Context

• 5 September is teacher’s day. Teachers’ Day or Shikshak Divas marks the birthday of the country’s first Vice President (1952–1962) who went on to become the second President of India (1962-1967), a scholar, philosopher, Bharat Ratna awardee, a highly-respected teacher and prolific statesman – Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan.

What are the issue with teachers?

• Less attractive career: It seems that teaching the young is no longer an attractive profession because systemic conditions are so discouraging. It points towards the reforms that education now requires.
• Diversion from teaching: Teaching children is not regarded as a serious profession. Non-teaching duties are routinely assigned, and now the digital regime has washed away the few traces of professional autonomy even in the best of private schools.
• Bureaucratic over vigilance: So deep is official suspicion of their integrity that many states have installed CCTV cameras in classrooms. That is not the only form of insult teacher’s face. They have little power to assert their professional dignity in the face of bureaucratic or managerial authority.
• Marginalisation by coaching institutes: The Indian school teacher now faces new social and economic forces. Coaching institutions have marginalised the secondary-level science teacher. All over the country, children are allowed to bunk school to attend NEET and JEE coaching classes. Science and math teachers were, in any case, aware that their pedagogic effectiveness would be measured by an unreformed examination system.
• Reliability issue due to internet overuse: Social Science teachers are coping with a different kind of challenge to justify their knowledge and interpretation. Children’s access to the internet exposes them to a wilderness of socio-political ideas and information. It is not easy for social science teachers to convince children that they are more reliable than a YouTube video or a WhatsApp message.

Catchy line in this context for value addition

Jinke jiwan me guru nahi, unka jiwan abhi shuru nahi.

How to address these challenges

• Supporting teacher control over curriculum and instruction: Classical top-down school leadership needs to be re-examined, and teachers must be recognized as professionals who have expertise to make good learning decisions for their students.
• Establish adequate pay scales and financial incentives: Compensation systems signal what skills and attributes are valued and what kinds of contributions are rewarded.
• Establish and conduct personnel evaluation systems: Teachers need regular feedback and accurate information on job expectations.
• Provide adequate planning time for teachers: While all teachers work under tremendous time constraints, experienced teachers generally are able to complete their planning more quickly. For new teachers, adequate planning time can allay feelings of being overwhelmed.
• Provide a structure for team planning and teaching: Teachers often report feeling isolated in their classrooms. Team planning and teaching can be an important step in retaining a high quality teaching force.

Conclusion

• Since the teacher is the pivot of the entire educational system and is the main catalytic agent for introducing desirable changes in the teaching learning process, all attempts need be made for motivating teachers to become innovative and creative. It goes without saying that a self-motivated and really industrious teacher can utilise his own resources to keep themselves abreast of new knowledge and skills.

Mains question

Q. It seems that teaching the young is no longer an attractive profession because systemic conditions are so discouraging. Critically analyse.

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Context

India, after half a century of keeping its higher education doors closed to foreigners, is on the cusp of opening itself to the world.

Higher education reforms

• Currently, India does not allow the entry and the operation of foreign university branch campuses.
• The NEP 2020 was a turning point for the entry of foreign universities as it recommended allowing foreign universities ranked in the “top 100” category to operate in India — under somewhat unrealistic conditions.
• Internationalism: The wide-ranging National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promises higher education reforms in many areas, and internationalisation is prominent among them.
• Strengthening India’s soft power: Among the underlying ideas is to strengthen India’s “soft power” through higher education collaboration, bringing new ideas and institutions from abroad to stimulate reform and show “best practice”, and in general to ensure that Indian higher education, for the first time, is a global player.
• In February 2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, announced that “world-class foreign universities and institutions would be allowed in the planned business district in Gujarat’s GIFT City”
•  It was reported that in April 2022, the University Grants Commission (UGC) formed a committee to draft regulations to allow foreign institutions in the “top 500” category to establish campuses in India — realising that more flexibility was needed
• Bringing global experience to India: Establishing branch campuses of top foreign universities is a good idea as this will bring much-needed global experience to India.

Challenges

• Globally, branch campuses, of which there are around 300 now, provide a mixed picture.
• Many are aimed at making money for the sponsoring university — and this is not what India wants.
• It will not be easy to attract foreign universities to India and even more difficult to create the conditions for them to flourish.
• Many of those top universities are already fully engaged overseas and would likely require incentives to set up in India.
• Further, there are smaller but highly regarded universities outside the ‘top 500’ category that might be more interested.
• Universities around the world that have academic specialisations focusing on India, that already have research or faculty ties in the country, or that have Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in senior management positions may be easier to attract.
• What is most important is to prevent profit-seekers from entering the Indian market and to encourage foreign institutions with innovative educational ideas and a long-term commitment.
• Many host countries have provided significant incentives, including building facilities and providing necessary infrastructure.
• Foreign universities are highly unlikely to invest significant funds up front.
• A big challenge will be India’s “well-known” bureaucracy, especially the multiple regulators.

