Category Archives: Education

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March 21, 2015

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Changing facets of vocational education

Vocational education needs to keep pace with the changing trends and requirements of the industry. Outdated training methods and skills will not help our economy, writes Sachin Adhikari.

The combined forces of globalisation, technological change and liberalisation of markets are creating a more competitive economic environment and changing the very nature of work and work organisation. While these forces are creating new job opportunities, they are also increasing the workers’ vulnerability.

Additionally, being knowledge-driven, the quality of the labour force has become a major determinant in the competitiveness and adaptability of enterprises, workers and the economy. All of this poses a challenge to the vocational education and training (VET) systems to meet the rapidly and continuously changing labour market demands.

India is at a threshold, where skilling is the only way it can utilise its huge youth entering the workforce. Vocational training can help bridge employability gap on one hand, while providing effective employment on the other. However, it is most crucial to remember that such trainings need to keep pace with the changing trends and requirements of the industry.

 
With respect to this, education and training systems face multiple challenges. Firstly, in order to equip workers who are already employed with new skills and competencies, they need to develop a system of continuous in-service training that can respond flexibly and rapidly to labour market requirements. Secondly, they need to offer youth the sound education and broad initial training that will give them a solid basis for continuing training throughout their working life.

Thirdly, they must ensure access to opportunities to the unemployed, the disadvantaged and those at risk. The world of work is evolving and with it, the role of VET. The far-reaching transformation of the global economy is compelling governments and even the private sector to rethink their development strategy in general, and VET in particular.

 
With respect to India which is depending on VET for skilling and optimising its huge demographic dividend, technology can be a boon, if properly utilised. Technology can not only help policy makers and training institutions, but also help the young Indians take a more proactive approach in working with government and the private sector. Rapid innovations in technology have fundamentally altered the economy and changed the landscape for mainstream education and skills development. There are now digital and mobile technologies which enable learning in and out of classrooms through mobile apps, websites, e-books, and games.

To make this more effective, first and foremost, old curriculum must be updated with a new and advanced one. The new curriculum must have coherence with industry requirements to ensure that those passing out are absorbed by them. How can technology help? Primarily, by increasing exposure and reach.

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Long-term development impact of mobile technology lies in education and learning for young people in developing countries like ours and also in connecting them to jobs. There is an increasing role for mobile technology in schools, but mobile learning also needs to play its role in reaching those who are outside the scope of traditional schooling, and will benefit immensely from access to various educational programmes. Likewise, mobile technology can also benefit the corporate segment wherein the employees can upgrade their learning through courses on mobile phone.
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Realising the potential of e-learning, several national and international organisations have initiated programmes in India. Undoubtedly, the most popular ones include spoken english courses which help students in rural and semi-urban areas with their verbal skills. Several vocational skilling courses are also being made available via e-learning courses. These have the advantage of inviting trainers from all parts of the country and even abroad to train candidates. Also, candidates can get visual exposure of the industry they may be training for and get insights and advice from experts in the industry. All this, without having to travel from one’s home or city!

E-learning and mobile learning is a positive movement that can open education and training up to young people who currently feel excluded. Several organisations like Viztar International has been prompt in realising these advantages and have designed training modules that will be available to the students on their mobile phones and tablets. 

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March 14, 2015

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Innovation and action in funding girls’ education

Girls’ education functions as a force multiplier in international development, yielding economic and social returns at the individual, family and societal levels. Educated mothers are less likely to die of complications related to pregnancy, and their children experience lower rates of mortality and malnutrition. As a result of improvements in education for women of reproductive age, an estimated 2.1 million children’s lives were saved between 1990 and 2009.

Education is associated with increased contraception use; less underage premarital sex; lower HIV/AIDS risks; and reduced child marriage, early births, and fertility rates. Educating girls also yields intergenerational benefits because the children of educated mothers tend to be healthier and better-educated themselves.

In addition to its health benefits, education can augment women’s labor force participation and earning potential. This can lead to reduced poverty, greater political participation by women, and women’s increased agency and assertion of their rights at the household and community levels. Educating girls also contributes to economic growth—increasing a girl’s secondary education by one year over the average raises her future income by 10 to 20 percent.

