Free and Quality Education: Why India desperately needs it? Answered

"Bad schools threaten India’s dream of being a superpower"[1]

"Education is one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability" -- World Bank

"Poverty can be eradicated only by providing quality education to the children" - Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann

Why quality education?

Future of 26.5 crore pupils studying in our schools is at stake because of bad schools[1:1]

-- India needs to make these 10s of crore kids population educated & employable
-- Otherwise this massive Most Valuable Asset will turn into a disaster

By not focussing on education
-- India could waste much of its growth potential
-- And court instability as undereducated, underemployed youngsters lose hope[1:2]

Why free education?

Average tuition fee in Tier I and II cities for private primary schools is between 60K to 1.5 lakh per year[2]

i.e. making it inaccessible to majority of the population in these cities who are forced to study in public schools

  • Not just in India, but across the world including developed countries, majority of the children attended state funded or government schools[3][4][5]
  • Despite India having significantly less per capita income than US and UK, a lower percentage of students attend government schools
  • This suggests poor quality of Government schools, which is also confirmed by data in the next section

Indian Govt funded schools are performing poorly

  • Government schools consistently underperforming since last 10 years[1:3]

  • Gujarat is one of the poorly performing states as far as Govt schools is considered. 73% students who appeared for class 10 supplementary examination failed in 2023[6].

Comparison of Education budgets

India significantly underspends on Education. Ranks 150 out of 200 countries[7]

India Education spending is similar to Pakistan & Srilanka

  • India has been underspending on education for decades, resulting in dismal and poor infrastructure of government managed schools.

The above data points to the need to increase Govt spending on education and improve quality of govt funded schools. In other words Govt should strive to provide free quality education.

Broken promises and Helpless India & its children

Modi Govt had promised 6% spend on education in 2014 manifesto, however allocation has been stagnant at 2.8 to 2.9%[8]

“The politics of jail boosts the power of the ruling leader. However, the issue with the politics of education is that it empowers the nation, not the individual leader” - Best Education Minister Manish Sisodia from jail[9]

26.5 crore pupils in India are suffering because of govt missteps[1:4]

"One state govt has done more than most is in Delhi, India's Capital, under Aam Aadmi Party(AAP)" - The Economist 28 June 2023[1:5]

Delhi Case study

Delhi Education model was praised on the front page of the biggest newspaper of US "The New York Times"[10]

Free Quality education has been one of the main guarantees of AAP

  • Delhi AAP govt has been allocating significantly large amount of its budget to education, 24.3% in 2023-24 as compared 14.8% average for other states[11].
  • As a result, in the last five years Govt schools in Delhi have come at par with private schools and in fact have also outperformed them in some metrics.
  • Delhi Govt school students have been performing increasingly well in national competitive exams as well, as is shown by increase in the number of students clearing these exams[12]
NEET JEE Mains JEE Advanced
2021 895 384 64
2023 1391 730 106

Sources:

  1. https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/06/28/narendra-modis-ultimate-test-educating-265m-pupils?s=08 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/the-cost-of-raising-a-child-in-india-school-costs-30-lakh-college-a-crore/articleshow/93607066.cms ↩︎

  3. https://img.asercentre.org/docs/ASER 2022 report pdfs/All India documents/aser2022nationalfindings.pdf ↩︎

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States ↩︎

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom ↩︎

  6. https://ahmedabadmirror.com/class-10-supplementary-exam/81860993.html ↩︎

  7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_on_education_(%_of_GDP) ↩︎

  8. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/nine-years-of-modi-govt-in-education-big-plans-some-key-gains-8651337/ ↩︎

  9. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/politics-of-jail-vs-politics-of-education-in-manish-sisodias-letter-from-prison-2344582-2023-03-09 ↩︎

  10. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/world/asia/india-delhi-schools.html ↩︎

  11. https://prsindia.org/budgets/states/delhi-budget-analysis-2023-24 ↩︎

  12. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/more-delhi-govt-school-kids-clearing-neet-jee-over-yrs-kejriwal-8819689/ ↩︎