Evaluate the redundancy of education policies in India

To say education is important is an understatement. Education is a weapon to improve

one’s life. It is probably the most important tool to change one’s life. Education certainly
determines the quality of an individual’s life. It improves one’s knowledge, skills and
develops the personality and attitude.

We all know that education is really important for everyone. But the kind of knowledge and
skills required by the economy are different in many ways from the core knowledge. The
government needs to implement drastic measures to bridge the gap between education and
work. Education needs to allow young people to gain employable skills and this can be done
through vocational courses.

Our Indian education system is divided in three tiers primary education, secondary
education and higher education. In this whole educational journey students go through
many exams. It teaches them to analyse their strengths and weakness consistently. An
Indian education policy emphasizes competitive spirit. Competition teaches students to
unleash their full potential. Indian schools teach basic knowledge in all subjects. The annual
system in school years helps slow learners.

These days a lot of positive changes are happening in the education policies of India.
Emphasis on practical knowledge is increased. There are many government policies to
encourage the importance of education system such as Rashtriya Madhyamika Abhiyaan,
2009- This scheme aims to enhance access to secondary education and to improve its
quality. Vidhyanjali Scheme, 2016- To encourage extra-curricular activities in students. The
Indian government is working on the New ‘National Education Policy (NEP) to bring
revolutionary changes in the Indian education system. The first draft of the policy was
released in 2019. The focus of the New Education Policy (NEP) will be on girl’s education. It’s
planning to eradicate the inequality in education. And there are a lot more to know.

But there are some major redundancies in education system of India which we need to
focus and improve them. Some major drawbacks of Indian education policies are:-

 Rote Learning- It emphasis on memorizing the facts rather than thoroughly

understanding the concepts. Rote learning is terrible because it encourages
us to memorise and prevent analytical thinking. Yet it remains the dominant
mode of learning in our schools. Learning history becomes memorising a
chronology of dates. In the science, concepts and principles are taught, but
they get drowned in a heap of practice problems whose main aim to develop
an ability to do pattern recognisation.
 Completely relying on notebooks.
 Students have no freedom to think creatively.
  Taking marks as an assessment of student’s talent, when marks can be easily
obtained by memorizing the pre-written answers in the book.
 Lack of infrastructure.
 Textbooks do not mention how the topics are relevant to practical life.
 Pressurizing students for marks and grades.
 Not teaching students about how to deal with daily life struggles.
 Incentivising hyper-competitiveness rather than encouraging to co-learn.
 Indian government is spending only 3% of its GDP on education while other
countries like USA and Brazil spend 5.4%-5.7% of GDP in education system.
 As the government is unable to invest enough in the education sectors. And
the result is the high cost of education. This is the reason why there is no
control of government on the fee structure of private educational institutes.
 Not encouraging research and innovations.
 In the top 100 universities list by ‘Times Higher Education World Reputation
Ranking’ none of the Indian universities could make into the list.

To overcome these drawbacks India needs to work a lot in different fields. Some major steps
need to be done are:-

 Indian government needs to invest heavily in infrastructure, teacher and training

teachers. At least 4% of GDP must be invested in the education sector.
 Our attitude towards marks and grades needs to be changed.
 Teachers should encourage logical thinking and creativity in students.
 Students should be exposed to economic and social problems in the world. The more
students know about the world the more exposure they will get.
 Compulsory Gender Education- The government of Telangana made gender
education compulsory at graduation level. It became the first Indian state to do so
and has also introduced bilingual textbooks.
 Free higher education for special students- Guwahati government has announced a
scheme of free education to these students from class 9 till the university level in all
government-run institutes of higher education.
 Diksha scheme- The government of India will soon launch the learning portal
‘DIKSHA’ to upgrade the teaching skills and will initiate the integrated B.Ed
programme.
 Malnutrition affects a child’s ability to learn. So, the nutritional deficit must be taken
care of. As we know healthy mind leads to the healthy nation.

So, it’s high time to realise that the education is foremost need of each individual. There is a
dire need for revolutionary changes in India’s education policies. Not just the syllabus and
pedagogy, but also the attitude towards the marks system needs to be changed. With
effective learning system, India can successfully utilize its vast human resources and it will
lead towards the well developed country.