The Education System in India

Author : Dr. V Sasi Kumar

Link to Article

Year : 2000s?

India in the Past

The gurukula system:

• Open to anyone who wanted to learn (subject to teacher’s acceptance)
• Inside the guru’s house - students would also learn how to manage a house
• Learning across all subjects known at that time, and closely linked to nature and life

The modern schooling system was brought to India by the English (Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay) in 1830s:

• Only “modern” subjects like English, math, science etc, not philosophy and metaphysics
• The link with nature was broken, as was the relationship between teacher and student

Starting from the 1920s till date, boards of education were formed, and schools have been getting consolidated under them, for the purpose of curriculum and standard setting. While major strides have been taken towards universal primary education, progress has been slow. The investment of 3% of GDP towards school education is also recognised to be on the lower side. However, this has come up from as low as 0.7% in 1951-52.

School System

• Initially, states had autonomy in education policy and implementation
• Since 1976, education has been in the concurrent list, meaning that policy and standards are set nationally, with states having freedom in implementation of the same
• NCERT and SCERTs work on developing curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation methods and guidelines on education to be followed in each state
• CBSE was initially setup to cater to children of government employees who may move across the country
• ICSE was originally set up to be a replacement (localisation) of the cambridge school certificate, and started and remains as the board of choice mainly for private and wealthier schools

Exclusive Schools

• Some schools follow international or niche curricula
• They often charge higher fees, have stronger infrastructure and lower student-teacher ratios

State Schools

• State board and curriculum may be followed by 3 types of schools:
• Government schools (owned and operated by state government)
• Grant-in-aid schools (privately owned, government aided)
• Private state-board schools (privately owned and operated)

Kerala

• The first state to achieve 100% literacy, also having the lowest fertility rate and greatest life expectancy
• Has often been the first to experiment with forward looking and progressive education policies and methods
• They introduced IT in education and are now moving towards IT enabled education