Opportunities

• India is seen around the world as an important country and an emerging higher education power.
• It is the world’s second largest “exporter” of students, with 4,61,792 students studying abroad (according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics).
• And India has the world’s second largest higher education system.
• Foreign countries and universities will be eager to establish a “beachhead” in India and interested in providing opportunities for home campus students to learn about Indian business, society, and culture to participate in growing trade and other relations.
• Benefits of branch campuses: International branch campuses, if allowed, could function as a structurally different variant of India’s private university sector.
• Branch campuses, if effectively managed, could bring much needed new ideas about curriculum, pedagogy, and governance to Indian higher education — they could be a kind of educational laboratory.

Current initiatives

• There has been modest growth of various forms of partnerships between Indian and foreign institutions.
• The joint PhD programmes offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay-Monash Research Academy and the University of Queensland-Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Academy of Research (UQIDAR), both with Australian partners, are some examples.
• Another example is the Melbourne-India Postgraduate Academy (MIPA). It is a joint initiative of the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur with the University of Melbourne.
• MIPA provides students with an opportunity to earn a joint degree accredited both in India and Australia: from the University of Melbourne and one of the partnering Indian institutions.
• These partnerships suggest that India could offer opportunities for international branch campuses as well.

Challenges

• Globally, branch campuses, of which there are around 300 now, provide a mixed picture.
• Many are aimed at making money for the sponsoring university — and this is not what India wants.
• It will not be easy to attract foreign universities to India and even more difficult to create the conditions for them to flourish.
• Many of those top universities are already fully engaged overseas and would likely require incentives to set up in India.
• Further, there are smaller but highly regarded universities outside the ‘top 500’ category that might be more interested.
• Universities around the world that have academic specialisations focusing on India, that already have research or faculty ties in the country, or that have Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in senior management positions may be easier to attract.
• What is most important is to prevent profit-seekers from entering the Indian market and to encourage foreign institutions with innovative educational ideas and a long-term commitment.
• Many host countries have provided significant incentives, including building facilities and providing necessary infrastructure.
• Foreign universities are highly unlikely to invest significant funds up front.
• A big challenge will be India’s “well-known” bureaucracy, especially the multiple regulators.

Conclusion

After examining national experiences elsewhere, clear policies can be implemented that may be attractive to foreign universities. Once policies are in place, the key to success will be relationships among universities.

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Context

Faced with an unprecedented education emergency, this is the time to substantially ramp up public spending on education and make it more effective.

Low allocation for education

• UNESCO’s 2030 framework for action suggests public education spending levels of between 4% and 6% of GDP and 15%-20% of public expenditure.
• A recent World Bank study notes that India spent 14.1 % of its budget on education, compared to 18.5% in Vietnam and 20.6% in Indonesia, countries with similar levels of GDP.
• But since India has a higher share of population under the age of 19 years than these countries, it should actually be allocating a greater share of the budget than these countries.
• Public spending on education in most States in India was below that of other middle-income countries even before the pandemic.
• Most major States spent in the range of 2.5% to 3.1% of State income on education, according to the Ministry of Education’s Analysis of Budgeted Expenditure on Education.
• This compares with the 4.3% of GDP that lower-middle-income countries spent, as a group, between 2010-11 and 2018-19.
•  In the 2021-22 Budget, the Central government’s allocation for the Education Department was slashed compared to the previous year, even though the size of the overall budget increased.
• Of the major States and Delhi, eight either reduced or just about maintained their budget allocation for education departments in 2021-22 compared to 2020-21.

Way forward

• The vast majority of the 260 million children enrolled in preschool and school, especially in government schools, did not have meaningful structured learning opportunities during the 20 months of school closures.
• Infusion of resources: The education system now needs not only an infusion of resources for multiple years, but also a strengthened focus on the needs of the poor and disadvantaged children.
• What it is spent on and how effectively resources are used are important.
• It is clear what additional resources are required for.
• The needs include: back-to-school campaigns and re-enrolment drives; expanded nutrition programmes; reorganisation of the curriculum to help children learn language and mathematics in particular, and support their socio-emotional development, especially in early grades; additional learning materials; teacher training and ongoing support; additional education programmes and collection and analysis of data.
• Focus on teacher training:  How does expenditure on technology compare with the amounts spent on teacher training, which represents just 0.15% of total estimated expenditure on elementary education?
• Teachers are central to the quality of education, so why does India spend so little on teacher training?

The opacity of education finance data in India

• The opacity of education finance data makes it difficult to comprehend this.
• For instance, the combined Central and State government spending on education was estimated to be 2.8% of GDP in 2018-19, according to the Economic Survey of 2020-21.
• This figure had remained at the same level since 2014-15.
• On the other hand, data from the Ministry of Education indicates that public spending on education had reached 4.3% of GDP in the same year, rising from 3.8% of GDP in 2011-12.
• The difference in the figures is due to the inclusion of expenditure on education by departments other than the Education Department.
•  Including expenditure on education by, for example, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (on Anganwadis, scholarships, etc.), the Ministry of Science and Technology (for higher education) is of course legitimate.
• However, the composition of these expenditures is not readily available.