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The social and economic benefits of education also illustrate the clear business case for schooling, based on returns from investments in education. For example, a recent report showed that for a typical company in India, an investment of $1 in a child’s education today will return $53 in value to the employer by the time the individual enters the workforce.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/03/innovation-action-funding-girls-education-ackerman

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March 8, 2015

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Catching Them Young is the Key to Skill Acquisition

The Union Government intends to launch the National Skills Mission to consolidate the initiatives spread across its 20 ministries/departments which run around 70 schemes. Practically, all other departments and ministries are also directly or indirectly associated with skill development. The Budget 2015 reiterates, in unequivocal terms, that skill development is the key to utilise the young manpower that India is blessed with. There are two major facts that deserve serious consideration while preparing plans and programmes to suitably train the young to meet manpower requirements in India and abroad. Interesting population projections open up new avenues worldwide as 25 per cent of world’s labour force shall consist of Indians by 2025. The figures on percentage of workforce with education up to Class IX or more brought out by the skill development ministry are revealing: compared to 53 per cent in China, 50 per cent in Australia and 48 per cent in Germany, India has shockingly low percentage of 1.5 only.

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In his letter forwarding the Report of the Education Commission (1964-66), Professor D S Kothari expressed the hope that the report “will provide some basic thinking and framework for taking at least the first step towards bringing about what may be called an education revolution in the country”. In this letter, while mentioning the main points, he put the first one as “introduction of work experience (which includes manual work, production experiences, etc.) and social service as integral parts of general education at more or less all levels of education”. Specific recommendations were made to vocationalise secondary education.
 
The implementation of the 1968 National Policy on Education in respect of imparting skills and vocationalisation of education suffered mainly because of lack of respect and acceptability in society. Lack of suitably trained teachers in schools and absence of teachers equipped to handle vocational courses at secondary level also contributed adversely. Bureaucratic hurdles dampened whatever enthusiasm was generated in some places. Even now, certain suggestions are being floated to begin skilling after Class VIII. This would be disastrous in thought and practice. It is the elementary stage that determines the direction in which the learner talent could be supported and assisted. If children are exposed to working with hands, individually and in groups, and thus made to develop respect making things and creating new ones, they are more likely to opt for higher levels of skills and vocational courses as they grow up. China has successfully done it and each elementary school has a ‘school factory’—a room that displays whatever children have made and created. An attitudinal transformation can be achieved only if the teachers are ready, if the right teacher-taught ratio exists, and if the schools are permitted to utilise locally available expertise. To meet the needs of young persons who have completed elementary stage already, the strategic path is clear:  design specific skill acquisition programmes to match the ascertained market needs. The training modules shall have to be done afresh for each course. These shall have the common element of human values and ‘learning to work together’ in diverse climatic, linguistic, cultural and religious contexts. 
 
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February 21, 2015

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Uneducated India: Learning at the rural juncture

The Indian education market is worth a staggering INR 5.9 trillion (USD 92.98 billion). Of this, 59.7 per cent accounts for higher education, a sector that caters to 20 million students from 36,000 different institutions every year. Accounting for 38.1 per cent, the next chunk is taken away by primary schools, followed by a paltry 1.6 per cent and 0.6 per cent for primary schooling and technology & multi-media, respectively. Between April 2000 and September 2014, FDI equities brought in USD 964.03 million into the country. India has one of the largest markets in education and the largest pool of higher education students, a feat that wasn’t easy to achieve.

In terms of pure numbers, education is currently growing at an 11.3 per cent CAGR. Between 2005-2012, more than 18,000 colleges were established in India bringing the total to a neat 35,539. These colleges are separate from India’s 574 universities (8.7 per cent CAGR) of which 50 per cent are state-run, 23 per cent are deemed to be universities (autonomous), 19 per cent are private institutions and 8 per cent are central universities. Literacy, on the other hand, has had a funny growth in India. The British Raj began in 1858 and ended in 1947. The kernel of Enlightenment came as a foreign export to India, and with it the principles of egalitarianism in a land burdened by complex and discriminatory hierarchies, dark superstitions and xenophobia. It’s a wonder that between 1900-1947, India’s literacy grew an astounding… 5.8 percent. From 6.2 per cent, India jumped to 12 per cent in 1947, hardly an achievement of pride. However, between 1947 and 1994, literacy crossed 48 per cent, a rise of 36 per cent. Today, that number stands at 74.04 per cent, still a sluggish growth by better standards. And that’s the interesting conundrum. With an above average literacy rate, numerous institutions, billion of dollars swirling in the sector, why is India still fumbling at a sceloritic pace compared to its competitors?

