Challenges and Issues in Present Education System

India is the largest democracy with remarkable diversity among its population of 1.2 billion which makes up about 17% of the world’s population. Almost 70% of Indian population is rural. The adult literacy rate stands at about 60% and this is significantly lower in women and minorities. Education in India comprises of government, government aided and private institutions of which nearly 40% are government. With the population growth rate of 1.5%, there is tremendous pressure on the education system to provide quality education at affordable price and improve the literacy rate. Education in India faces following primary challenges:

Quality: 

Maintaining standard of education in more than a million schools nationwide, offering training programs to teachers, and keeping good balance with education system worldwide is a big challenge. Schools vary in size and resources and are forced compromise in the all round development opportunities they must provide to students.

Access :

Having infrastructural constraints and social issues, it becomes harder to make education accessible to all segments of the society (women, minorities, poor).

Cost

The cost of education is very high even for the people and places where it is accessible. E.g. the competitive pressure on students & parents forces them to opt for private tuitions & trainings to supplement the school education.

Social & Cultural

The ethnic diversity in India poses challenges to implement consistent education nationwide. There are more than 300 languages spoken in the country and makes it difficult to offer education tailored to specific social segment. Educating women in some societies is a big issue. Children of poor families are forced to work and miss out the learning opportunities. Illiterate adults have very limited opportunities to get educated at later age in their lives.

Issues in Present Education System:

1. Education System Promotes Rat Race

Our education system basically promotes rat race among our children. They have to read and mug-up entire text book without any understanding of it. So a student who scores 90 out of 100 and comes first actually remains a rat. Children do not have any analytical skills that they must have needed. It is time to change our education system.

2. Education Does Not Builds Persona of a Child

Unfortunately our education system is not helping to develop persona of a child. Remember, it is personality that is more important than academic qualification. As I said earlier, our system demands good numbers from a child in an exam not to show his personality. Hence a child is not well exposed to outer world and he or she might not be able to develop a personality. So this is another flaw in our education system.

3. No Critical Analysis, only Following the Establishment :

Our children are not able to do critical analysis of anything, for example our history, culture and religion. They take the line of establishment or the views of predominant majority. They are simply not able to look things from their own perspective. If you want a society should become a lot better than we must develop a culture of looking at things critically. We are simply failing at this because of our education system. Children must learn to criticize our own culture and other established narratives.

4. Too Much Localism Rather Global Outlook

Our education teaches too much of nationalism and it could create a negative mindset in our younger generation. Loving your country is good thing but just blind love is dangerous. In our schools children are not able to get a global outlook. It means how to see yourself that you are actually a global citizen rather confined to a place or a country.

5. Teachers Themselves are Not Trained and Efficient

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.

6. Medium of Language of our Education System

This is also a big problem that needs to be addressed. We are not able to decide on the medium of language of our education system. Still emphasize is given on English where majority of children cannot understand the language. So how does they are going to understand what teachers are teaching. Moreover, subjects like mathematics, physics and arts have nothing to do with the medium of communication. Hence, over-emphasis on English could be wrong.

7. Education given is Irrelevant to Job-Market

This is perhaps the most apparent failure of our education system that after completing graduation in any discipline students are not able to get jobs. It is simply because skills that are required in a job market are simply not present in a fresh graduate. All that a student is taught in his entire school and college life is almost redundant for job markets. Skill that is required by them is not taught in schools and colleges. Hence our education system is needed to be revamped and must be designed according to our economic policies.

8. Missing Innovation & Creation because Only Aping West

If we talk about the privileged children in India then even they are not able to innovate and create new things. Although they have everything that a child need but still they lack something in them. What they are doing is only aping western culture and not being able to do something new. On the one hand children are not able to go to schools and on other hand, if they are going then are not able to innovate or solve the problems that the country is facing. Hence, this is yet another fundamental problem with our education system.

9. Students Happy in Getting a Highly Paid Salary Job but Lacks Ambition to Become Entrepreneur

Now, in college campuses it has become a common thing that every young student is interested in a getting a job that pays them well. However, they would never like to become an entrepreneur. This lack of ambition does not allow our country to excel in any field. This attitude of our children making them slaves of few multinational companies. Therefore our education system should be designed to make our children a successful entrepreneurs rather going for a salaried job.

10. Gross Failure of Our Education System to End Social Disparity

The last but not the least failure of our education system is after so many years it has not being able to reduce social disparity in our country. In fact, social disparity has gone up. It is such a shame that education itself has become a tool for creating divisions. A child of a rich parent would get good education and a child of poor parent cannot afford even a basic education. Government should intervene and make education its prime responsibility.

Conclusion

Finally, I would say we spend only few percent of our GDP on education, so our government should make education its first priority and try to address issues discussed above. If government is able to take note of these problems then we can definitely overhaul our education system.

The author of this article is  Assistant Professor, Pioneer Institute of Professional Studies