Our greatest opportunity as a country lies in the demographic dividend: two thirds of our people are in the working age; we will have this advantage for about three decades. If we give our children skills, we can accelerate growth by 2% per annum for decades. Our greatest threat lies in low skills and productivity because of poor school education outcomes. If we do not give our children better education, there is a real danger of undermining political stability, economic growth and social harmony.

Learning outcomes are appallingly bad across states and in private and public schools. While about 90% of children pass grade X, only about 10% in government schools and 20% in private schools have minimum required proficiency in maths, science and languages.

Our enrolment in classes 1 to 8 in schools is over 90% across the country, and the student-teacher ratio in public schools is about 22:1, much better than the norm of 30:1. Our governments are spending vast sums on school education, ranging from Rs 60,000 to Rs 120,000 per child per year in most states.

Our parents are increasingly spending vast sums disproportionate to their incomes on tuition fees in private schools in the hope that their children will have a better future. And yet, the failure of school education across states and in both public and private sectors is striking. Only a small proportion of children, mostly from well-educated middle class families, are learning useful skills.

We need to understand the reasons for this collapse of education; only then can we find ways of improving........

© Free Press Journal