Education System in India

Education System in India

In the Beginning

In the past, India had the Gurukula system of education during which anyone who wished to review visited a teacher's (Guru) house and requested to be taught. If accepted as a student by the guru, he would then occupy the guru's place and help altogether activities reception. This not only created a robust tie between the teacher and therefore the student but also taught the scholar everything about running a house. The guru taught everything the kid wanted to find out, from Sanskrit to the holy scriptures and from Mathematics to Metaphysics. the scholar stayed as long as she wished or until the guru felt that he had taught everything he could teach. All learning was closely linked to nature and to life, and not confined to memorizing some information.

Education System in India   

The modern establishment was delivered to India, including the English language, originally by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay within the 1830s. The curriculum was confined to “modern” subjects like science and arithmetic, and subjects like metaphysics and philosophy were considered unnecessary. Teaching was confined to classrooms and therefore the link with nature was broken, as also the close relationship between the teacher and therefore the student.

The Uttar Pradesh (a state in India) Board of highschool and Intermediate Education was the primary Board found out in India within the year 1921 with jurisdiction over Rajputana, Central India, and Gwalior. In 1929, the Board of highschool and Intermediate Education, Rajputana, was established. Later, boards were established in a number of states. But eventually, in 1952, the constitution of the board was amended and it had been renamed the Central Board of education (CBSE). All schools in Delhi and a few other regions came under the Board. it had been the function of the Board to make a decision on things like curriculum, textbooks and examination system for all schools affiliated thereto. Today there are thousands of faculties affiliated to the Board, both within India and in many other countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Education System in India   

Universal and compulsory education for all children within the age bracket of 6-14 was a cherished dream of the new government of the Republic of India. this is often evident from the very fact that it's incorporated as a directive policy in article 45 of the constitution. But this objective remains distant even quite half a century later. However, within the recent past, the govt appears to possess taken a significant note of this lapse and has made primary education a Fundamental Right of each Indian citizen. The pressures of the economic process and therefore the acute scarcity of skilled and trained manpower must certainly have played a task to form the govt take such a step. The expenditure by the govt of India on school education in recent years involves around 3% of the GDP, which is recognized to be very low.

“In recent times, several major announcements were made for developing the poor state of affairs in the education sector in India, the foremost notable ones being the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The announcements are; (a) To progressively increase expenditure on education to around 6 percent of GDP. (b) To support this increase in expenditure on education, and to extend the standard of education, there would be an imposition of an education cess over all central government taxes. (c) to make sure that nobody is denied of education thanks to economic backwardness and poverty. (d) to form right to education a fundamental right for all children within the age bracket 6–14 years. (e) To universalize education through its flagship programs like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Mid Day Meal

The School System

India is split into 28 states and seven so-called “Union Territories”. The states have their own elected governments while the Union Territories are ruled directly by the govt of India, with the President of India appointing an administrator for every Union Territory. As per the constitution of India, school education was originally a state subject —that is, the states had complete authority on deciding policies and implementing them. The role of the govt of India (GoI) was limited to coordination and choosing the standards of upper education. This was changed with a constitutional amendment in 1976 in order that education now comes within the so-called concurrent list. That is, school education policies and programs are suggested at the national level by the GoI though the state governments have tons of freedom in implementing programs. Policies are announced at the national level periodically. The Central planning board of Education (CABE), found out in 1935, continues to play a lead role within the evolution and monitoring of educational policies and programs.

There is a national organization that plays a key role in developing policies and programs, called the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) that prepares a National Curriculum Framework. Each state has its counterpart called the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT). These are the bodies that essentially propose educational strategies, curricula, pedagogical schemes and evaluation methodologies to the states' departments of education. The SCERTs generally follow guidelines established by the NCERT. But the states have considerable freedom in implementing the education system.

The National Policy on Education, 1986 and therefore the Programme of Action (POA) 1992 envisaged free and compulsory education of satisfactory quality for all children below 14 years before the 21st Century. the govt committed to earmark 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for education, half which might be spent on primary education. The expenditure on Education as a percentage of GDP also rose from 0.7 percent in 1951-52 to about 3.6 percent in 1997-98.

