Sriram Balasubramanian

Education in India is an area where reform has been recommended for a long period of time. Various academics have argued for the need to bring about reform. In a positive move, there has been a move to streamline the engineering college entrance exams to one single window exam for entrance into engineering colleges. While this is an encouraging and positive step, there are more pertinent issues that need to be addressed within the engineering system.

In a recent report, India was being ranked 73 out of 74 countries on a global survey (PISA) of the educational capabilities of students of class V in maths, science, reading.Second, the report by Pratam has also released an independent report (ASER) which reinforces the fact that our academic standards need reform. At the university level, based on rankings on various global surveys, very few institutions are in the top 100. In the case of universities, the primary point of concern has been the lack of investment in infrastructure and lack of a culture of innovation in the majority of universities present. What are some of the issues that needs to be addressed?

The first issue that needs to be addressed is the syllabi that are in place in engineering colleges. Most of the syllabi are outdated and defunct to say the least. Barring the top institutes, the syllabi have not evolved enough to be in sync with the needs of modern India. In addition, very little of the syllabi is very theoretical in nature. It does not cater to practical applications and is not applications driven. As a result, students tend to become theoretical duds and find it a tough ask whenworking in the industry in which practical application is the key to excellence. Besides the need to instill quality faculty in the system, there has to be a culture of creativity that needs to be imbibed within the system.

One of the fundamental issues with the education system is the need to institutionalize the idea of organizing technical festivals and collaborating with industry to provide innovative solutions. A technical festival is an idea which is very unique to the Indian system. At the heart of such massive technical festivals, lies a very solid management team that runs the show. It also tries to address these concerns of innovators who are looking for opportunities to show case their skills. Expansion of creative ventures such as these would help to nurture creativity among people. It could also bring about a sense of entrepreneurship among the students who are looking for opportunities to bring about new products. The key to build this is to expand these to the non elite institutions across the country. Besides the elite institutions, the concept of learning is literally non existent. Encouragement of such events in the institutions in lesser fancied towns across the country is one of the key developments that needs to be done. Additional funding from the state or other resources could aid this process and make it better. Besides this, there needs to be a renewed emphasis on the restructuring the primary education system.

The point to ease out the stress pressure among the students can also be done by having a refreshed primary education system. Primary education in the country today is too focused on science based subjects and does not provide the diversity that is required in learning. The culture of creativity needs to be brought into the system from the primary level. The proposed new one shot entrance exam would achieve its purpose only if it addresses these needs

The intent in streamlining the exam process to one single exam is impressive. Conceptually the idea is welcoming but the issue is whether the implementation is sound. Moreover, there is also the threat ofbeing too decentralized a system. It has to be carefully implemented so as to ensure that too much power is not vested within the examination per say. The key is to understand that we need to cater to the nativities of our country rather than ape the western SAT model. The exam, for it to have an impact, should be a reflection of what Indian children would need looking years down the line. Most of all, the entire focus should be on the content of the exam more than the format or the nature of it.

Reform in the education sector is something that is very crucial to our growth as a nation. It has been long overdue and the efforts such as restructuring the exam system give me hope. Having said that, one also needs to understand that there are more pertinent and systemic issues that needs to be corrected if we are to ever achieve elevating the education standards in this country. Our education system needs to be restructured at the core and not at the mere periphery.

After all, in order to inculcate a culture of learning, we need to look much beyond the single window exam achievement.

Bottom Line : A welcome step but core educational reforms is the lasting solution to create a world class system

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