QES exposes crucial facts on Indian Education System

Updated on: Tuesday, February 21, 2012

In an effort to deliberate on the recent findings of the detailed study carried out by Wipro, Wipro-EI Quality Education Study 2011 with the teachers and principals, a special event was held at Chennai, on Feb 18.

Nearly, 80 teachers and principals from schools across the city of Chennai participated in the one-day event.

Panelists of the event were S S Nathan, Bala Vidya Mandir and   Vish, CEO, Karadi Tales. Guest speakers included Vyjayanthi Sankar, Vice President, Educational Initiatives, Sreekanth Sreedharan, Manager, Wipro Applying Thought in Schools

In the in-depth study covering 89 of Indias “best” schools, mostly in the 5 metros, 23,000 students and 800 teachers conducted recently by Wipro and Educational Initiatives covering elite schools in India extended to scholastic performance, student attitudes and values and various aspects of the school learning environment like leadership, teachers role, classroom practices, co-scholastic areas like art, music, sports etc.

Key findings were that best schools in India focused more on rote learning rather than understanding the concepts making them perform below global students. It revealed, a downward trend in schools and education segment since 2006. Students also revealed biased opinions that would grow into prejudices on issues such as gender equality, acceptance of cultural and religious diversity, civic, citizenship and ecological responsibilities.

Also, the study divulged, students performed better in schools where the Principals were found to have a higher instructional leadership (going beyond administrative tasks into academic aspects also).

Furthermore, it also disclosed that out of the surveyed 30-40% of Principals and Teachers believed that strict discipline is necessary for proper teaching, while the same study also unveiled that negative disciplining correlated with student performance.

Most of the principals think that co-scholastic areas are relevant for building students self-confidence, self-control, sportsmanship, solidarity, teamwork, competitiveness and health. Data reflects that there is no major emphasis in the school curriculum on these areas. Among co-scholastic areas, sports, art and craft are given higher emphasis than music, dance drama and debates.

Some important questions cropped up through QES on school education and societal issues are:

    What do we want our children to learn and how? Do we want them to memorize facts and reproduce them in exams or learn by understanding?
    Some people say that there is an “India” and “Bharat” in the making. If the students in these schools belong to “India” How do they view the other India and what do we make of it?
    Do we discipline students or provide friendlier classrooms?
    What are the big changes within elite schools in the last couple of decades?
    Schools shape the thinking and life of our future citizens to a significant extent. What is the vision of a good society coming out of our constitution and how do we view these trends in the light of that?
    Why do we have elite and non-elite institutions even for children? Is this “right” to begin with? Our schools have challenged the 25% clause that Right to Education is mandating...
    What do these things mean for an India that is finding its place in a globalized world order?

QES also has provided six recommendations for better and quality education such as large scale awareness campaign among schools on notions of quality; wide ranging debate on alternative models that question widely held beliefs on learning environments (structure, decision making, processes etc) and emphasizes learning in co-scholastic areas; student interviews on different social and ecological issues, periodic benchmarking on all aspects of educational quality; providing effective teacher support and studies to further unpack the notions of quality.

QES exposes crucial facts on Indian Education System

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