Wide Gap between Indian School Education & Higher Education

Abstract

 India has got various systems of education and on the top of it they do not have coordination amongst them. Almost every state of the country has got its own secondary board. There are some states, too, that have got more than one Board of Secondary Education. Some Union Territories such as Delhi have also got their boards of secondary education. Every state and region is at liberty to have their own medium of instruction. They can prescribe text books as per their requirement and ideology. Different types of schools cater to different aspirations of students as per the social status of students. If schools among themselves don’t have coordination, it can be easily visualized what kind of messy situation there is likely to be when the higher education also emerges in such a picture. It won’t be hyperbolic to say that in India as far as education is concerned, the right hand does not know what the left hand is going to do.

  In India  education is provided by the public sector as well as the private sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: central, state and local. School Education includes (i) Pre-school Education and (ii) 12 years of School Education and its equivalent.  Institutions recognized/approved by a competent authority e.g., Central/State Government or other authorized agencies, e.g., Boards of Secondary Education, UGC, AICTE, MCI, ICAR, Directorates of Education or other duly empowered authorities. With a median age of 25 years, India has over 550 million people below the age of 25 years. According to Census figures, over 32 per cent of the 1.1 billion, the population is between the age group 0- 14. This means that the number of people in India needing primary and secondary education alone exceeds the entire population of the USA. Since these students are to seek higher education in India over the next decade it illustrates the need for the coordination between the school education and higher education. Presently about 11 million students are in the Higher Education system. This represents just 11% of the of the 17-23 year old population. The government hopes to increase this to at least 21% by 2017- a target which still falls short of the world average. With the emergence of India as a knowledge-based economy, human capital has now become its major strength. This has put the spotlight on severe inadequacies of India’s infrastructure for delivery of education, particularly highlighting the need for co-ordination between school and higher education.