Reform in education will be back on agenda: Shashi

Observing that India's education policy has remained out of sync with the time, Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor Monday called for reforms in the sector, critical to the country's growth needs. 

"We will work towards putting our reform agenda back on track," Tharoor told a higher education summit here, adding that as India aims to grow at 8.2 to 8.5 percent, the country needs to invest in education and help improve the quality of education. 

The minister said there has been no significant improvement in terms of quality education delivery. The issues of "skill gaps, skill shortages and unemployable graduates still persist". 

Referring to IITs and IIMs, he said: "These are still islands in a sea of mediocrity." 

Also, even though India with 621 universities and 33,500 colleges has one of the largest network of higher education institutes across the world and second in terms of student enrolment, its gross enrolment ratio (GER) of 18.8 per cent in 2011 is still less than the world average of 26 per cent. 

Global experiences indicate a positive correlation between GER and economic growth in the country and point to the need for a minimum of 30 percent to sustain economic growth. 

Tharoor said that while countries in the Middle East and China are wooing foreign universities to set up campuses in their countries, "India turned away many academic suitors who have come calling in recent years". 

Bills relating to higher education reforms such as the Higher Education and Research Bill, 2011 and the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010 are awaiting Parliament's nod. 

The minister said companies are entering the higher education space in the "guise of training". 

"Our University system simply is not producing well educated graduates to meet the needs of Indian companies today." 

He said there has to be a sharp improvement in the quality and quantity of institutions of higher education to match global standards. 

There is a proposal to establish 50 centres for research in frontier areas of science, design innovation centres, innovation centres in different universities and also research parts of the IITs and other technical institutions. 

"If finally established, it would transform the research environment in our country," he added. 

Tharoor also stressed the need for public-private partnership to meet the deficiency in public funding. 

India spends 1.1 percent of its gross domestic product, while South Korea spends 2.4 percent and the US 3.1 percent. 

IIM-A summer placement process starts from today

The premier B-school is all geared up for summer placements for its 2012-14 PGP batch. The cohort-based placement process will begin at Indian Institute Of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) on Wednesday.

Despite the fears of an uncertain economic environment, students are expecting a rise in stipends by 15 to 20 per cent this year. The expectations for IIM-A students come following continued interests of leading companies, who made attractive offers during final placements in March this year.

The placement this year, like last year, will take place in four clusters beginning November 17. The second cluster start on November 9, third on November 16 and the process will conclude on November 17. Members of the student placement committee opined that given the economic scenario, consulting, ecommerce and technology companies will have more to offer than the banks and other financial firms.

In the summer placements last year, out of 379 students, who took part in the summer placement process, only 42 students got overseas opportunities. In 2011, student's top preference continued to be banking, financial services and insurance ( BFSI) sector, with 112 students accepting offers in this area. The other sectors that attracted students in high numbers included consulting which had 81 students accepting offers, FMCG with 45 students and IT with 31 accepted offers.

Education must be more goal-oriented

What do Indian parents want? Indian parents want their children to get a ‘good’ education. Given their resources and their understanding of education, they look for the best school their money can buy. They send their children to tuition or coaching classes and they buy other school materials.

The assumption is that ‘more is better’ — more years of schooling, more supplemental inputs into schooling and more expenditure. For most parents, whether rural or urban, high income or low income, ‘success’ means doing well in exams. Exam performance is the only way to get to the next stage, whether it is to further education or into the workplace.

What does the government want? The Right to Education law requires government to ensure that every school in the country has a specified set of inputs and processes.

Here the belief is that once these are in place, ‘education’ will be guaranteed. Underlying the government’s push to provide inputs is the assumption that more is better but appropriate number of qualified teachers, classrooms, days of teaching are needed. Going by what is stated in the RTE document, ‘success’ means that all schools have all the mandated inputs and processes, all children in India in the age group 6 to 14 are enrolled in school and all children complete eight years of schooling.

What does the evidence say? Data from all sources in India point to enrollment levels that are well above 96%. Putting both centre and state together, expenditures on elementary education in India have risen from Rs. 62,000 crores in 2006-7 to an estimated figure of Rs. 112,000 crores in 2010-11.

While there are still input gaps, the number of teachers and basic facilities is rising consistently each year.

What is stuck is what children are learning in school. Regardless of what you feel about learning outcome measurements done by Assessment Survey Evaluation Research (ASER) or by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the evidence points to the fact that the value added for every year spent in school in India, is low and unchanging.

ASER uses basic reading and arithmetic tasks for assessment; the same set of tasks are given to all surveyed children from age 5 to 16. The exercise is carried out in every rural district in India every year.

While there could be discussion on the measures and methods, the fact remains that without basic reading, and arithmetic skills, children will not go far in school or in life. PISA is a more sophisticated international effort which measures what 15 year-olds can do. Again, there can be debate on how or what PISA does but the message from both exercises (as well as from any recent empirical evidence on student outcomes in India) is clear.

