Education System in India

Introduction

India ranks second in population and seventh in terms of largest landscape. India is a land of diversity in terms of Languages, Religions and Castes. India is well known not just for its culture and tradition, but also for its intelligent yet cheap human resources. India’s recent Mangalyaan satellite launch is certainly a cherry on the cake. Leading IT giants such as Microsoft, Apple, IBM etc. always try to acquire more Indians as their employees, In fact NASA’s 36% of scientists are Indians (Source: Times of India). Education acts as a base for all these brilliancy. Education System in India, Is it good or bad? Let’s take a closer look.

Literacy in India

India has an average literacy rate of 74% compared to the world’s literacy rate of 84% (Source: Wikipedia).

Levels in Indian Education System

There are thousands of schools, colleges and universities offering several levels of education in India. Broadly all of the courses can be categorized under 6 levels as shown in the picture below;

Education Institutes in India

According to All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), there are close to 4600 approved institutes providing technical education as on July 2014 which includes engineering, Pharma, Architectural and other technical institutions.

Number of Graduates in India

During the year 2013 to 1014, close to 1.75 million undergraduates and half a million of post-graduates have completed their education in India. Apart from these graduates, there are also other non-technical institutes offering graduation to several millions across the country. Source: icec.co.in

Advantages in Indian Education System

Multiple choices

There are various types of curriculum and syllabus available in India’s education system such as Sate-Board, Matriculation and CBSE. Though there are differences in terms of complexity and quality, they are all limited up to higher secondary education. Parents can choose the best as per child’s knowledge.

Discipline Along with Education

In India, schools and colleges are not just a place to learn math and science, but also discipline and respect. Indian schools are well known for teaching excellent morals to children at a very tender age.

World class educational Institutes

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is one of renowned institutes in the world, offering world class quality education. Getting into IIT involves incredible competition along with intelligence and dedication. Aspirants must get highest score possible in Join Entrance Examination (JEE) to get a seat in one of the 15 IITs located across several states in India.

In 2012 over 5 lakhs appeared for the exam whereas the total number of seats available were less than 10,000. It’s like 53 students competing for each seat. Source: Times of India

The reason for such competition is because of the quality of education and on-campus offers from Fortune 100 companies such as Samsung, Google, and Apple etc. At the end of the course itself these companies are ready to pay up to INR 73 lakhs per year ($137,000) for IIT students. Source: NDTV

Disadvantages in Indian Education System

Reservation System

Reservation Quotas in Indian education system acts a major hurdle for most of the aspiring students. Though many disputes are arising for the past 6 years. Indian Government is not ready to make any changes in terms of reservations.

Present caste-based reservation system of Union Government; Source: Wikipedia

Category as per Government of India	Reservation Percentage as per Government of India
Scheduled Castes (SC)	15%
Scheduled Tribes (ST)	7.50%
Other Backward Classes (OBC)	27%
Total constitutional reservation percentage	49.50%
General (Open to all including SC/ST and OBC)	50.50%

Cost of Education

Though the cost of education in comparatively less in government and aided schools and colleges, Private institutes charge way too high fee for students. One of the International Residential schools in Chennai, Tamilnadu charges from 3 lakhs to 4.75 lakhs a year from 2nd grade to 12th grade.

Moreover Private schools and colleges in India keeps Increasing their fee by 8% to 14% every year source: Forbes

Competitive Pressure

Indian parents take education way to seriously. They often force their children to be the topper in the school and sometimes in the state! This creates unwanted pressure in children’s mind. Though a student scores 93%, he or she might still be worried because the first mark is 95%. This state however is slowly diminishing. It becomes a usual new every year students committing suicide because of scoring low marks in their exams. Last year, around 6 students committed suicide in the state of Tamilnadu, because of their failure in class 12th public exams. Source: Times of India 

Language Barrier

Though government schools offer education at low cost along with incentives such as free uniforms and food, the quality of education and resources are no match to private institutes. Moreover these government institutes offer education in rural languages and English is one among the subjects as a language; these children when they get into college, suffer a lot because of this language barrier. Though they are able to score well because of the hard work, they are still unable to clear interviews.

Conclusion

As every coin has two sides, there are both pros and cons in Indian Education System. However people have started realizing the true value of education. Parents are ready to spend as much as possible for their children’s education. Government is taking various steps possible to promote education. The reputation of Indian Human Resources in international IT sectors keeps increasing every year. It is assured that Indian is trending in the right direction in terms of education.