Conclusion

The questions for this Budget should be clear. How much additional funds are being allocated for different levels of education by the principal departments in 2021-22? Are the funds being spent on the specific measures required to address the education emergency facing the children?

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Context

The ranking of State-run higher education institutions (HEIs) together with centrally funded institutions using the National Institutional Ranking Framework, or the NIRF, is akin to comparing apples and oranges.

Institute data

• According to an All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019-20 report, there are 1,043 HEIs.
• Of these, 48 are central universities.
• 135 are institutions of national importance,
• 1 is a central open university,
• 386 are State public universities,
• 5 are institutions under the State legislature act,
• 14 are State open universities,
• 327 are State private universities,
• 1 is a State private open university,
• 36 are government deemed universities,
• 10 are government aided deemed universities.
• 80 are private deemed universities.

Comparison of financial health of State HEI with Central HEIs

• A close study of the above data shows that 184 are centrally funded institutions (out of 1,043 HEIs in the country) to which the Government of India generously allocates its financial resources in contrast to inadequate financial support provided by State governments to their respective State public universities and colleges.
• The Central government earmarked the sums, ₹7,686 crore and ₹7,643.26 crore to the IITs and central universities, respectively, in the Union Budget 2021.
• Ironically, out of the total student enrolment, the number of undergraduate students is the largest (13,97,527) in State public universities followed by State open universities (9,22,944).

How NIRF ranks the education institutions?

• Parameters set by the core committee of experts: The NIRF outlines a methodology to rank HEIs across the country, which is based on a set of metrics for the ranking of HEIs as agreed upon by a core committee of experts set up by the then Ministry of Human Resources Development (now the Ministry of Education), Government of India
• The NIRF ranks HEIs on five parameters: teaching, learning and resources; research and professional practice; graduation outcome; outreach and inclusivity, and perception.

Where do State HEIs lag on NIRF parameters?

• Teaching, learning and resources include metrics viz. student strength including doctoral students, the faculty-student ratio with an emphasis on permanent faculty, a combined metric for faculty with the qualification of PhD (or equivalent) and experience, and financial resources and their utilisation.
• Low faculty strength in State HEIs: In the absence of adequate faculty strength, most State HEIs lag behind in this crucial NIRF parameter for ranking.
• The depleting strength of teachers has further weakened the faculty-student ratio with an emphasis on permanent faculty in HEIs.
• Research and professional practise encompasses a combined metric for publications, a combined metric for quality of publications, intellectual property rights/patents and the footprint of projects, professional practice and executive development programmes.
• Need for modernisation of laboratories: As most laboratories need drastic modernisation in keeping pace with today’s market demand, it is no wonder that State HEIs fare miserably in this parameter as well while pitted against central institutions.

Issues with comparing State HEIs with Central HEIs

• The difference in financial allocations diregarded: The financial health of State-sponsored HEIs is an open secret with salary and pension liabilities barely being managed.
• Hence, rating such institutions vis-à-vis centrally funded institutions does not make any sense.
• No cost-benefit analysis carried out: No agency carries out a cost-benefit analysis of State versus centrally funded HEIs on economic indicators such as return on investment the Government made into them vis-à-vis the contribution of their students in nation building parameters such as the number of students who passed out serving in rural areas, and bringing relief to common man.
• While students who pass out of elite institutions generally prefer to move abroad in search of higher studies and better career prospects, a majority of State HEIs contribute immensely in building the local economy.
• Issues in embracing technologies: State HEIs are struggling to embrace emerging technologies involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, block chains, smart boards, handheld computing devices, adaptive computer testing for student development.

Consider the question “What are the challenges in the ranking of Higher Education Institutions in India? What are the issues faced by State HEI?”

Conclusion

Ranking HEIs on a common scale purely based on strengths without taking note of the challenges and the weaknesses they face is not justified. It is time the NIRF plans an appropriate mechanism to rate the output and the performance of institutes in light of their constraints and the resources available to them.

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Context

There is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations. This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society.

Enhanced enrollment

• Reservation: The extension of reservations to OBCs and EWS increased the enrollment of students from these socio-economic backgrounds.
• Increased education institutions: In addition, the massive increase in the number of higher education institutions has led to an enlargement of the number of available seats — there are more than 45,000 universities and colleges in the country.
• The Gross Enrollment Ratio for higher education, which is the percentage of the population between the ages of 18-23 who are enrolled, is now 27 per cent.

Issues of employment opportunities

• Unfortunately, the spectacular increase in enrollment in recent years has not been matched by a concomitant increase in jobs.
•  Employment opportunities in the government have not increased proportionately and may, in fact, have decreased with increased contractualisation.
•  Even in the private sector, though the jobs have increased with economic growth, most of the jobs are contractual.
• Worse, the highest increase in jobs is at the lowest end, especially in the services sector — delivery boys for e-commerce or fast food for instance.
• Thus what we see is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations.
• This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society, some of which we are already witnessing.

