Indien: Liberalisierung der Bildungsangebote für mehr Wettbewerb

Der Schlüssel zur Verbesserung des indischen Bildungssystems liegt in der Liberalisierung der Bildung. So erhalten Lernende nach Überzeugung von Prof. Abad Ahmad, Vorsitzender der Aga-Khan-Stiftung Indien, mehr Wahlmöglichkeiten und es ensteht ein gesunder Wettbewerb zwischen den Bildungseinrichtungen.


'Vocational education gets better job than mere degrees'

Does a degree guarantee a job? It doesn't, unless the subject is one of the preferred ones or it has been obtained from a reputed premier college. So, a society poised to have a substantially large young population by 2020 just might end up with a "demographic disaster".

"The serious deficiency in vocational training and deficiency in the level of education, especially in the tertiary education, as compared to the other emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries is well known," said Prof Abad Ahmad, chairman, Aga Khan Foundation India. He was speaking at the convention `Leveraging demographic dividend through quality education -- The way forward', organised by LMA on Friday.

Prof Ahmad pointed out that the number of employable graduates is a small percentage. The key to transform our education system lies in liberalisation of education, addressing its supply side matrix, enabling more choices to students and creating healthy competition among educational institutions to generate merit. This will require bold steps to dismantle "archaic regulations" that have generated artificial scarcity for quality education and spurred growth of shoddy institutions indulging in crass commercialisation, he said.

Former director, IIT Madras, Prof P V Indiresan stressed upon improving the admission process. Referring to the recommendations of Yash Pal Committee on higher education and the National Knowledge Commission, he questioned the wisdom of increasing enrolment and instead suggested decrease in enrolments and matching the system to economic activity.

Prof Indiresan suggested doing away with tests that lead to the need for coaching classes and instead considering value for school tradition and teachers' recommendations as in premier global institutions like Harvard. He also stressed the need for job-oriented education and suggested a plan for better teachers, not just by offering higher salaries.

In the session that was chaired by G B Pattanaik, principal secretary to the governor, the head of corporate affairs at Intel Corporation, Valsa Williams suggested a sharing of responsibility between stakeholders including government, private sector, academia and civil society.

Earlier, delivering the keynote address, member, Planning Commission, Narendra Jadhav expressed concern over quality of education, which, he said, was much below expectations. While curriculum revision could be a step towards improving the quality, access to higher education also needed to be increased.

Governor B L Joshi, delivering the inaugural address, stressed on human resource management, innovative modification in curriculum and a balanced regulatory system based on transparency and accountability.

Chief secretary (UP) and chairman of LMA advisory council, Atul Gupta, maintaining that UP had committed itself for improving the education scenario, stressed upon public-private partnership. LMA president, Jayant Krishna was also present on the occasion.