The school system in India has four levels: lower primary (age 6 to 10), upper primary (11 and 12), high (13 to 15) and better secondary (17 and 18). The lower grade school is split into five “standards”, upper-grade school into two, high school into three and better secondary into two. Students need to learn a standard curriculum largely (except for regional changes in mother tongue) till the top of highschool. there's some amount of specialization possible at the upper secondary level. Students throughout the country need to learn three languages (namely, English, Hindi and their maternal language) except in regions where Hindi is that the mother tongue and in some streams as discussed below.

There are mainly three streams of in-class education in India. Two of those are coordinated at the national level, of which one is under the Central Board of education (CBSE) and was originally meant for youngsters of central government employees who are periodically transferred and should need to move anywhere within the country. variety of “central schools” (named Kendriya Vidyalayas) are established for the aim altogether main urban areas within the country, and that they follow a standard schedule in order that a student going from one school to a different on a specific day will hardly see any difference in what's being taught. One subject (Social Studies, consisting of History, Geography, and Civics) is usually taught in Hindi, and other subjects in English, in these schools. Kendriya Vidyalayas admit other children also if seats are available. All of them follow textbooks written and published by the NCERT. additionally, to those government-run schools, a variety of personal schools within the country follow the CBSE syllabus though they'll use different textbooks and follow different teaching schedules. they need a particular amount of freedom in what they teach in lower classes. The CBSE also has 141 affiliated schools in 21 other countries mainly catering to the requirements of the Indian population there.

The second central scheme is that the Indian Certificate of education (ICSE). It seems that this was started as a replacement for the Cambridge School Certificate. the thought was mooted during a conference held in 1952 under the Chairmanship of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the then Minister for Education. the most purpose of the conference was to think about the replacement of the overseas Cambridge School Certificate Examination by an All India Examination. In October 1956 at the meeting of the Inter-State Board for Anglo-Indian Education, a proposal was adopted for the fixing of an Indian Council to administer the University of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate's Examination in India and to advise the Syndicate on the simplest thanks to adapt its examination to the requirements of the country. The inaugural meeting of the Council was persisted 3rd November 1958. In December 1967, the Council was registered as a Society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. The Council was listed within the Delhi School Education Act 1973, as a body conducting public examinations. Now an outsized number of faculties across the country are affiliated to the present Council. of these are private schools and usually cater to children from wealthy families.

Both the CBSE and therefore the ICSE council conduct their own examinations in schools across the country that are affiliated to them at the top of 10 years of schooling (after high school) and again at the top of 12 years (after higher secondary). Admission to the 11th class has generally supported the performance during this all-India examination. Since this puts tons of pressure on the kid to perform well, there are suggestions to get rid of the examination at the top of 10 years.

Exclusive Schools

In addition to the above, there is a comparatively small number of faculties that follow foreign curricula like the so-called Senior Cambridge, though this was largely superseded by the ICSE stream elsewhere. a number of these schools also offer the scholars the chance to take a seat for the ICSE examinations. These are usually very expensive residential schools where a number of the Indians working abroad send their children. They normally have the fabulous infrastructure, low student-teacher ratio, and really few students. Many of them have teachers from abroad. There also are other exclusive schools like the Doon School in Dehradun that absorb a little number of scholars and charge exorbitant fees.

Education System in India   

Apart from all of those, there are a couple of faculties around the country, like the Rishi Valley school in Andhra Pradesh, that attempt to break free from the traditional education system that promotes rote and implement innovative systems like the Montessori method. Most such schools are expensive, have high teacher-student ratios and supply a learning environment during which each child can learn at his/her own pace. it might be interesting and instructive to try to to a study on what impact the type of faculty has had on the lifetime of their alumni.

State Schools

Each state within the country has its own Department of Education that runs its own establishment with its own textbooks and evaluation system. As mentioned earlier, the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation method are largely decided by the SCERT within the state, following the national guidelines prescribed by the NCERT.