Way forward

• A reduction in the rate of increase of universities and colleges might not be politically feasible given the huge demand for higher education.
• Increase vocation institutions: A concurrent increase in the number of high-quality vocational institutions is something that can be done.
• There are upwards of 15,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country currently.
• Upgrading the existing ITIs, opening many more new ones with high-quality infrastructure and updated curriculum is something which should be done urgently.
• There is a scheme to upgrade some ITIs to model ITIs.
• However, what is required is not a selective approach but a more broad-based one that uplifts the standards of all of them besides adding many more new ones.
• Industry might be more than willing to pitch in with funding (via the CSR route) as well as equipment, training for the faculty and internships for students.

Conclusion

These steps could help mitigate the mismatch between employment opportunities and the increasing number of educated youth in the country.

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The Tamil Nadu Assembly has passed a bill exempting the State from the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to undergraduate (UG) medical courses.

About NEET

The NEET has replaced the formerly All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT).

It is an all-India pre-medical entrance test for students who wish to pursue undergraduate medical (MBBS), dental (BDS) and AYUSH (BAMS, BUMS, BHMS, etc.) courses.

The exam is conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA).

TN law: Permanent Exemption for NEET

• The Bill exempts medical aspirants in Tamil Nadu from taking NEET examination for admission to UG degree courses in Indian medicine, dentistry and homeopathy.
• Instead, it seeks to provide admission to such courses on the basis of marks obtained in the qualifying examination, through “Normalization methods”.
• The aim of the Bill is to ensure “social justice, uphold equality and equal opportunity, protect all vulnerable student communities from being discriminated”.
• It seeks to bring vulnerable student communities to the “mainstream of medical and dental education and in turn ensure a robust public health care across the state, particularly the rural areas”.

Why TN is against NEET?

• Non-representative: TN opposes because NEET undermined the diverse societal representation in MBBS and higher medical studies.
• Disfavors the poor: It has favored mainly the affordable and affluent sections of the society and thwarting the dreams of underprivileged social groups.
• Exams for the elite: It considers NEET not a fair or equitable method of admission since it favored the rich and elite sections of society.
• Healthcare concerns: If continued, the rural and urban poor may not be able to pursue medical courses.

Can any state legislate against NEET?

• Admissions to medical courses are traceable to entry 25 of List III (Concurrent List), Schedule VII of the Constitution.
• Therefore, the State can also enact a law regarding admission and amend any Central law on admission procedures.

Views of the stakeholders appointed by TN

• A majority of stakeholders were not in favor of the NEET requirement.
• NEET only worked against underprivileged government school students, and had profited coaching centres and affluent students.
• NEET had not provided any special mechanism for testing the knowledge and aptitude of the students.
• The higher secondary examination of the State board itself was an ample basis for the selection of students for MBBS seats.

A move inspired by a SC Judgement

• This thinking of the State may be due to the observation made by the Supreme Court in the selection process of postgraduate (PG) courses in medicine.
• The Medical Council of India (MCI) had prescribed certain regulations providing reservations for in-service candidates.
• The Supreme Court struck down regulation 9(c) made by the MCI on the ground of the exercise of power beyond its statute.

Not a similar case

• It must be remembered that the Supreme Court was only dealing with a regulation framed by the MCI.
• The requirement of NEET being a basic requirement for PG and UG medical courses has now been statutorily incorporated under Section 10D of the Indian Medical Council (IMC) Act.
• When the Tamil Nadu government issued an order in 2017 providing for the reservation of 85% of the seats for students passed out from the State board it was struck down by the Madras High Court.
• The introduction of internal reservation for government school students is under challenge before the Madras High Court. Similarly, NEET as a requirement is also pending in the Supreme Court.
• Unless these two issues are decided, NEET cannot be removed by a State amendment.

The bill cannot be passed

• The present move to pass a fresh Bill on the same lines is most likely to meet the same fate.
• The President refused to give his assent to this bill.
• It is significant that no other State in India has sought an exemption from NEET and, therefore, exempting Tamil Nadu alone may not be possible.
• Even among the seats allotted to the State, there is no bar for students from other States from competing or selecting colleges in Tamil Nadu.

The bigger question

• The question is not whether the State government can amend a law falling under the Concurrent List.
• The question is whether the State government can exempt Section 10D of the IMC Act, which is a parliamentary law that falls under the Central List (Entry 66).
• Moreover, the Supreme Court has also upheld NEET as a requirement.
• Mere statistics highlighting that a majority of the stakeholders do not want NEET in Tamil Nadu is not an answer for exempting the examination.

Again, it is State and Centre are at crossroads

• Normally, a Bill requires assent from the Governor to become a law. Stalin’s contention is that this Bill deals with education, which is a Concurrent List subject.
• Admissions to medical courses fall under Entry 25 of List III, Schedule VII of the Constitution, and therefore the state is competent to regulate the same.
• Yet, as far as matters relating to the determination of standards for higher education are concerned, the central government has the power to amend a clause or repeal an Act.
• So, just the passing of the Bill doesn’t enable the students to get exempted from writing NEET.
• Already, Union Higher Education Secretary Amit Khare has held that if any State wants to opt out of the exam, it has to seek permission from the Supreme Court.

