In this episode, I pen down an experience that peeps and chatters about the education system in India
9938 ft above the sea level I sat watching a small stream of river almost like a line on paper. River Parvati flew in full fledge in the village of one of the Saptrishis of Hindus. The village was full of woods connected by small walkways. At the end of the village was a thin route to cross a complete region going through the mountain jungles. The whole fight was to peacefully sit at the edge of this remote village of India where even a bike cannot reach. But in the village people wanted to move downwards, little do they know, the fight is about reaching here and they are already at the destination. How ironical, I thought.
A vulture on fly in the backdrop of tall mountains was a constant distraction. It took a flight and with almost no effort moved from one mountain space to the other. And that was not the only distraction as I heard a bell ringing behind me. And murmuring and whispers was heard at near distance. I paused my thoughts, taken to one of the small walkways by the noise of the bell, I walked till the end of which I found a small school and the announcement was that of a recess break, murmurs was of the children of the school.
A building with merely 4 rooms, visible cracks on the cemented structure and an open space to sit outside was the first highlight of the scan. Adjacent to these rooms, was an abandoned structure. On left and right stood tall mountains with snow on some peaks. Some students started dispersing seemingly going back to their home for lunch. Some didn't care about the food and started playing as if it were the last day. Some were still left behind trying to finish their work. Two teachers seemed to be doing all the heavy lifting, helping the students left finish their work also in parallel asking playing children to eat first.
As my head just started making observations, a group of students caught my attention as they stopped their play with the ball as they spotted me. Almost in curiosity they came around to discuss about me. I was curious to find out whose task it would be if their ball went down the mountain, would not want to bat on this pitch for sure.
After some conversations with people around, what surprised me was not the infrastructure condition but the imminent migration situation post 7-8th class that was visible on the face. But it also did not surprise me. Because it was while watching the vulture pass over the school I thought about the sheer number and scale of the education system in India.
There are nearly ~14 lakhs + schools in India, ~97 lakhs teachers and ~26 crore students enrolled at a given point of time. In the silence and peace of mountains the first thought is that of potential. But when you visit the nooks and corners of the country, the rural India that hosts ~12+ lakhs of these schools, you realise how far the destination is, almost 9938 ft away I guess.
The population entering today's India is going to define the future for the country. The level of innovation, skills of today’s workforce shall decide India’s growth speed thereby eradicating poverty. It is merely not about food on the table, but a well educated society married with Indian culture is the recipe for a sane society, opposite to that of the West.
Forget the advent of AI, we are constantly competing with the global workforce and hence successfully solving the problems of India’s education system is at the core deciding factor of India’s story.
I travelled back to watch the stream of the river thinking what are the biggest challenges they face? What could one do today, like immediately, to see any sort of change in the situation? I took the small Doraemon bag and kept climbing with questions.
Infrastructure is an obvious one. Though it is still commendable of how, given the resources post independence, the road we have covered. Building these schools is a mammoth task in itself. Estimated only 7 out of 10 schools in India have access to electricity, forget the computers, electronics, bio labs, sports equipments, educational tools. Quite a task for a country where defence takes up 10-12% of the country's budget, while education gets 2-2.6%, forget the hurdles of downstream vision, effectiveness and penetration, I thought.
The problem with infrastructure is that it has intensive capital requirements or extraordinary cross functional effort between schools, government, NGOs, private players. It's a long term problem which requires a long-term solution, not the lowest hanging fruit definitely.
One inevitable idea seems to serve these students digitally. It's difficult to even estimate the size of the problem since the first big challenge to any such effort is the lack of Digital Literacy. Penetration of smartphones have definitely helped the cause but a structured understanding of basics of computing, understanding local/cloud systems, productivity tools like making cloud docs, presentations, sheets that is easily shareable, skills to operate various educational solutions, etc. This seemingly simple topics can provide ground breaking returns.
Access to quality education is the second aspect of the challenges faced. Though this problem is less divided by rural and urban schools, it is acute in rural regions because of availability of alternative sources of learning in urban regions. It is also important to define good quality education.
When you peep in India’s history, you go back to 5th century CE to find the Nalanda University spread in estimated 14 hectares of land, roughly 35 football fields, in Magadh, today's Bihar. With such a rich history, an ideal answer would be holistic development: self discovery and skills relevant in today's age. With limited resources, even this needs prioritisation and the desperate need is of making skills available for educational system as a whole. This needs a scalable solution in terms of both, user reach and adding skills/subjects. I watched the river flow with thoughts getting washed away with the flow.
With advent of technology in the past decade, edtech as an industry took shape creating solutions by and large helping urban regions. Despite such heavy effort, we still fail to make education democratic.
This is primarily because solving for the medium of consuming education is just one part of the problem. When it comes to India, the scale and diversity never present a simple problem statement. A country with 122 major languages, ~1500 dialects can truly be educationally democratic when the medium is brick and mortar free and also the language is of the user’s preference. Over ~17 crore students consume the education in vernacular medium. Hence, students don't just need access to skills and learning resources, if the language of learning of their choice, they will learn fast, understand concepts deeply and there you open the doors for innovation. An alternative solution to this shall be pushing English at the deepest part of the country, which is adding to already dying regional cultures of the country, a topic for some other blog.
Looking at the vulture flying, it felt hopeful. But deep down I knew what I thought was just a glimpse of the complex web of problems the education system faces.
That’s all from this edition of chatter box , thank you for reading
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