MEDJAIS2013

TEAM MEMBERS

Stepping Stones- Enhancing the

Quality of Primary Education

PRANAV KHARBANDA

DR. JAI KOHLI

DR. NITI CHOPRA

BISHAN SINGH (TEAM COORDINATOR)

KULDEEP SHARMA

Education System is mainly based on theoretical knowledge they don’t believe in practical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is also important but if you don’t take practical knowledge you will not understand clearly that

topic.

Indian education is very harsh for the kids and ignores their feelings and ambitions. Parents are pushed their kids to

school at the age of 3. They don’t understand the feelings and opinions of kids. Education should be creative not be based

on cramming.

Education should be creative not be based on cramming.

Some people think that education is only for getting marks in the degree and

they are educated after completed but they don’t know the reality of life they completed their degree after cram the syllabus.

Actually they are only book worms not well educated because they don’t have practical knowledge.

Now days we are watching many people who don’t get job after completing their higher education and they are unemployed. The reason behind that they don’t have practical

knowledge -they know only about books topic and don’t know about the real world

problems.

We can’t say that theoretical knowledge or education is not good for the people. By the help of education we can learn how to think, how to work properly, how to make decision, how to sit,

how to talk with other people etc. this all can be done by proper education.

The education system of India should be learning centric not a books centric. Student must be

allowed to take subject according to their interest. Student should not try to get all information

from books and lectures.

Books will not provide you proper education it can be increase by sharing ideas and views to

others. Student should get information with its own by the help of library and internet. Internet

will provide your detail information about your topic as well as it increases your knowledge.

National Policy of Education (1992) laid down many objectives for the

development of education system in India but it has not been successful in

achieving all of them.

It has specified that the examination system should discourage the

memorizing but it is what is going on.

The education in India seems to encourage rote learning instead of

experimentation and questioning.

There is some disparity in assessment as all the State Boards have

different standards of evaluation.

The reservation on the basis of caste and religion is also a negative point

in Indian education.

Corruption is visible in the allocation of seats of institutions of higher

studies and student politics is another sore point. These are some of the issues,

which need to be worked upon.

Self reading and gathering information from the internet will increase

your good reading habit, self confidence and analytical skills.

Student will be able to remember for a long time when they apply it

practically.

Student should visit field trips to botanical garden, museum etc to get

practical knowledge and learn something from the experienced people

which will increase their communication skills.

The system of education in India should be learning-centric rather

than exam-centric.

Children must be allowed to choose subjectsaccording to their interests.

Instead of gaining knowledge from voluminous books and lectures, children

must be made to interact in groups and express their views on various topics.

Rather than taking notes from the teacher and textbooks, children must be

made to research information on their own from library books and the

Internet and share them in the class.

This will help them develop good reading habits, self-confidence and

openness to criticism. It will also help them in developing critical reading

and analytical skills.

Children will be able to remember what they learn when they apply it

practically. They must be taken on field trips to museums, labs,

planetariums, excavation sites, botanical gardens, etc. where they can learn

by interacting with knowledgeable and experienced people in varied fields.

It will also help them improve their communication skills.

However, behind the veil of such promising statistics, the learning outcomes of India's

children show little progress. The country ranked 63 out of 64 in the latest Program for International

Student Assessment (PISA) study, with some of its best schools ranked about average among those

surveyed. The 2011 ASER stated that only 48.2% of students in the fifth grade can read at the second

grade level. The number of students completing their primary education with inadequate numeracy

and literacy skills is startling. To see this manifest in an economic sense, one may attribute India's

productivity growth -- lagging behind that of East Asian economies -- to a lack of progress in the

foundational elements of countrywide, high-quality education.

Challenges of Primary Education in India

Early childhood education in India is subject to two extreme but contrary deficiencies.

On the one hand, millions of young children in lower income groups, especially rural and

girl children, comprising nearly 40% of first grade entrants never complete primary

school. Even among those who do, poorly qualified teachers, very high student-teacher

ratios, inadequate teaching materials and out-moded teaching methods result in a low

quality of education that often imparts little or no real learning. It is not uncommon for

students completing six years of primary schooling in village public schools to lack even

rudimentary reading and writing skills.

At the other end of the social and educational spectrum, children attending urban

schools, especially middle and upper class children in private schools, are subjected to

extreme competitive pressures from a very early age to acquire basic language skills and

memorize vast amounts of information in order to qualify for admission into the best

schools. Parents and teachers exert intense pressure on young children to acquire

academic skills at an age when children should be given freedom and encouraged

to learn as a natural outcome of their innate curiosity, playfulness and eagerness to

experiment. Rising concern over compulsory learning at an early age is prompting

many educators to advocate dramatic steps to counter the obsession with

premature and forced teaching practices.

The curriculum or the syllabus for students in our country in higher education (mainly engineering colleges) is outdated in most cases.