Options for Tamil Nadu

• Data is necessary only when there is power to legislate on the subject concerned.
• Since the Bill, which will become an Act only after the President’s nod, will come into effect only from the next academic year, the battle for and against the NEET requirement will continue in courts.
• Hopefully, the courts will determine the legality and have a definite solution to the question of medical admissions within the next year.
• Till such time, students who wrote NEET will fill the seats under the State quota.

Way forward: Preventing Commercialization of Medical Education

• The time may also have come to examine whether NEET has met its purposes of improving standards and curbing commercialization and profiteering.
• Under current norms, one quite low on the merit rank can still buy a medical seat in a private college, while those ranked higher but only good enough to get a government quota seat in a private institution can be priced out of the system.
• The Centre should do something other than considering an exemption to Tamil Nadu.
• It has to conceive a better system that will allow a fair admission process while preserving inter se merit and preventing rampant commercialization.

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Context

Proportion of children attending the government schools has been on the decline. This has several implications.

Issues with school education in India

• A quality, free and regular school education represents our most potent infrastructure of opportunity, a fundamental duty of the state.
• Meritocracy represents the idea that people should advance based on their talents and efforts.
• But India’s meritocracy is sabotaged by flailing government schools.
• The proportion of India’s children attending a government school has now declined to 45 per cent.
• This number is 85 per cent in America, 90 per cent in England, and 95 per cent in Japan.
• India’s 100 per cent plus school enrolment masks challenges; a huge dropout ratio and poor learning outcomes.
• We have too many schools and 4 lakh have less than 50 students (70 per cent of schools in Rajasthan, Karnataka, J&K, and Uttarakhand).
• China has similar total student numbers with 30 per cent of our school numbers.

It is not Government Vs. Private schools

• Demand for better government schools is not an argument against private schools.
• Because, without this market response to demand, the post-1947 policy errors in primary education would have been catastrophic for India’s human capital.

Way forward

• We need the difficult reforms of governance, performance management, and English instruction.
• Governance must shift from control of resources to learning outcomes; learning design, responsiveness, teacher management, community relationships, integrity, fair decision making, and financial sustainability.
• Performance management, currently equated with teacher attendance, needs evaluation of scores, skills, competence and classroom management. Scores need continuous assessments or end-of-year exams.
• The new world of work redefines employability to include the 3Rs of reading, writing, and arithmetic and a fourth R of relationships.
• India’s farm to non-farm transition is not happening to factories but to sales and customer services which need 4R competency and English awareness.
• English instruction is about bilingualism, higher education pathways, and employability.
• Employment outcomes are 50 per cent higher for kids with English familiarity because of higher geographic mobility, sector mobility, role eligibility, and entrance exam ease.
• India’s constitution wrote Education Policy into Lists I (Centre), II (State), and III (concurrent jurisdiction); this fragmentation needs revisiting because it tends to concentrate decisions that should be made locally in Delhi or state capitals.

Conclusion

Government needs urgent measure to addreess the issues which has bearing on its future.

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Blended mode of teaching and its advantages

• A recent circular by the University Grants Commission (UGC) proposes that all higher educational institutions (HEI) teach 40% of any course online and the rest 60% offline termed as blended learning (BL).
• The UGC argues that this “blended mode of teaching” and learning paves the way for:
• 1) Increased student engagement in learning.
• 2) Enhanced student-teacher interactions.
• 3) Improved student learning outcomes.
• 4) More flexible teaching and learning environments, among other things.
• 5) Other key benefits such as the increased opportunity for institutional collaborations at a distance and enhanced self-learning accruing from blended learning (BL).
• 6) BL benefits the teachers as well. It shifts the role of the teacher from being a “knowledge provider to a coach and mentor”.
• 7)  The note adds that BL introduces flexibility in assessment and evaluation patterns as well.

Challenges

• All India Survey on Higher Education (2019-20) report shows that 60.56% of the 42,343 colleges in India are located in rural areas and 78.6% are privately managed.
• Only big corporates are better placed to invest in technology and provide such learning.
• Second, according to datareportal statistics, Internet penetration in India is only 45% as of January 2021.
• This policy will only exacerbate the existing geographical and digital divide.
• Third, BL leaves little room for all-round formation of the student that includes the development of their intelligent quotient, emotional quotient, social quotient, physical quotient and spiritual quotient.
• The listening part and subsequent interactions with the teacher may get minimised.
• Also, the concept note assumes that all students have similar learning styles and have a certain amount of digital literacy to cope with the suggested learning strategies of BL.
• This is far from true. Education in India is driven by a teacher-centred approach.

