‘India will take 126 yrs to reach top education standards’

According to an ASSOCHAM paper, though India has made rapid strides, the yawning gap between the standards of education does not seem to bridge soon as the developed world has not slowed down spending on education. 

The paper said, “With India spending a mere 3.83 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education, it is not sufficient to catch up. It will take six generations or 126 years to catch up with developed countries if we do not change our education system dramatically.  According to the paper, the US spends 5.22 per cent of its GDP on education, whereas for Germany it is 4.95 per cent and UK 5.72 per cent. “With the GDP base of these developed counties so high, the absolute money earmarked for education is huge. For instance, the size of the US GDP would be something like seven times the size of the Indian GDP and then on top of it, its ratio on education on a higher base would be very significant,” said ASSOCHAM Secretary General DS Rawat.

“However, India has a resource constraint, but then, the country must catch up to reach the levels of spending as recommended by the United Nations, which wants countries to spend at least six per cent of their GDP on education,” the paper added.

If India steps up its resource commitment for education, it can really become a major source of talent to the rest of the world, given the demographic advantage it has. With 315 million students, it has the largest pupil population in the world. According to the paper, the shortages of quality teachers are among the major challenges for the education sector. At present, the shortage of teachers has been measured at 1.4 million.  Around 20 per cent of the teachers do not measure up to the standards of the National Council for Teachers’ Education (NCTE).