Quality Education Sustainable Development Goals

Quality Education

Background: 

India has made tremendous educational progress, with a primary school enrollment rate of 99 percent. The Sustainable Development Goals have now shifted their focus to improving educational quality in order to ensure that children are actually learning in school. 

Concerns with Quality Education in India 

• 
  From a young age, our educational system fails our children. According to Pratham's Annual Survey of Education Report 2019, only about 51% of our children in Std III can read the Std I text. This means that half of all students in third grade are already two years behind where they should be. 
• Private schools are becoming increasingly popular among Indian parents, and demand for private education tends to rise in tandem with income levels. 
• For example, while nearly 90% of children in Bihar, India's poorest state, attended government schools in 2018-19, the same figure is less than 38% in Tamil Nadu, one of India's wealthiest states. 
• Due to a lack of opportunities and financial resources, the majority of rural youth skip school. They take menial jobs and relocate to other states, contributing significantly to a vicious cycle of poor educational quality

Digital Education: 

• While technology and online education are becoming more prevalent, there is no substitute for face-to-face education if no child is to be left behind.
• Access to complementary goods and services, such as smartphones and reliable internet access, is required for e-learning. 
• According to Pratham's 2020 survey for rural India, 38 percent of children's families do not have a smartphone, and another 45 percent have only one smartphone to which a child does not have exclusive access.
• In any case, the development of cognitive and interpersonal skills is critical during a child's formative years, and these can primarily be fostered through face-to-face learning methods. 

New Education Policy, 2020: 

• The goal of the New Education Policy, 2020 is to increase public investment in education to 6% of GDP.
• Multiple regulators in the education sector are causing conflict and increasing the compliance burden on educational institutions, according to NEP 2020. 
• This would increase private and foreign funding in India's traditional education system, similar to what has happened in the E-education sector in recent years, which has been less regulated. 

Key initiatives to achieve the aim of the New Education Policy 2020

Conclusion: 

Harnessing India's demographic dividend is largely dependent on the country's educational ecosystem. Almost a quarter of India's population is in the age group (6-23 years) that is expected to attend educational facilities and contribute to the country's human capital base. Furthermore, due to the Indian people's financial constraints, public education is critical. At a time when budget outlays for implementing the SDGs are limited, maximizing financial resources for educational infrastructure is critical.