To become truly world-class, the Indian education sector requires more funding, more standardisation and more transparency
Much like every year, there is a great deal of anticipation surrounding the upcoming Union Budget. The government, in the build-up to the Lok Sabha elections later this year, is expected to increase expenditure in key sectors, including education. When it comes to last year’s Budget (2023-24), the allocation for the education and the higher education sector was just about 2.9 per cent of the country’s GDP. Though small in absolute terms, it was still 8 per cent higher than the previous year. This trend of increasing spending on education is expected to continue this year as well.
However, if one compares the spending on education in other countries, the allocation is much less than the outlay by developed countries such as the United States (6 per cent of GDP) and the United Kingdom (4.2 of GDP). They meet the global expectations for budgetary allocation on education. Therefore, there is scope for India as well to increase its budgetary allocation in education from a mere 2.9 per cent of its GDP to 6 per cent.
In India, the foundation of education leaves a lot to be desired, and we need to spend more to improve it. Simply allocating funds is not enough to help the education sector. If we have to bring a fundamental change, we must first make sure each child gets a level playing field, which won’t be possible by just allocating funds or raising the allocation of funds. The change must arise from all levels, from funding to syllabus to the infrastructure.
One Nation, One Syllabus
One way to develop a strong foundation among students is to implement a uniform syllabus across the country. Our syllabus varies in quality across states. Starting from the school level, we have numerous boards, including the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the respective state boards. The syllabus and the teaching pedagogies in schools across each of these boards vary from one another. As a result, once students graduate from the 10th and 12th classes and appear for competitive examinations, some of them don’t get a level playing field. Unless we think of ‘One India, One Syllabus,’ no amount of funding is going to help in a real sense. There needs to be a systemic change in the way we teach our children, and the Centre and the states must come on the same page to understand the real issues plaguing our nation’s education system.
If all students from Class 1 to graduation to PG level and further have one syllabus and one quality, it will provide all students with a level playing field. The industry will get high-quality and high-calibre resources from all over the country. The country’s resources will be better utilised. Imagine the talent pool we will have when every child gets equal opportunities for good quality education.
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Empowering Rural Education
We also need to nurture talent in rural India and help them compete by improving the quality of education they receive. There is no dearth of talent in rural India; what is lacking is resources, syllabus, infrastructure and the kind of exposure students in urban centres receive. This leaves rural students without a proper academic foundation to pursue higher education. A coordinated effort between the states and the central government is required to allocate the budget for education accordingly.
OCAC and Vocational Education
In traditional degree programmes, we need to focus on out-of-class academic collaboration (OCAC) and vocational education and scale it up tremendously. This component has to become an integral part of the syllabus. In some countries, for instance, students are required to invest enough time out of class, for in-company projects, learning real-life skills, etc. This is the reason why they learn to be so innovative and make significant research contributions. We need to adopt a research and application mindset.
Higher Education and Research
When it comes to research, most of the government funding and grants go to government institutes. Research grants must be disbursed judiciously, whether it is for a government university, a deemed-to-be-university or a private university. One of the criteria for transparent and merit-based allocation of research grants is that there can be weightage for rankings, like NIRF and NAAC rankings etc. There needs to be a transparent criterion for allocating research grants.
Moreover, there is a need to see how many government-funded research project reports, which get submitted, are acted upon. And how many such submitted project reports lead to the decision-making stage by the concerned stakeholders. Once these changes are implemented, transparency and merit-based decision-making will be demonstrated, resulting in highly motivated stakeholders, and leading to significant improvements in research outcomes.
The author is the Campus Director of NMIMS University Navi Mumbai
