EW’s unfinished long march to save Indian education

Modestly launched in 1999 with the huge ambition “to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, EducationWorld has succeeded in moving education of the world’s largest child population from the peripheries towards the centre of the national agenda. In this special report we highlight the great and small issues that have impeded education development – Dilip Thakore In November 1999 EducationWorld was modestly launched with the huge ambition to navigate the uncharted waters of Indian education and the mission statement to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”. Over the past 18 years during which this publication has attained maturity, it has been ploughing a lonely furrow, persistently highlighting great and small issues which have impeded promotion of education to the top of the national agenda, as a result of which the overwhelming majority of the world’s largest child and youth population (550 million) has been deprived of high quality, globally comparable education. Although in the new millennium, education of the country’s children and youth has undoubtedly moved from the outer peripheries of the national agenda towards the centre, our message that real — rather than ritual — universal education is the prerequisite of national development and advancement has not significantly impacted the political class and the lay public.  In particular the political class has remained indifferent and exhibited little interest in EducationWorld. That’s why our major objective, which we have been reiterating from day one — that the annual outlay for public education be raised to 6 percent of GDP as recommended by almost all official education commissions from the high-powered Kothari Commission (1968) onwards, and most recently by the TSR Subramanian Committee’s National Policy on Education 2016 — has remained unfulfilled. The annual outlay for education continues to remain in the 3.25-4 percent range. Against this please note that the annual expenditure in the developed OECD countries averages 7-10 percent. Admittedly the annual outlay for education in China is marginally lower than in India. But almost all of it is spent on primary-secondary education, unlike India where over one-third is expended on subsidised higher learning.  Nevertheless, over the past 18 years of continuous and uninterrupted publishing, EducationWorld has had some success in raising middle class awareness that there’s more to education than children going to school, learning by rote and passing exams. As evidenced by the tremendous nationwide enthusiasm generated by the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (estb.2007), which rate the country’s Top 1,000 primary-secondary schools on 14 parameters of education excellence (teacher competence, academic reputation, sports and co-curricular education, internationalism, safety, hygiene etc), the desire to excel and improve has permeated the great majority of the country’s 320,000 private schools, even if only a small minority of the 1.08 million government schools countrywide. For the past few years we have begun to rank government schools as well and their motivation for improvement and recognition is no less (see EW September…