Education Ecology in India

Author : Kathan Shukla

Link to Article

Year : 2015

Rote-learning is the plain memorisation, without conceptual understanding (knowledge, without higher levels of bloom’s taxonomy). This (only/largely rote-learning) isn't a desirable state of education.

The above image, copied from globianperspective.com (Prof. Kathan Shukla’s blog) details the current education ecology in India. In order to understand it better, one may read it in the below order.

Assessment Practices

Board exams (10th and 12th grade) are of great importance with respect to one’s career and higher education. The exams currently assess almost only lower levels of cognition (knowledge and understanding at best), and they incentivise rote-learning of model responses to repeated questions and reproduction in limited time.

These exams are treated as the main end goal for students, and thus students are incentivised to fall into rote-learning patterns.

State Administration

Administration at the state level is highly centralised. A handful of state administrators are responsible for all activities of teacher supply and training, school calendar and curriculum design, teaching material design and supply, distribution/logistics, pedagogy design, evaluation design and implementation etc. This is overly burdensome on a handful of individuals, and leads to blanket subpar results across the state. It would be better to have a more decentralised approach, with standard setting and regulation being centralised.

District-Block-Cluster Administration

With limited autonomy, lower levels of administration act as eyes and hands of state administration. This is the mechanism to increase reach, without a localised approach.

Principal

Principals today are teachers who are used as figureheads in public schools. They are burdened with additional administrative work and paperwork. They are expected to execute bureaucratic work, without having any real autonomy.

Teacher

Teachers work under constraints including:

• Poor training
• Poor working conditions, with limited incentives
• Hierarchical culture

They are thus incentivised to plainly cover large syllabi, pleasing their bosses, and without providing feedback for improvement.

Parents

Parents are most invested in their children’s future success (career wise). They thus act as a reinforcing influence for children to rote-learn further.

Tutoring

Tutors serve primarily as an added avenue to improve students’ exam results. They thus, primarily aim to provide model responses, reinforce their learning, and thus students’ grades, with or without higher level learning.