It is stale, dogmatic and teaches things that the world has moved on with. To infuse dynamism, you need the curriculum to be progressive in

nature. People need to be given the option of doing multiple courses in the first year and allowed to choose what they want after the first semester

or year. The spirit of curriculum should be projects driven not exams driven, it should be innovation driven and it should evolve not stay stagnated.

Exams need to be there to measure but they should be complimented with incentives for innovation (say Final Exams should be 50% and

the projects should be 50%). The projects should have independent people who judge them not just faculty in place.The students should also be given the option to

switch over to other streams if they feel so or if they justify the basic criteria. When I mean streams, practically speaking it should be very easy within Engineering and slightly harder to shift to say a Commerce course

(this is assuming it’s a full-fledged university with all these courses).For all this to happen, you need young and dynamic faculty sitting on

the academic syllabus boards, that’s where the next issue pops up

****************************************************** The academic curriculum board, in most cases is filled with

people above their 60’s and 70’s. With all due respect to them, I strongly feel that you need a bunch of younger professors in there to

have that mix of experience and youth in the system.

Make the curriculum Dynamic not Dogmatic:

Make the Teachers feel worthy, pay them more:

The younger ones would be more in sync, more in line with the technological changes and the new age needs of the students in their years

to come. The fact, however, is that most of the younger professors are either outcasts (from the IT factory) or are doing this job because

they don’t have better things to do. Very few among the young are actually in teaching for the sake of teaching.

This might sound like a ludicrous suggestion but if you think about it, it might make some sense. We all know that private colleges make

money and they are run as large businesses. The solution, I feel, lies in making them take away the non profit status and make them

competitive. Make them under direct competition with each other so that they can get fight it out openly rather that doing so under the

carpet. We cant follow the English education system and yet sit in our holy grail of non profit, can we? Education is a business in some

form, the more we hide behind it, and the more corruption would step in. If Educational institutes are using this business to improve their

system, then let them do it, that’s how world class universities abroad work and that’s how we should work if we follow the colonial

system. The best way forward is to make them “for” profit, taxable and it would increase capital for them as well as increase transparency

for us.

One of the key pillars in growth in education is the level of industry interaction with the students. Companies should be sought out for such

interactions, if they don’t agree to it, then the universities should use their advantage. When companies come for placements, there should

be a basic qualification criteria for their eligibility for the placements. For example, they should have contributed investment worth 2 to 4

lakhs (just example, this can vary up or down) in R and D with the university to be eligible to come to placement. Most of the companies

would fall in line automatically since for them human capital is much more important than these meager sums of money. You think any IT

company would care about a few lakhs when they are recruiting 600 to 1000 people? When you provide so much human(s) capital you

think they would ignore it? Not a chance, this would make the university utilize its human potential to the hilt and also enhance its industry

interaction numbers significantly. Eventually, this investment would enhance the learning experience of the student and make him want to

give back to the institutes more once that person graduates.

Make the Private Institutes for profit, not non-profit

Industry Interaction a Placement Obligation

One of the most underrated potentials in Indian education system is the power of the Alumni. Barring the IIT’s and few other top institutes,

the concept of Alumni networking is nonexistent. In an era where every Indian graduating is earning somewhere, alumni networks need to

be very well intertwined with the university affairs. Alumni are very eager to give; just that a) they don’t know who to give b) they are

worried about where the money would go. Once you establish a credible network which is transparent, it would give the avenue as well as

the confidence for the alumni to contribute in terms of money or academic expertise All of the above are just mere suggestions to tackle

system that has numerous issues. These suggestions might not break the deadlock or create a revolution by any means but it can be

something that can be incorporated. These suggestions might not be relevant to some. These suggestions might also sound farfetched but if

it at least one of them adds value somewhere to the education system, then it’s worth it

MAJOR OTHER SOLUTIONS PROPOSED CAN BE:

The most important aspect of the approach is attitude of the teacher, which should be that learning is

a form of play which fosters the blossoming of the child’s natural development. Learning should and can be made interesting, enjoyable, fun.

A large portion of the teaching materials are produced at the school by the teachers, who customize

their teaching aids to suit the interests and knowledge levels of the students.

First attention is given to the health and nutrition of the children to ensure that they have the

physical energy and natural attention span needed for learning. Nutritional and medical supplements are

provided to under nourished children from low income families. Free exercising and play are encouraged

to build strength and stamina.

Children learn spontaneously when their interest and curiosity are awakened. ‘Teaching’ is confined to brief periods according to the natural attention span of each child, which is normally 15-30

minutes daily during the first two years. It is never extended beyond the child’s span of interest. The student-teacher ratio is kept very low to enable the teacher to work with small groups of 4-5

children at a time while the others are absorbed in learning games or recreational play. The most effective ratio is five students per teacher

during pre-school, LKG and HKG and twenty students per teacher during standards 1 to 5. However, since the teaching methods are

Use the power of the Alumni:

intense, each student actually need attend only 2½ to 3 hours of class per day, enabling each teacher to effectively handle double the

number of students.

