Out with the old

Shweta Aprameya,
FOUNDER & CEO, YTS SOLUTIONS, MOBILE MONEY SERVICE PROVIDER, MUMBAI

The primary goal of education is to create individuals capable of envisioning new things without emulating what previous generations have churned out. They are the creators, inventors and discoverers. Education was initially passed on from father to son and families continued to follow the same process across generations.

The first step of schooling was introduced with formal gurus imparting education to a select few, limiting its benefits to the elites. The industrial revolution however made it possible for books to be mass produced and knowledge to be made available and accessible. Education thus became an industry where knowledge was imparted for a fee by a set of teachers following a prescribed syllabus, which was uniform across fields and across imparting institutions. This is the industrial approach to education. Codified standard operating processes were followed to deliver both quantity and quality of output at a cost lower than revenue.

This is where the education industry stands today, left behind in the change that has swept the world since it is too codified. The need for change in this industry is imperative, especially if you consider that it is failing at the output level with an abysmal rate of employable youth. The pertinent question though is why is the system not delivering what it was designed to deliver?

Need for competitive education Fundamentally, the education industry does not work on a competitive basis. It's only the secondary, and particularly, the tertiary level education system that follows the principle of competitiveness and attract talent in the form of teachers and students. Primary education is imparted as a fundamental right by the government and hence tends to be low in quality with focus on quantity instead. However, most parents are willing to pay for quality education. As per recent reports, the Karnataka government-driven "free" schools are failing to attract students, who prefer private schools. This is a confirmation of the shift in the market dynamics. To improve quality, education will have to follow the basic principles of competitiveness and move away from government as an anchor delivery arm, restricting its role to monitoring the rules of the game.

Since education does not follow the basic market dynamic principles, the quality has always suffered. There are two key aspects of education quality. The first one is the quality of the deliverer or teachers. Repeated data from across states in India shows that the quality of teachers in schools is low which in turn leads to low quality of education imparted. The second aspect of this quality is the infrastructure or the tools of imparting education. Technology today has made it possible for education to be imparted by good quality teachers remotely to students thus reducing the dependence of local teachers. Can we not record lectures of the best teachers and make them available free of cost?

Align syllabus to social changes Efficiency in the context of education can be defined as the end result which is quite low. We most urgently need to have a look at our current syllabus and approach and align it with the society which has transitioned from an agriculture to manufacturing to a service economy. At the same time, we need to change our filter of judging young ones purely from their academic scores to alternate talent they might be demonstrating in their early days. The second dimension of efficiency in case of education is the cost of delivery. Operational logistics do not allow students in far off locations to have access to a teacher who is an expert in the subject. With virtual classrooms, if you have a teacher in one location, and she is good at science, then technology can easily be used to virtualise her to other locations.

Need to innovate Innovation drives collaboration which helps in exchange of ideas and well-fuelled teamwork. This is one of the most important aspects for learning. Innovation comes to rescue today with a single laptop, a webcam, a projector and an internet connection; a teacher can therefore broadcast and begin collaboration with any other classroom. As groups of learners coalesce around shared passions online, they experience something that is difficult to replicate in the physical space.

Making education affordable The financial model today offers education free of cost or at a subsidised price provided by the government as a fundamental right of the citizen, but only till the primary level and then leaves the student to fend on own for higher education. Students depend on parents or their earnings or loans to finance the same. The question but is can we not turn it on its head and treat all education free and offer loan to the student? That way we would be able to cater to the varied skill sets of students which may not be in the direction of academic excellence but can be nurtured. And it also takes away the eliticism in imparting of education and provides everyone an equal and better opportunity for learning.