There is a crisis. The crisis is about the capabilities that every child in India should have by the time she or he finishes each stage of schooling. This crisis cannot be tackled simply by believing that more is better or proceeding as if it is business as usual. Concrete, clear, new pathways connecting inputs and processes to outcomes have to be built.

These pathways must be understood and must be implementable by schools, parents and teachers.

Clarity is key
Both in policy and in practice, our education system needs at least three fundamental and urgent shifts. First, capabilities and learning goals need to be articulated for each stage of the education system. These goals need to be clearly stated and be understood by ordinary people. Goals need to be such that most children can achieve them at each stage.

Clear articulation of goals will help everyone to understand that simply knowing textbook content or doing well in exams is not the objective of the education system. Parents and communities must understand what the school system is supposed to achieve. This understanding can lead to local accountability and also to support for schools.

Second, all elements in the school system need to be aligned in both design and implementation to maximise the possibility of reaching the goals.

These elements include appropriate allocation of funds, teacher preparation, curriculum, textbooks, methods of teaching, materials, organisation of schools and monitoring. A continuous system of field support and review will allow refinements and changes to be made to figure out what works.

Third, in a country with a weak culture and appetite for measurement, simple methods have to be used on scale to gauge the progress being made every year. Such measurements need to be carried out by both the government and citizens.

The measurements should help school systems internally to refine and review their procedures and enable parents to pressurise schools to do better.

Measurement also means engagement — in understanding the situation and figuring out what to do next.

India has almost reached universal enrollment. This is an impressive achievement. This happened because everyone understood the goal. Policymakers, planners, practitioners and parents all understood what had to be done: get every child in school. To have every child in school and learning well, we need a similar clarity, priority and alignment for a new set of goals and figure out new effective pathways for achieving them soon.

Schools told to upload RTE info by Dec 31

Ironically, most of the violators (schools) are situated in areas either surrounded by middle class localities or slum areas. "Certainly, it's a serious issue. The department is looking into all possibilities to provide remedies and to take punitive action against them," said Sharma. The Act does allow them to serve notices, he added but it will be of no use as the session has crossed midway.

The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) expressed shock over how 40% of the schools grossly violated RTE Act-2009. "The commission will look into the matter," said SCPCR member Vishamber. The department has refused to divulge the names of any school till they submit the final report.

Many violator schools claimed that they were not against admitting EWS students as the government reimbursement was higher than their own annual fees. "The government is expected to give around Rs 8,000 per child annually, which is more than the annual fees charged by many schools," reads one reply sent by a school.

To nail these violators, the education department has directed all schools to upload RTE information - number of seats and date of admission on their website by December 31. The circular reads: "Schools should compulsory publish material relating to RTE to help create awareness on this Act. They should also set up helpline kiosks during admissions to render all possible help to the beneficiaries."

Proposed amendments to Maharashtra Universities Act

The committee of technology-based examination reforms in state universities has suggested amendments to the existing Maharashtra Universities (MU) Act, 1994, to enable the use and integration of technology in the examination processes. Some of the key suggestions are:
There is a need to modify clause 32 (5e) of the MU Act to allow question bank or question paper bank systems. As of now, the clause states that: "The (exam) committee should obtain three sets of question papers in sealed covers in the respective subject. Chairman of the committee should draw at random one of such sealed covers containing question papers. The selected cover with seals intact should then be sent to the (printing) press."

Different universities such as the Maharashtra Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Science University ( MAFSU); Babasaheb Ambedkar Technical University ( BATU) and the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) have variations to the above mentioned clause in their corresponding acts, but to the similar effect. The clauses are needed to be modified to allow usage of IT in setting question papers with built in security measures.

Separate clause be inserted fixing responsibility on the pro-VC, dean or director of evaluation for imparting training to teachers and administrative staff on usage of technology, new trends in the assessment processes such as cognitive and summative assessment, creation and use of repository of questions, use of technology in paper setting and conduct of examination.

Changes needed to ensure that the controller of examination (CoE) or director of evaluation are part of the decision-making process instead of the prevailing system of being invitees on university committees. This will remove difficulties faced in recruitment of staff or availing of finances related to examination section.

Financial Requirement

For financing the information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives in state universities, the reforms panel has suggested that the larger universities, with surplus amount left from exam related revenue, may utilize the same for implementing IT initiatives.

Smaller universities may collaborate with the larger universities and enter into an agreement with service providers jointly. Due to a large number of students of both the universities combined and economies of the scale, the cost per student of the IT solution should be reduced in comparison to purchase of IT solution by smaller university on its own.

Smaller universities can share the infrastructure such as data centre, etc, of the larger universities and use in-house developed softwares of larger universities.

The universities may opt for either Capex-Opex or transaction-based fee models for funding IT initiatives. In the first model, the universities invest upfront in the capital expenditure (Capex) of deploying hardware and software solutions. In the following years, the expenditure is then limited to operational expenditure (Opex). In the second model, the universities employ services of a service provider whom they pay per use on number of transactions. The fee per transaction is fixed slab.

The committee has recommended that examination-related revenue should not be used as general revenue by the universities. It should be used only for examination related expenditure.