Posted by Ninad on August 20, 2010 under All Posts | 
Recently, I was interviewed by ‘The Hindu’. The piece appeared in the newspaper on 17th August, 2010, and is reproduced below:
Embrace technology to improve access to education
Public-private participation will boost the investment in education manifold in the years to come, says Ninad Karpe, CEO and MD of Aptech.
Ninad Karpe started his career as a consultant advising companies planning to invest in India. He is now the CEO and Managing Director of Aptech which he joined in 2009. A keen follower of the education scenario both in India and around the world, Mr. Karpe maintains a blog www.reformingeducation.in where he speaks about issues relating to education. Excerpts from an interview during his recent visit to Thiruvananthapuram:
On problems in the primary education sector
The primary education system is plagued by so many problems. These range from single- teacher schools to institutions where girls cannot attend just because there are no toilet facilities. Broadly the problems are those of access and quality. Seen on a nationwide basis, out of every 100 students who enroll for class one, 80 or so drop out by the time they reach class nine or ten.
The Right to Education Act is a welcome development as it has the potential to ensure access to education. Access, however, should be ensured without compromising on quality. That said, quality in Indian schools may take some time to improve.
Lack of quality teachers is a major stumbling block and this will continue for a while because teaching has not been a sought after profession for a long time. This cannot be changed overnight. Moreover, monetarily too teaching in schools is not that attractive. Then again, getting the odd good teacher is not enough. How do you get a set of good teachers across subjects? How do you retain them?
But, by providing access and reasonable infrastructure and with some help from technology the school system can be improved. It is true that technology cannot replace the teacher completely, but it can substitute a teacher’s work by up to 20 per cent or so. In India though the government has experimented with separate education channels and with e-learning schemes, technology has not really kept pace with the requirements, in creating a classroom-like experience for students.
On private investment in education
After Kapil Sibal took over as minister in charge of education a lot of visibility has been generated for the education sector. New schemes and new ideas are doing the rounds. As a result a lot of money, private money included, is going to come to education. That is good. In the days to come we can see huge amounts of money being pumped in by the private sector in tier-II and tier-III cities. These players are going to give much better access and far better infrastructure than the public sector.
The government has also announced a PPP scheme for the education sector. This is a fairly attractive scheme. I can say that when compared to the last five years, investment in education will grow four-fold in next five years. The private players will also start embracing technology in a big way. All this will happen over the next decade. But then schools aren’t just about the infrastructure. There is also the more intangible ‘learning experience’, the ambience.
On the possible entry of foreign universities/ educational institutions into India
The Foreign Universities Bill is a good initiative. The government has put in filters in the bill which will prevent India from getting inundated by those kinds of institutions which we do not want here. The education industry in India is fairly mature. But I do not honestly think that this would result in a dramatic change in the education sector. Will four institutes coming up in India change the education scene in a radical manner? Yes, it will help some students get quality education. This is radical more as a thought process. There aren’t many countries in the world that allow foreign universities to set up shop. As a piece of legislation this Bill is a fairly dramatic step. I had never thought I would see something like this in my lifetime.
But in terms of impact, the role of foreign universities will be limited. The kind of shortages we have in terms of the number of colleges and universities, it is too huge a gap to be filled by foreign institutions.
On fears that top quality institutions may not prefer to come to India.
Why fear? Why can’t the second or third rung institutions come to India? Now, are Indian students only going to top notch institutions abroad? I have been to Russia and there are 40,000 Indian students studying there. The question is do we just look at students going to Harvard or do we also look at students who aspire to get educated in a foreign university, even if that is a second-rung institution? If the top two or three colleges don’t come, it is okay. Let the second level guys come and become successful and then the top guys will come.
A major point to note about foreign universities is that even if such institutions come here they will not be a substitute to learning in our own country’s institutions. As in the case of schools, the university is not just about the campus but it is about a host of learning experiences. The atmosphere of, say, Harvard cannot be recreated here in a campus just like that. So even if a foreign university opens a campus here it will take 10 to 15 years to get its processes going.
We should encourage foreign universities to come and at the same time facilitate partnerships. It should never be one against the other.
On the move to set up Universities of Innovation.
If things are done in the way that the Bill suggests, it would be nothing short of a revolution. Here, there is a lot of scope for private capital to come in. In fact only Indian private capital will come in initially to fund a university of innovation. The foreign players will wait to see how things progress then may come in.
On the role of Aptech in higher education
Education is not a homogenous industry and over the last 25 years we have traversed quite a bit of ground. Our mission now is to become a global career education company. We are into animation, multimedia and gaming, hardware networking, travel, tourism, hospitality and airport management, an English language academy… We have a presence in more than 20 countries. And everywhere the aspiration of a student is the same; to get a better standard of living. We aim to give students skill sets, career tools which are globally valid.
Posted by Ninad on April 12, 2010 under All Posts |
Mark Twain has popularized this term “Lies, damned lies and statistics”.
