wishlist of education industry

  Last year's impressive budget outlays for education have raised the hopes of all those associated with this vocation. We do hope that even this year, the government lives up to its promise of making the poor its priority. And what better way to service the poor than to invest in their education so that   present and future generations can secure better lives. Here is what I would be hoping for:

 

   First and foremost, a further increase in our budget outlay for education in general as   some long-standing and yet unresolved problems still subsist. A pertinent one would be the low attendance at the primary and secondary levels. Many students opt out as the mid-day meals are not sufficient for their nutritional requirements. There are also other problems like the absence of teachers and the unavailability of blackboards or classrooms. The obvious solution to   these problems would be to allocate more funds and to increase teachers' salaries.

 

       There is also a case for improving the quality of education imparted at the tertiary level especially in the case of government-run colleges and universities.  Reform is warranted at the level of curriculum-development. Also, one needs to ensure that the students actually graduate with at least a minimum level of skill that helps them to swim in the job market.  Today, even as the so-called centers of excellence are flush with funds and facilities,  other universities run by the State that cater to the vast majority of the student population are in a bad state .

 

     Finally, even as we allocate funds to professional education, we must ensure that the basic skills of students including but not limited to those of arithmetic, language, history and geography are not compromised. The decline in the general level of such skills in otherwise technically competent graduates is something that I have experienced in the course of my work. This leads to a decline in the quality of their greater intellectual capital and also hampers the development of well-rounded personalities.

 

 

 

 

Writer's profile

 Chitra Awasthi, Managing Director, Rit International, is an educationist and counselor. She is a writer and freelancer and has been working in this field for the past twenty years.

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Chitra
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