way that content is delivered, including the use of various methodologies

that help different children to engage with educational content and learn more

effectively, recognizing that individuals learn in different ways. Training in pedagogy can

be provided to teachers through pre-service training at teacher training colleges, as well

as through in-service training and other continuing professional development.

India is facing dual challenges in both at the primary and secondary level, one hand we

are facing the issue of lacking teachers in the school & colleges and on another hand there

are 11 Lakh untrained teachers in the workforce. So it is not just recruitment which needs

to be on the priority list but also a proper set up for teacher training is the top priority of

Union and the State governments. Hence EIFE comes up with the Pedagogy & Teacher

Training in India too for teacher training in the coming years so as to avoid any future

crisis of untrained teachers.

2) Short term Practical Training Program

Unfortunately, our education system is not helping to develop the persona of a child.

Remember, it is a personality that is more important than academic qualification. Our

system demands good numbers from a child in an exam not to show his personality.

Hence a child is not well exposed to the outer world and he or she might not be able to

develop a personality. Our children are not able to do a critical analysis of anything or

would not able to perform in unexpected situations. It’s essential to understand that

without growing a personality or persona of a child we can’t make them sufficient to face

the challenges in life.

To develop the persona in student and make them capable to think critically the

foundation would like to propose a very basic practical training program. The objective

of these practical training provides the knowledge to understand the challenges in life,

developing the think critically and develop problem-solving skills.

First Aid Course

Fire Extinguisher Training

Child Abuse Prevention

Clean India/ Swatch Bharat

Waste management

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Training on menstrual health for girls

Environment Protection and conservation

Basic Food Hygiene

Training on Problem Solving – Projects

Fear Challenges

3) Expedition Education - International Study Tour

In today’s world, the practical exposer is equally important for the growth of the student

and Expedition Education is a way to explore the world and learn new things by

themselves. Expedition Education combines travel and authentic educational experiences

by exploring, learning, doing, connecting with different people. We connect kids to the

wider world and excite their passion for learning. It provides opportunities for students

to study or gain experience outside of India by visiting different Industries, Companies,

Universities, Schools and places.

Nowadays, the Expedition Education - International Study Tour become an integral part

of our education system. We understand that theoretical knowledge is not enough for a

successful professional career. With an aim to go beyond academics, Expedition

Education provides students with a practical perspective of the workplace including the

chance to learn another language and to experience life within a different culture. The

objective of a visit is to provide students with insight regarding the internal working of

companies in different countries with different cultures.

It provides students with an opportunity to learn practically through interaction, working

methods and employment practices. It gives them exposure to current work practices as

opposed to possibly theoretical knowledge being taught at the school/college. And

International Industrial visits not only provide an opportunity to interact with industries

and know more about the industrial environment but also provide international exposure

to countries emerging as economic powerhouses, their working culture and societies.

Expedition Education - International Study Tour is the culmination of their beliefs …

Learning requires movement and active participation

The road to knowledge and wisdom begins with a powerful sense of wonder

The most important thing we can give our children is a hunger for discovery

The main objective of the Expedition Education - International Study Tour is to provide a

unique experience to the students and exchange and share good practices which could be

replicated to improve the efficiency, production and competence in their respective field

of study.

Vaibhav Agarwal

Chief Marketing Officer EIFE & MIG

(M) : +91 9818926800,

+91 9811513122

(E) : vagarwal@eife.org

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