Suggestions

• The government should ensure equity in access to technology and bandwidth for all HEIs across the country free of cost.
• Massive digital training programmes must be arranged for teachers.
• Even the teacher-student ratio needs to be readjusted to implement BL effectively.
• This may require the appointment of a greater number of teachers.
• The design of the curriculum should be decentralised and based on a bottom-up approach.
• More power in such education-related policymaking should be vested with the State governments.
• Switching over from a teacher-centric mode of learning at schools to the BL mode at the tertiary level will be difficult for learners.
• Hence, the government must think of overhauling the curriculum at the school level as well.
• Finally, periodical discussions, feedback mechanisms and support services at all levels would revitalise the implementation of the learning programme of the National Education Policy 2020, BL.
• It will also lead to the actualisation of the three cardinal principles of education policy: access, equity and quality.

Conclusion

Government must take steps to address the concerns with blended learning before implementing it.

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The article highlights the important role students can play in improving the quality of colleges and institution in India.

Improving the colleges

• The global QS ranking is out and India has 12 universities and institutions in the top-100 in particular subjects.
• We have many colleges offering higher education but typically they are not very good.
• Today, with a huge number of students going to college, education is tied strongly to career prospects.
• If studying and thinking harder do not lead to even a decent chance of career improvement, it is natural for most students to lose academic ambition.

Career prospects in various colleges

• For admission in IIT, many work extremely hard to secure admission, but then lose motivation and drift towards near-certain graduation.
• IIT admission is a value signal to future employers who do not see much relevance in the actual syllabus.
• The entry wall is high, the exit wall is low, and the four-year syllabus is an obstacle course between the student and an employer with whom eye contact was made from atop the entry wall itself.
• Students of varied subjects thus remain uninterested in their core syllabi.
• Lower-ranked colleges may attract a slightly different mix of employment prospects, some in core areas.
• In many colleges, both good and bad ones, high grades correlate only loosely with career outcomes. 

Improving the college

• Very few jobs actually require the highest quality education — the best academic and research jobs.
• In such a system, it may not be worthwhile or even practical for a mediocre college to unilaterally improve itself.
• Having improved, it remains to convince society that it deserves to displace the pre-eminent colleges at the top.
• For lower-ranking colleges to improve itself, its students must first see useful value in a better education.
• That requires system-wide growth in opportunity.

How to achieve system-wide growth in opportunity

• Such growth cannot be legislated from above. It must occur organically, from below.
• There are several stakeholders involved in such transition.
• 1) At the top are policymakers.
• Policymakers are trying and have achieved many things.
• In recent years, however, our demographics have caught up with us.
• We have more than 650 million people under age 25.
• No other country is close. We need more than policies.
• 2) Next is industry. It faces a learning curve for technology.
• Countries that wish to lead must develop their own technology, even at high cost.
• Indian industry can often choose between importing slightly older technology from outside or developing things in-house.
• A slow growth in the latter has begun and may pull our college system upward over time.
• 3) Our next stakeholders are college teachers.
• For a college to flourish, it needs many students who compete to enroll.
• Our entrance exams for good engineering colleges are hard.
• Our nationally renowned degree colleges which admit based on board marks are frequently forced to set very high cutoffs.
• The need for more engineering colleges, for many students who are clearly good enough, has led to the creation of several private colleges that teach well in large volumes.
• Quality of teachers’ is improving.
• College teachers improve as their employers aim higher, and as their students bring more into the classroom.
• 4) Finally, we have students. If students demand better instruction, colleges will sooner or later supply it.

Way forward for students

• Students must aim to relate their learning to society.
• They must see their learning not as an obstacle course but as an initiation into a process that yields tangible long-term value.
• Indian society does not merely have people looking for work.
• It also has work looking for people: Work in food, health, design, manufacturing, transport, safety, garbage, water, energy, farming, and a hundred other things that we can do better.
• Room for improvement is plentiful, though the market models may not be efficient or mature yet.
• The walls between our classrooms and our lives must be broken, if our colleges are to flourish.
• In recent decades, India has also attracted much work from overseas. Growth in that direction may well be sustained.

Consider the question “India has many colleges and institutions offering higher education but few could get the spot in the list of top global institutes. Examine the factors responsible for this. Suggest the measures to deal with this issue.”

Conclusion

Such change, driven by student aspirations, will be organic, bottom-up, and unstoppable.

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Fairness and inclusiveness are two important aspects of education system. Growing shift toward digital education in India has implications for these two aspects. The article suggests ways to make the education system fair and inclusive.

Knowledge economy in India

• The new National Education Policy (NEP) as well as other factors have lately brightened up education landscape in India..
• The rise of education technology (ed-tech) incorporating VR, AR, ‘gamification’, 3D immersive learning, etc, is contributing to the knowledge economy’s potential for large market size, calling for requisite policy support.

Barriers to equity in education

• The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) defines two dimensions of equity in education.
• First is “fairness”, which means ensuring that personal and social circumstances do not prevent students from achieving their academic potential.
• The second is “inclusion”, which means setting a basic minimum standard for education that is shared by all students regardless of their background.
• The barriers that make equity difficult to foster in India are varied and complex.