The act of teaching consists primarily of

presenting sensory images, objects and information

to the child in a pleasant and interesting manner and

permitting the child to observe and inquire about the

subject, without compelling the child to memorize.

Colored flash cards with large images are utilized as

convenient, low cost teaching aids.

Rapid acquisition of basic reading and

verbal skills in multiple languages occurs naturally

by exposing the child to whole words as objects

repetitively for very brief periods. In this manner at

a young age even children of illiterate parents learn

several languages as effortlessly as they normally

learn to speak their native tongue.

Story telling is used to make learning fun

and to communicate basic values of goodness, beauty, harmony, responsibility and right conduct.

Information on people and other living things, places, history, geography, and other cultures are

presented to the child in the form of stories, pictorial information and explanations combined together to present facts in a living, integrated

context rather than as a series of separate divorced subjects.

Rapid acquisition of basic math skills is achieved through the use of number line method which enables the child to physically experiment

and act out different combinations of addition and subtraction

MODEL PROPOSED

The Project supports the improvement of quality in primary schools through interventions in four

key areas:

1. In-service teacher training and support to improve active learning, continuous, supportive

student assessment and rational class management.

2. Development and supply of essential teaching-learning materials.

3. Promotion of community participation.

4. Improvement of school environment and facilities.Appendix

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=primary+education+in+india&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&oq=primary+educaT&aqs=chrome.2.0

j69i57j0j5j69i60l2.7020j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=higher+education+india+wikipedia&revid=464322925 https://www.google.co.in/search?rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&biw=1366&bih=667&q=improving+primary+school+education+in+ind

ia+an+impact+assessment+of+dpep-phase+i&revid=464322925&sa=X&ei=ojcmUua3DrCaiAfU4YHIDg&ved=0CGwQ1QIoAA http://berkeley.aidindia.org/balaji-sampath-2011 https://www.google.co.in/search?q=primary+education+in+india&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&oq=primary+educaT&aqs=chrome.2.0

j69i57j0j5j69i60l2.7020j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=improving+primary+school+education+in+india https://www.google.co.in/search?q=primary+education+in+india&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&oq=primary+educaT&aqs=chrome.2.0

j69i57j0j5j69i60l2.7020j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=status+of+primary+education+in+india&revid=516771664 https://www.google.co.in/search?q=primary+education+in+india&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&oq=primary+educaT&aqs=chrome.2.0

j69i57j0j5j69i60l2.7020j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=status+of+primary+education+in+india&revid=516771664 https://www.google.co.in/search?q=primary+education+in+india&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&oq=primary+educaT&aqs=chrome.2.0

j69i57j0j5j69i60l2.7020j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.co.in/search?um=1&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&hl=en&q=improve%20primary%20education%20in%20india&

bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.51495398,d.aGc,pv.xjs.s.en_US.M4-36_38X9A.O&biw=1366&bih=667&ie=UTF-

8&sa=N&tab=iw&ei=nSUmUtaDEcuSiQeT74C4CA#hl=en&q=ways+to+improve+education+system+in+india&revid=340536811 http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-system-india.html http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/1602003/post-5-suggestions-to-improve-the-higher-education-system http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1815233/report-sushma-swaraj-suggests-measures-to-improve-education-system-in-india http://www.ask.com/question/education-system-in-india http://privatejobshub.blogspot.in/2013/04/present-education-system-in-india-how.html https://www.google.co.in/search?um=1&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&hl=en&q=improve%20primary%20education%20in%2

0india&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.51495398,d.aGc,pv.xjs.s.en_US.M4-36_38X9A.O&biw=1366&bih=667&ie=UTF-

8&sa=N&tab=iw&ei=nSUmUtaDEcuSiQeT74C4CA#hl=en&q=how+to+improve+education+system+in+india&revid=1521541336 https://www.google.co.in/search?um=1&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&hl=en&q=improve%20primary%20education%20in%2

0india&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.51495398,d.aGc,pv.xjs.s.en_US.M4-36_38X9A.O&biw=1366&bih=667&ie=UTF-

8&sa=N&tab=iw&ei=nSUmUtaDEcuSiQeT74C4CA http://www.google.co.in/imgres?um=1&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHMO_enIN500IN500&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbnid=m02s3L4

BXOzUfM:&imgrefurl=http://unicefiec.wordpress.com/tag/india/&docid=A6zJw5K1tY7sVM&imgurl=http://unicefiec.files.wordpress.co

m/2013/06/7.jpg%253Fw%253D475%2526h%253D197&w=475&h=313&ei=9yQmUsCyF8aViAeS7YH4Aw&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:2

6,s:0,i:164&iact=rc&page=2&tbnh=168&tbnw=256&start=16&ndsp=21&tx=45&ty=51#imgdii=m02s3L4BXOzUfM%3A%3BjNH-

o3l45aXvrM%3Bm02s3L4BXOzUfM%3A