Improving quality of education should be a top priority of the NDA government
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s suggestion to improve the quality of teachers by introducing a five year training course for aspiring teachers so that they can meet the needs of the national and international markets has to be seriously considered. Teacher quality has nosedived in recent years to abysmal levels and this needs to be radically reversed if the nation has to make any significant improvement in the quality of education.
One reason for this is that quality of teachers and teaching was low on the priority list. This was because the focus of national education policies was mainly on improving access to education. The stress was on scaling up enrolment rates and reducing dropout rates to the maximum. Consequently thousands of new teacher training institutes and colleges popped up to meet the expanding needs of the educational sector.
But the quality of teacher training deteriorated so much that today most teachers are ill equipped to impart any learning to the children. To get an idea of the deterioration in teacher skills one has to only look at the outcome of the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The results published last year showed that less than 1% of the 7.95 lakh Bed graduates who appeared were able to clear the exam. And this is no exception as the pass percentage for the CTET was only 9% in 2011 and 7% in 2012.
The poor quality of teachers has had a debilitating impact on the quality of education in India so much so that an international comparison based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests showed India was ranked close to the bottom. This indicates that the learning outcome of education has to be a top priority if the country has to make any headway in the new knowledge economy.
While it is true that student background and family characteristics are an important determinants of educational outcomes it is also a fact that the schools have also an important role to play. In fact investigations in India show that as much as half to two third of the variation in educational outcomes was due to school specific factors.
This would include not only the quality of teachers but also other aspects like the availability of school infrastructure, the absenteeism among teachers, quality of school management and other factors. Then there are also issues like student teacher ratios. A recent survey of student teacher ratios in South Asia showed that student teacher ratios in Indian schools at the primary and lower secondary level are higher than that of even Bhutan and Sri Lanka which places our students at a disadvantage.
But a shift of educational policies from the quantity to quality requires more than an improvement in teacher training programs. Other factors like the use of clear and transparent guidelines on teacher recruitment and training, including on basic degrees, and career progression are equally important. Teaching has to become an attractive profession with adequate earnings and prestige.
Some western countries have made great strides in this direction with teachers selected from best secondary school graduates. In countries like Finland where the educational outcomes is among the best only one tenth of the applicants are selected to teacher education programs. Even in Singapore teachers are generally selected from the top third of the high school graduates.
Better quality of education is important not only for students, who benefit from better earnings but also for the nation at large. Plentiful availability of well-educated youth is an important determinant of investments and overall growth of the economy.
In fact studies show that an improvement in educational outcome will even have a substantial impact on the size of the GDP. For instance estimates show that an improvement in the education standards of all OECD countries to that of Finland, the top performer in PISA tests, would boost the GDP of OECD countries by $ 260 trillion, which is around six time their current GDP.
The NDA government would do well to improve the quality of education by scaling up the professional competency of teachers, improving student teacher ratios, providing better infrastructure facilities and ensuring more competent management to ensure that India plays a more substantial role in the new knowledge economy.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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