Loss of learning during Covid pandemic

• The latest Annual State of Education Report (ASER) reveals that 20% of rural students lacked textbooks.
• Only one in ten students had access to online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The Survey provides a glimpse into the levels of learning loss that students in rural India, particularly in states like Bihar, West Bengal, UP, and Rajasthan, are suffering, resulting in sharp digital divides in education.
• Unless remedied with urgency, the digital split may disrupt learning, and jeopardise our hard-won gains resulting in large scale school drop-outs, particularly of adolescent girls.

How to remove barriers to equity?

• To remove these barriers we need to look at several aspects like monetary resources, academic standards, academic content and support.
• Apart from inequality in internet access and access to devices, even the quality of connection and related services and subscription fees exacerbate the digital divide.
• For education to be availed as a social good, access at an affordable cost and reasonable quality is a precondition.
• The availability of content in vernacular languages is yet another issue.
• In digital education along with demand-side issues, supply-side issues need fixing, such as training of teachers in ICT, new learning devices and handling the evolved curriculum.
• Teachers and academic institutions need to ensure that the content they are using is lucid, appropriate, fact-based and relevant.
• Access to education loans from banks and financial institutions are a great support in the cause of education, particularly higher education.
• Education is on the Concurrent List. A cooperative and collaborative spirit will thus be critical to realise the goals.
• The Centre has a task well cut for building consensus on NEP2020.

Consider the question “Fainess and inclusiveness are two important dimensions of equity that should be pursued by any education system. However, push towards digital educations threatens these two dimensions of the education system in India. Comment” 

Conclusion

With strong corporate commitment, states’ support, backed by strong policy push and intent by the Centre, and value addition by other stakeholders, the roadblocks on the path of equity and inclusiveness in education, though daunting, could be addressed.

Source-

https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/equity-in-education-matters/2121998/

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Pandemic has forced learning to the online mode. But there are several concerns with the online leaning. The article discusses the same.

Providing learning opportunity in pandemic

• The main thrust of providing learning opportunities while schools are shut is online teaching.
• There are several sets of guidelines and plans issues by the government, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for this purpose.
• The Internet space is teeming with learning schemes, teaching videos, sites and portals for learning opportunities.

3 issues with online learning

1) Increasing inequality

• Calamities, be they natural or man-made, affect the underprivileged the hardest,  COVID-19 is no exception.
•  The COVID-19 shutdown has affected opportunity for the poor even harder than their counterparts from well-to-do sections of society.
• The government began plans for students with no online access only by the end of August.
• But online or digital education is available is for students with only online access.
• Thus, digital India may become even more unequal and divided than it already is.

2) Pedagogical issues leading to bad quality education

• The quality of online teaching-learning leaves much to be desired.
• Listening to lectures on the mobile phone, copying from the board where the teacher is writing, frequent disconnections can hardly and organically connect the child’s present understanding with the logically organised bodies of human knowledge.
• The secondary students are in a better position still because of their relative independence in learning and possible self-discipline.
• The beginners in the lower primary can get nothing at all from this mode of teaching.

3)  An unwarranted thrust on online education, post-COVID-19

• All reliable studies seem to indicate that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the classroom helps in already well-functioning systems, and either has no benefits or negative impact in poorly performing systems.
• That does not indicate much hope from IT in our education system.
• Transformation of schools in the current understanding of pedagogy, suitability of learning material and quality of learning provided through IT will further devastate the already inadequate system of school education in the country.
• Of course, IT can be used in a balanced manner where it can help; but it should not be seen as a silver bullet to remedy all ills in the education system.

Importance of institutional environment

• The institutional environment plays an important role online teaching.
• Even when the institutions function sub-optimally, students themselves create an environment that supports their growth morally, socially and intellectually in conversations and interactions with each other.
• The online mode of teaching completely forecloses this opportunity.

Conclusion

Our democracy and public education system should try to address the issues raised here while promoting the online mode of education.

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The article delineates the challenges academic institutions in India faces in the wake of Covid disruption and suggests some measures to deal with the challenges.

Context

Disruption in the wake of pandemic raised the spectre of educational institutions shuttering their doors completely or taking unprecedented steps that have invariably affected jobs and livelihoods.

Economics of the academics

• Economics has always been a part of academics; it is only in the present circumstances that it has become all the more apparent.
• Management in private institutions, is going to meet demands on the one hand and availability of resources on the other.
• One may call this new phenomenon “acadonomics”.
• “Acadonomics” would imply a careful allocation of resources keeping in mind the transient nature of the issue of how long it is going to take to come back to the steady state of affairs that it once was.
• ‘Acadonomics’ will also involve seeing the economics of moving on to an online mode of the teaching-learning process.

Comparison with the West

• The academic choices are not the same for all countries across the world.
• In the United States the elite private and state subsidised universities have endowments that can be used for a range of academic activities.
• Top 10 of the U.S. have a cushion of anywhere between $10 billion to $40 billion.
• By contrast, private academic institutions in India do not have any such buffers.
• None of the institutions in India possesses big corpuses from alumni or industry.
• Their survival, for the most part, is on the annual income that comes from tuition and the assortment of other fees collected.

