Indian Education System: Private School Vs Government School

Comparison of Indian Education System

Private school v/s Government school

Between the academic years of 2010-11 and 2015-16, the number of private schools grew 35% – from 0.22 million in 2010-11 to 0.30 million in 2015-16–while the number of government schools increased by just 1%, from 1.03 million to 1.04 million. Tiny (with 20 or fewer students) and small (with 50 or fewer students) government schools are being abandoned, according to Gandhi. In the five year, the number of tiny government schools rose 52% and small ones by 33.7%. As many as 5,044 government schools had no students in the year 2015-16, up by 14% from 4,435 in 2010-11.

The migration of students from government schools made many non-capable, with high per-pupil expenditure, and low value-for-money from public education expenditure. About 24,000 government schools across Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh have closed down. West Bengal witnessed a 280% rise in tiny schools–more than any other state–followed by Madhya Pradesh (225%) and Jharkhand (131%). However, Bihar bucked the national trend by reporting a 98% decrease in tiny schools. Govt. teachers in India earn four times the salary as that of China but don’t perform as well

India’s government teachers earn more than not just their counterparts in private schools but also in other countries. Despite being paid at least four times the salaries of teachers in China, the performance of Indian teachers judged according to the comprehending level of the students, has been poor in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test in 2009, with India ranking 73rd and China ranking 2nd, among 74 countries. PISA is a worldwide study by he Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school students scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.

Comparison of Indian education system with foreign education system

Indian education focuses more on theory rather than practical. It doesn’t allow creativity. Whereas in foreign countries; they prioritise more on practical based learning. And they let creativity in education. Education is a formality for every Indian. They must get a degree of Engineering or Medical stream; whether they have learned something or not In foreign countries education is considered as a learning process. Their curriculum contains everything from arts to sports along with studies. US has arts, sports, music and theatre in syllabus. Australia focuses more on sports; they have cricket, hockey and boxing in their college curriculum. Whereas, In Indian education system emphasize on studies alone. There is no room for extracurricular in our system.

In Dubai: primary and secondary education is free and made compulsory in law. Whereas, in India education is a flourishing industry. From privatization of education to tuitions and coaching institutes. Education is generating good money in the economy In India students are not given choice to select their field of interest. One must become an engineer or a doctor! Sports and arts are considered to be made for leftovers. If you don’t get admission in science of commerce stream; you choose arts. This is what Indians feel. In India; students are admitted into streams which have higher pay scale or higher number of jobs. And in foreign country; students are admitted according to their field of interest.

In India; students take admission seeing the trends. So if in a particular year, majority of students are rushing towards Mechanical Engineering, you’re bound to take admission in Mechanical Engineering. Students are not given choice to select their field of stream. In short in India; we go with the flow. Where as in foreign countries, students wait until they get admission into their field of interest. Students are required to memorize facts and figures. Thousands of equations of mathematics, birth dates and death dates of freedom fighters, chemical reactions and hundreds of other things. We emphasize on theory. And in foreign country they impact knowledge in students through practical implementation.

Indian education system teaches old technologies. Education system hasn’t changed much after independence. Indian education system is very bad in adopting latest technologies in curriculum. In foreign countries; curriculum changes everyday according to upgradation of technology and requirements of the industry. And lastly we believe in grades and certificates. We believe in taking admission in IITs and IIMs. Foreign countries believe in skills. They don’t care about the institution of education more, all they see is what you learnt during your schooling.

Issues and Challenges faced by the Indian Education System

Expenditure on education In terms of expenditure incurred on education, particularly on higher education, during the year 2010–11, the government spent around Rs.15, 440 crore which is about 85 per cent of the revised budget estimates for the year. The recent 66th round of NSSO survey reveals that between 1999 and 2009, spending on education in general jumped by 378 per cent in rural areas and 345 per cent in urban areas of the country. The survey further reveals that spending on children’s education underlines sharp increase – 63 per cent for rural and 73 per cent for urban families. However, if we measure the expenses on education as a percentage to GDP, India lags behind some developed/ developing nations We recognize that the gap in investments in education in India can perhaps be filled by private sector playing a crucial role.