68 per cent of India is rural. The region is home to nearly 833 million, and 51.73 per cent of them are below the age of 25. The Census in 2013 concluded that almost half of rural India -as opposed to 28 per cent according to the Planning Commission- qualified for the BPL status. This is the ultimate death knell set to put rural India’s potential into a deep slumber. A young, burgeoning population with no opportunities is likely to migrate to marginalised rural settlements. Most of the leaps in education in India have been largely confined to urban India, even as 29 per cent of primary school rural enrolments are in private institutions. The toxic conflux of poverty, remote geography, lack of pedagogical resources, cultural obstinance, poor infrastructure and even poorer implementation of government schemes and policies creates an environment almost hostile to quality education in rural India. It’s not that Indian children don’t get to school. Primary completion rates for 2006 were 85.7 per cent. Students simply don’t stay long enough for it to significantly matter, and the quality of education imparted is severely low.

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In fact, according to philanthropic organisation Dasra’s research, most NGOs are school-based (traditional) or community-based efforts that focus on primary education. Secondary education receives little attention from even NGOs. So, the reality is simple. More than 70 per cent of India is either badly educated or uneducated, and the Right to Education act has been largely ineffective in improving the condition. Even in metropolitan cities like Delhi, poor nutritional quality of midday meals has brought governments under severe criticism. failed the nutrition test. Another aspect of the rural education problem is the education of rural girls and women. In the 1900s, less than 1 per cent of rural women were literate. Today, 57.93 per cent of them do. Globally, that number has no value. According to the Census, any individual above the age of seven who can read and write, irrespective of fluency, in any language is considered literate. Our low bar for what constitutes literacy makes our leap seem more than what it is. Though more than half of rural women are literate, they are mostly uneducated due to cultural hindrances to improvement.

So, who are the players working for rural low-cost education, fighting against cultural backwardness and all the logistic, infrastructural, pedagogical and geographic problems that comes with providing education to the rural and remote? …

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February 8, 2015

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Gujarat to track child education record using Unique Identification code

Dropout of children from schools, their absenteeism, performance of government schools and its teachers have had a sledgehammer impact on primary education in various states, including Gujarat that is not known to have an impressive track record. 

But, things seem to be changing in Gujarat. 

Conceived in December 2012, the state government has from the June 2014 academic year put into practice a child education tracking system by assigning a digitised Unique Identification code number to all the whopping 87 lakh students between standard 1 and standard 8. 

According to Mukesh Kumar, state project coordinator of the Centre’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), every child will have an 18-digit UID number to track his or her academic career. 

“It will not only track the reasons for his dropping out from school, his absenteeism and his performance but this will also be linked to the consequent training programmes for teachers,” Mukesh Kumar told Mail Today. 

He explained that under this system, annual child-wise records would be maintained with the student’s name, birth date, details of parents, address and incentives or benefits received, if at all, from the government. It has been called Aadhaar-enabled District Information System for Education (DISE). 

Officials informed that the usual DISE captures only the figures of enrolment, but this has been termed Aadhar-enabled system since the latter contains a comprehensive data of every resident’s demographic and biometric information, “which they can use to identify themselves anywhere in India, and to access a host of benefits and services”. 

The same concept has been adopted to build a database of students and to provide unique identification number to all the students in the schools. 

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Among the key aims of the project is to deal with problems like fake enrolment, fudged dropout and retention numbers as well as to ensure universalisation of elementary education, Mukesh Kumar said. 

This web-enabled system will not only help become a complete academic track record of every student and his or her socio-economic situation reflected through dropouts and absenteeism but, “very importantly, also create a database and parameters of the performance of every school.” 

According to Mukesh Kumar, the database would bring out the commonalities in academic failures in the schools and this would provide the education department a hands-on material for training of teachers to improve their performance. 

“And thus contribute to the overall improvement of the basic education performance of the state,” he added. 

The entire project was specially designed and developed by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Monitoring Information System of Gujarat. 

The first set of data for 87 lakh students for the academic year 2013-2014 was collected by a Cluster Resource Centre. 

And this time the data is being collected right from the block level. 

According to an internal Education Department note, “a central interface team also called as District Team & Block Team will monitor the end users CRC (Cluster Resource Co-coordinators) to track the entire group of schools allocated to each one of them.” 

The tracking will include the facility and enrolment, distribution of helpdesk operations forms across all the schools.