Private education in India

• Private institutions in India are hardly in a position to meet an eventuality such as COVID-19.
•  In an educational set-up in India, nothing can be reduced — the norms cannot be lowered nor can the infrastructure be dismantled.
•  For the most part, the fixed and operational costs remain the same, and infrastructure once created cannot be shrunk.
• The downside to self-financed institutions is that in the time of the pandemic and loss of jobs, students plead inability to pay the requisite fee.
• Which places additional burden on the management which feels already stretched because of existing commitments.

Dual mode of learning and issues

• 1) Cost for persisting with a dual mode of the teaching-learning process is going to be quite prohibitive for the next few years.
• The scaling of operations that would include the dual modes of online and offline is going to be expensive.
• 2) The online teaching mode brings with it increased costs of IT infrastructure such as network bandwidth, servers, cloud resources and software licensing fees.
• 3) Online teaching means new hiring in the IT sector and increased costs due to engagements with Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, and other online platforms.
• 4) Online teaching means setting up multiple studios and educational technology centres which translate into investments in high technology.
• 5) Creation of virtual laboratories across all domains of studies and examination centres, etc. would add to the woes in terms of already depleted finances.
• 6) Additional funds have to be allocated to train faculty for online teaching.

Way forward

• The Centre and State governments should provide soft loans to students to stay with the educational course.
• Students looking at online instruction would be disinclined to pay the same fee charged for offline instruction.
• It would seem prudent for the government and regulatory bodies to not interfere in the fee structure, and, for the future, even consider a measure of higher degree of financial autonomy.
• It is high time institutions in India are allowed to create coffers or corpuses for a rainy day.
• Educational institutions could come to be treated like any other corporate body, with an allowable small margin of profit.

Consider the question “What are the challenges faced by the education system in the aftermath of the pandemic. Suggest ways to mitigate the impact.”

Conclusion

‘Acadonomics’ of the future will not only decide the fate of the academic sector in India but also its quality, ranking, research, innovation potential and its collective impact on our country’s economy.

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The article analyses the issues the graded with the graded autonomy to the Higher Education Institutes.

Background

• NEP 2020 provided for phasing out of the system of affiliated colleges and the grant of greater autonomy in academic, administrative and financial matters to premium colleges.

Concerns with the autonomy

• The move has raised concerns about the politico-bureaucratic interference in the internal functioning of universities.
• It has also raised concerns about the substantial burden on universities which have to regulate admissions, set curricula and conduct examinations for a large number of undergraduate colleges.
• Concerns have long existed about over-centralisation, due to constraints imposed on the potential for premium affiliated colleges to innovate and evolve.
• These apprehensions about the autonomy came to be used by successive governments to build a case for the model of graded autonomy.

The push towards graded autonomy

• Successive governments have pushed through measures that have largely allowed for greater penetration of private capital in higher education.
• Recommendations of recent education commissions have promoted the unequal structure of funding for higher education.
• Under this, hierarchy in higher education was created: Central government-funded universities, provincial Central government-funded universities, regional universities and colleges funded by State governments, etc.
• The National Knowledge Commission (2005) stated that good undergraduate colleges are constrained by their affiliated status… the problem is particularly acute for undergraduate colleges which are subjected to the ‘convoy problem’ as they are forced to move at the speed of the slowest.
• In turn, the dominant policy discourse vocally propagates “graded autonomy” for better performing Higher Educational Institutions.
• Under which academic excellence can be supported through a grant of special funds and allowing greater power to such institutions.
• This basis has been gradually enforced with the UGC in 2018 granting public-funded universities the right to apply for autonomy based on whether they are ranked among top 500 of reputed world rankings or have National Assessment and Accreditation (NAAC) scores above 3.26.

NEP 2020: Centralisation and autonomy

• NEP 2020  is a combination of enhanced centralising features and specific features of autonomy.
• Deeper centralisation is indicative in the constitution of the government nominated umbrella institution, Higher Education Council of India (HECI); Board of Governors, the National Education Commission etc.

Concerns

• The model of graded autonomy will encourage hierarchy that exists between different colleges within a public-funded university, and between different universities across the country.
• While the best colleges gain the autonomy to bring in their own rules and regulations, affiliated colleges with lower rankings and less than 3,000 students face the threat of mergers and even closure.
• A shrinking of the number of public-funded colleges will only further push out marginalised sections.
• Autonomy could lead to more inaccessibility as the independent rules and regulations of autonomous colleges and universities shall curtail transparent admission procedures.
• Graded autonomy can be expected to trigger a massive spurt in expensive self-financed courses as premium colleges, which will lead to exclusion.

Conclusion “Examine the issues with the autonomy of Higher Education Institutes in the NEP 2020.”

Conclusion

More than deliverance, autonomy represents the via media for greater privatisation and enhanced hierarchization in higher education.

Sources: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/privatisation-via-graded-autonomy/article32396753.ece

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