Gross enrolment pattern At present, in India, there are about 1.86 crore students enrolled in various streams of higher education including Business Management.3 Despite the large number of students studying in various streams, we have not seen any major shift in the productivity as skills and talents are deficient to support economic activities and, hence, there is a serious concern on employability of these educated persons. The gross enrolment ratio (GER) for higher education in India was 12 per cent in 2010. However, the enrolment level varies across states. We also need to recognize that our enrolment level is far below several other countries. For example, according to a Report, GER is 23 per cent for China, 34 per cent for Brazil, 57 per cent for U.K., 77 per cent for both Australia and Russia and 83 per cent for the U.S

In this context, the attempt of Government authorities to increase the number of students by 2020 so as to reach GER of 30 per cent becomes a big challenge. No do bt, the launch of new institutes like JRE School of Management can play a catalyst role in addressing the challenge of increasing GER in India. As a positive step, for the remaining duration of Eleventh Five Year Plan, the Government has taken initiatives to incentivise States for setting up/expansion of existing educational institutions, establishment of 8 universities, expansion of colleges to achieve a target of 1 lakh students enrolment and schemes for setting up model colleges in regions which are below national average of GER. Capacity utilisation

Another challenge to be addressed in strengthening the Indian education system is to improve the capacity utilization. For example, a recent study on capacity utilization in India for higher education indicates that the capacity utilization in case of MBA is about 57 per cent in Maharashtra and 72 per cent in Haryana. In case of certain states, there are a lot of unfilled seats in institutions. On the one hand, we need to improve our GER, and on the other, we need to ensure that institutions/ colleges/schools created for providing higher education fully utilize the capacity created.

Infrastructure facilities One of the factors why the capacity utilization is low in upcoming/new institutions/colleges (both in private and public sectors) is their inability to provide necessary physical infrastructure to run the institutions. The infrastructure facilities desirable to rank the institutions of better quality include real estate, state of the art class rooms, library, hostels, furniture, sports facilities, transport, commercial buildings, etc. We need to ensure apolitical private sector participation in the establishment of colleges for providing quality physical infrastructure. PPP model The Government is making efforts to improve the education system in terms of various parameters like GER, quality, investments, infrastructure, etc. But we need to recognize the constraints for the Government to make a big turnaround with huge investments in education.

I believe that priva e sector has started playing a distinctive role in improving the education system in India. In this context, it is useful to explore the possibility of public private partnership (PPP) model in education. This is not only going to reduce the burden of the Government in incurring high cost of providing basic infrastructure facilities but also lead to construction of state of the art buildings, labs, libraries, hostels etc. Besides, the collaborative efforts between universities/colleges and corporates would help in organizing joint research and development, students getting exposure to industrial activities in terms of internships, corporate training during vacations and issuing of certificates by corporates for attending internship/training etc. and, thus, facilitating in image building and branding of institutions and making the students more job-worthy. Student-teacher ratio

Another challenge for improving the Indian education system is to improve the studentteacher ratio. In India, this ratio is very high as compared to certain comparable countries in the world. For example, while in developed countries this ratio stands at 11.4, in case of India, it is as high as 22.0. It is even low in CIS (10.9), Western Asia (15.3), and Latin America (16.6) This brings the necessity to recruit quality teachers and strengthen the teachers required to handle classes. I also feel that like in developed countries where students are given part-time teaching assignments, we can also explore such possibilities in technical/higher education to handle lower level classes. It is also expected to help the students in meeting their education expenses partially.

Accreditation and branding – quality standards In order to improve the skills and talent of our large populace, there is a need for raising the quality and standards of our education system. It is well-known that many of our professionals (engineers/doctors/management professionals) remain unemployed despite lot of opportunities being open in the globalised world. One of the major factors is the lack of quality education resulting in qualified but not employable category. We need to introduce/activate the mechanism for rating and ranking universities/colleges.

At present, there is no compulsion for institutions/colleges to get accreditation in India. Government has already mooted a proposal to introduce accreditation. We, therefore, require standard rating agencies to give accreditation to universities/colleges/schools. In a recent ranking of Business Schools by Financial Times at global level, in the top fifteen, only two of the Indian premier Business Schools appeared at rank no. 11 and 13 for the year 2011. Most of the top ranking business schools were from the U.S. In this ranking, even China was ahead of India. In the same reporting, in respect of value for money of these two Schools, it is observed that it is not that high when compared with some of the best U.S. Schools. However, a positive development is that these high ranked Indian Schools possess faculties with doctoral qualifications and of global standards who can deliver quality education to the students.

In the world ranking of universities by Quacquarelli Symonds in 2010, out of 200 world renowned universities, only one Indian educational institution appears in the list, while 53 institutions are in the U.S. According to Webometrics ranking for 2011, while no Indian university appears in the list, there are 99 U.S. universities included. This essentially shows that we need to develop Centre for excellence of global standards. Given the increasing role of private sector in the recent years in the development of higher education standards, we need more such institutions that meet certain global rating standards to come up in those areas where low GER prevails. I understand that the JRE School of Management has been established in collaboration with the largest private education group in Asia-Pacific and, hence, striving for quality education of global standards would be its principal aim.