Current Education in India
BRIEFING PAPER
ASIA PROGRAMME APRIL 2005
ASP BP 05/03
The Challenges for India’s Education System
Marie Lall, Chatham House
Summary
• This paper, the first in an occasional series on India’s education system, places the current issues facing education in India in a historical context.
• Since Independence, successive Indian governments have had to address a number of key challenges with regard to education policy, which has always formed a crucial part of its development agenda. The key challenges are:
• improving access and quality at all levels of education; • increasing funding, especially with regard to higher education; • improving literacy rates. • Currently, while Indian institutes of management and technology are world-class, primary and secondary schools, particularly in rural areas, face severe challenges.
• While new governments commonly pledge to increase spending on education and bring in structural reforms, this has rarely been delivered in practice.
• Most of the changes undertaken by the previous BJP-led government were aimed at reforming the national curricula, and have been criticized for attempting to ‘Hindu-ize’ India’s traditionally secular education system.
• Improving the standards of education in India will be a critical test for the current
Congress-led government. It will need to resolve concerns over the content of the curriculum, as well as tackling the underlying challenges to education.
2
Introduction
The Challenges for India’s Education System
India’s education system turns out millions of graduates each year, many skilled in IT and engineering. This manpower advantage underpins India’s recent economic advances, but masks deepseated problems within India’s education system. While India’s demographics are generally perceived to give it an edge over other countries’ economies (India will have a youthful population when other countries have ageing populations), if this advantage is restricted
ASIA PROGRAMME APRIL 2005
ASP BP 05/03
The Challenges for India’s Education System
Marie Lall, Chatham House
Summary
• This paper, the first in an occasional series on India’s education system, places the current issues facing education in India in a historical context.
• Since Independence, successive Indian governments have had to address a number of key challenges with regard to education policy, which has always formed a crucial part of its development agenda. The key challenges are:
• improving access and quality at all levels of education; • increasing funding, especially with regard to higher education; • improving literacy rates. • Currently, while Indian institutes of management and technology are world-class, primary and secondary schools, particularly in rural areas, face severe challenges.
• While new governments commonly pledge to increase spending on education and bring in structural reforms, this has rarely been delivered in practice.
• Most of the changes undertaken by the previous BJP-led government were aimed at reforming the national curricula, and have been criticized for attempting to ‘Hindu-ize’ India’s traditionally secular education system.
• Improving the standards of education in India will be a critical test for the current
Congress-led government. It will need to resolve concerns over the content of the curriculum, as well as tackling the underlying challenges to education.
2
Introduction
The Challenges for India’s Education System
India’s education system turns out millions of graduates each year, many skilled in IT and engineering. This manpower advantage underpins India’s recent economic advances, but masks deepseated problems within India’s education system. While India’s demographics are generally perceived to give it an edge over other countries’ economies (India will have a youthful population when other countries have ageing populations), if this advantage is restricted