Education System

Kanji, a 10 year old child, who stays in a remote village in Gujarat, daily, go to school which is situated near main temple of Lord Shiva. When asked him about simple mathematical summation or multiplication of two numbers, he was not able to even read that problem statement properly. He was even lacking basic writing and reading skills in English. He is not the only “dull” student in that village; actually 80% of the students of that village are actually remaining uneducated in spite of attending schools regularly.

This is not the only case in that village but in fact almost every other village in India has poor education system. Many schools in villages are struggling with various issues such as poor infrastructure, shortage of teaching equipments, power deficiency, sanitation problem, libraries etc. The main important problem is availability of a good teacher. In some school, only one teacher is provided to handle whole school and the same teacher runs his own small business next to that school. So many teachers don’t come to school to teach students.  These teachers offer bribe to those officials who come for inspection and encourage wide spread corruption in a field of education.  Many children go to school only for mid-day meal. But most of the schools schools provide low quality dal kichdi for the kids who complain it is tasteless. There are allegations that lots of funds are nibbled away and the kids do not get the kind of food as per regulations set by the government. Apparently there is no proper supervision of the food prepared and sent by contractors. Apparently money for high quality food goes to middlemen and even some times teachers and principals. It is a matter of grave concern that the poor children have to eat food which has low nutrition.

Many engineering colleges, which are considered to be home of future technocrats, are lacking basic infrastructure and skilled professors. There are many government and private engineering colleges run without proper accommodation, classrooms, lab facilities and skilled professors. So many students don’t come to attend lectures. . These engineering colleges don’t even provide practical exposure to student which is very important for a future engineer. Professors don’t take lectures in government colleges leaving whole syllabus as burden for students. Due to strikes in many engineering colleges in India, studious students don’t get proper environment for studies.  The curriculum of these colleges is not upgraded frequently enough to match industry’s requirements. The survey has brought out the fact that only 12 per cent of engineering graduates are readily employable and another 52 per cent can be made useful to the industry by further training. But 36 per cent of students are not even trainable. Standard of education in these colleges are often compromised because of issues like Exam paper leakage and bribing to professors. Research and Development actually never happen in these colleges. Less encouragement to Research and Development is one of the reasons why India imports so many technologies from US and other countries.  Engineering -The most interesting learning phase of life for many students often goes without achieving anything.

It is to blame education system of India, when someone says that Indian graduates are lacking necessary job skills. Many countries, from which we had “copied” education system, have already changed their education system according to current technology and modern generation. Our current education system is only capable of creating job seekers but not job makers.

Ravi Soni

MBA- ITBM

2012-2014