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Education : An Ambitious Aspiration
Would it not be wiser to
concentrate on school education and on raising the quality of higher education
and gearing it more effectively to the country’s needs? Should we not use the
excellent strategies in the plan presented by the Minister to gear education to
facilitate the country’s advance in the global economy before we talk of making
India the Education Super Power of the Future
TTA
conference on education entitled “Educationext-The Way Forward” held in Delhi earlier
this year, the Minister for Human Resources Development Shri Kapil Sibal, in
his inaugural address, launched the idea of India as "the Education
Super Power of the Future". I could see that if used successfully
these strategies could transform education in the country and make it the
strong and powerful engine of advance that the country desperately needs in
order to be able to forge ahead in today’s highly competitive global economy.
A four
point program was outlined in the conference : (i) increasing enrolment in higher education from
the existing 12.2 per cent of the population of the relevant age group to 30
per cent by 2025. (ii) the introduction of
hundreds of new courses. (iii) the massive use of modern technologies for the delivery of
education. And (iv) the inclusion of private
players and the corporate sector as partners in the provision of education.
The
principal strength of the plan is the idea of making an extensive use of
technology. The five point program which runs as follows:
(1)
Low cost devices such as tablets and mobile telephones
(2)
The proliferation of cloud computing.
(3)
Open education, provided through information technology highways.
(4)
The provision of hundreds of courses with the idea of giving students extensive
choice and the freedom to make combinations of their choice-for instance music
and mathematics
(5)
The creation of a communications structure designed to give students exposures
such as hands on work experience, laboratory experimentation and research.
Finally
to start with, 2.5 lakh villages will be connected with the use of fiber
optics to create a powerful information highway.