With the right to education at primary level becoming a fundamental right, it is interesting to see some statistics connected to primary education in India (source: HRD Ministry). So, read on…
- Total number of children in 6-14 age group in India eligible for primary education: 19 million
- Number of children in the 6-14 age group who do not go to school: 8 million
- Drop out ratios:
- 25% by class V
- 50% by class VIII
- Number of primary schools in India with only one teacher: 120,000
These are staggering numbers. Around 40 per cent of eligible children (8 m) do not go to school.
Here are some more statistics (source: 2008-09 District Information System for Education) of the survey of 1.29 million government and private schools.
- Over 60 per cent did not have electricity
- 46.4 per cent did not have toilets for girls
- 50 per cent did not have boundary walls to ensure safety for students.
So, will the Right to Education change all this?
The gap is so huge that no amount of legislation can change this scenario in a short span of time. It will require consistent commitment from the government and citizens to increase the access and quality of primary education.
Because of the Right to Education law, more funds will certainly get allocated to schools and it will help in raising the capacity.
Posted by Ninad on April 5, 2010 under All Posts |
It’s been a long wait. Nine years!
The Constitution was amended nine years back to make education a fundamental right. On 1st April, 2010, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act became a law. India has now joined a few countries like Chile and Bangladesh which ensure compulsory education.
“I am what I am today because of education” – this is what Dr, Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India stated in his address to the nation – an unprecedented gesture.
Undoubtedly, it is a historic moment.
However, there are a lot of doubts on how it will be implemented.
Where are the teachers? Despite the bravado, how will the government fund a total spend of Rs. 171,000 crores (approx. USD) 38 bn? Why cover private unaided schools with an obligation of 25 per cent reservation for the underprivileged?
There are many such questions.
However, there is no doubt that education is now in the forefront of the national agenda. There is a law to back it and the Prime Minister himself had addressed the nation on this issue.
If not anything else, this visibility will ensure that Education now takes its rightful centre-stage in all policy decision-making.
Posted by Ninad on December 21, 2009 under All Posts |
Enrollment in primary school has shot up to nearly 95 per cent level in recent years, due to a massive effort by the government, NGOs and other initiatives. However, there is a big bottleneck in the secondary education as enrollment drops to 50 per cent in grade 9 and 10.
Enrollment for girl student is particularly poor at the secondary level and drop outs of girls rise significantly due to distance, safety and lack of sanitation.
For the primary level, government has launched Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBV). This is a residential school which caters primarily to girls who are first generation learners from disadvantaged castes. These schools provide free teaching, lodging and boarding until class 8. It is part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the Central government’s program which aims at ensuring that all children between 6 and 14 years enter primary school.
The government has recently launched a sponsored scheme for secondary education – Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), which aims at setting up a mass secondary education structure. If the girls’ hostel scheme is extended beyond class 8 and if RMSA is successfully implemented, it could make a huge impact on secondary education in India.
Here are some facts on secondary education in India:
- Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for secondary education at 40 per cent is lower than 70 per cent in East Asia and 82 per cent in Latin America. It varies widely between States: Kerala (92 %), Bihar (22%), Jharkand (4%).
- 40 million children were enrolled in secondary education in 2008. Majority of them were boys from urban areas with privileged background
- 37 per cent of secondary students fail and 11 per cent dropout before the exam.
- There are 3 National Boards and 34 State and Union Territory Boards, with their own curriculum.
- 60 per cent of the secondary school system is privately managed
There is enough evidence to prove the importance of secondary education, particularly for girls, in bringing about social and economic change at the grass root level.
As Sam Carlson of the World Bank has commented:
“Secondary Education is vital for breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty and provides hugely beneficial social impacts… It is a very high return on investment”
Posted by Ninad on July 22, 2009 under All Posts |
Rs. 44,000 crores seems a lot of money. Yes, it is.
But, that is also the amount the Central government spends every year on Education. In spite of all its efforts, there are huge dropouts in schools. More than 60 per cent students who register in government schools do not make it beyond standard 5.
Can this problem be solved with a school voucher? And, what is a school voucher?
It works like this. The government provides school vouchers to families and students who need to attend school. The student has a choice of using these vouchers with a public or private school and does not need to pay fees to that extent. These schools aggregate the vouchers and seek reimbursement from the government.
This system has been successful in many countries. In Chile, the voucher system covers 90 per cent of the school students. The State pays private and municipal schools directly on the basis of student attendance.
It has been tried in India by the Centre for Civil Society in Delhi as well. In a pilot program, vouchers were distributed by them to needy students and the results were inspiring.
So, is the school voucher the panacea to the present problems?
Yes and No.
Yes, it will work in the urban environment where students have a choice of schools. With this choice, they can select whichever school they want to attend.
No, it will certainly not work in the rural areas where students do not have any choice. In many villages, the only choice that students have is the local government school. If there is no choice of schools, how will the voucher system work?
The government needs to spend Rs. 44,000 crores annually on schools. In fact, whatever more they can fund is ideal. At the same time, it is about time that the school voucher system be tried out in a limited manner.