Each state has three sorts of schools that follow the state curriculum. the govt runs its own schools in land and buildings owned by the govt and paying the staff from its own resources. These are generally referred to as government schools. The fees are quite low in such schools. Then there are privately owned schools with their own land and buildings. Here the fees are high and therefore the teachers are paid by the management. Such schools mostly cater to the urban bourgeoisie families. The third kind consists of faculties that are provided grant-in-aid by the govt, though the varsity was started by a personal agency in their own land and buildings. The grant-in-aid is supposed to assist reduce the fees and make it possible for poor families to send their children. In some states like Kerala, these schools are very almost like government schools since the teachers are paid by the govt and therefore the fees are equivalent to in government schools.

The Case of Kerala

The state of Kerala, a little state within the South Western coast of India, has been different from the remainder of the country in some ways for a previous couple of decades. It has, as an example, the very best literacy rate among all states, and was declared the primary fully literate state a few decades back. anticipation, both male and feminine, is extremely high, on the brink of that of the developed world. Other parameters like birthrate, infant and child mortality are among the simplest within the country, if not the simplest. the entire birthrate has been below the replacement rate of two.1 for the last 20 years. Probably as a side-effect of economic and social development, suicide rates and alcoholism also are very high. Government policies even have been very different from the remainder of the country, resulting in the event model followed in Kerala, with high expenditure in education and welfare, coming to be referred to as the “Kerala Model“ among economists.

Kerala has also always shown interest in trying out ways of improving its school education system. whenever the NCERT came up with new ideas, it had been Kerala that attempted it out first. The state experimented with the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) with gusto, though there was opposition thereto from various quarters, and even took it beyond primary classes. The state was the primary within the country to maneuver from the normal behaviorist way of teaching to a social constructivist paradigm. it had been mentioned within the National Curriculum Framework of NCERT within the year 2000, and Kerala started trying it out subsequent year. The transaction within the classroom and therefore the evaluation methodology was changed. rather than direct questions that would be answered only through memorizing the teachings, indirect questions and open-ended questions were included in order that the scholar needed to think before answering, and therefore the answers might be subjective to some extent. This meant that the scholars had to digest what they studied and had to be ready to use their knowledge during a specific situation to answer the questions. At an equivalent time, the new method took away tons of pressure and therefore the children began to seek out examinations interesting and enjoyable rather than being stressful. A Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation (CCE) system was introduced alongside this, which took into consideration the general personality of the scholar and reduced the dependence on one final exam for deciding promotion to subsequent class. at present, the CBSE also has implemented CCE, but in a more flexible manner.

Kerala was also the primary state within the country to introduce Information Technology as a topic of study at the high school level. it had been started in school 8 with the textbook introducing Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. But within one year the govt was forced to incorporate Free Software also within the curriculum by protests from Free Software enthusiasts and a positive stance taken by a faculty teacher association that had the bulk of state teachers as its members. Eventually, from the year 2007, only GNU/Linux was taught within the schools, and every one computer in schools had only GNU/Linux installed. At that point, maybe even today, this was the most important installation of GNU/Linux in schools and made headlines even in other countries. per annum, from 2007 onwards, about 500,000 children pass out of the faculties learning the concepts behind Free Software and therefore the GNU/Linux OS and applications. The state is now moving towards IT Enabled Education. Eventually, it'll not be taught as a separate subject. Instead, all subjects are going to be taught with the assistance of IT in order that the youngsters will, on the one hand, learn IT skills and, on the opposite, make use of educational applications (such as those mentioned below) and resources within the Internet (such as textual material from sites like Wikipedia, images, animations, and videos) to review their subjects and to try to exercises. Teachers and students have already started using applications like Dr. Geo, GeoGebra, and KtechLab for studying geometry and electronics. Applications like Sunclock, Kalzium, and Chemical also are popular among teachers and students.

The initiative taken by Kerala is now influencing other states and even the policies of the govt of India. States like Karnataka and Gujarat are now getting to introduce Free Software in their schools, and a few other states like Maharashtra are examining the choice. The new education policy of the govt of India speaks about constructivism, IT-enabled education, Free Software and sharing educational resources. Once a couple of the larger states successfully migrate to Free Software, it's hoped that the whole country would imitate it during a relatively short time. When that happens, India could have the most important user base of GNU/Linux and Free Software generally.