Education System in India

In the Beginning: 

In ancient times, India had the Gurukula system of education in which anyone who wished to study went to a teacher's (Guru) house and requested to be taught. If accepted as a student by the guru, he would then stay at the guru's place and help in all activities at home. This not only created a strong tie between the teacher and the student, but also taught the student everything about running a house. The guru taught everything the child wanted to learn, from Sanskrit to the Holy Scriptures and from Mathematics to Metaphysics. The student stayed as long as he/she wished or until the guru felt that he/she had taught everything he could teach. All learning was closely linked to nature and to life, and not confined to memorizing some information. 

The modern school system was brought to India, including the English language, originally by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay in the 1830s. The curriculum was confined to “modern” subjects such as science and mathematics, and subjects like metaphysics and philosophy were considered unnecessary. Teaching was confined to classrooms and the link with nature was broken, as also the close relationship between the teacher and the student. Universal and compulsory education for all children in the age group of 6-14 was a cherished dream of the government of the Republic of India. 

This is evident from the fact that it is incorporated as a directive policy in article 45 of the constitution. But this objective remains far away even more than half a century later. However, in the recent past, the government appears to have taken a serious note of this lapse and has made primary education a Fundamental Right of every Indian citizen. The pressures of economic growth and the acute scarcity of skilled and trained manpower must certainly have played a role to make the government take such a step. The expenditure by the Government of India on school education in recent years comes to around 3% of the GDP, which is recognized to be very low.

The School System:

India is divided into 28 states and 7 so-called “Union Territories”. The states have their own elected governments while the Union Territories are ruled directly by the Government of India, with the President of India appointing an administrator for each Union Territory.

 As per the constitution of India, school education was originally a state subject —that is, the states had complete authority on deciding policies and implementing them. The role of the Government of India (GoI) was limited to coordination and deciding on the standards of higher education.

 This was changed with a constitutional amendment in 1976, so that education now comes in the so-called concurrent list. That is, school education policies and programs are suggested at the national level by the Government of India (GOI) though the state governments have a lot of freedom in implementing programs. Policies are announced at the national level periodically. 

The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), set up in 1935, continues to play a lead role in the evolution and monitoring of educational policies and programs. There is a national organization that plays a key role in developing policies and programs, called the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) that prepares a National Curriculum Framework. Each state has its counterpart called the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

The SCERT (s) generally follow guidelines established by the NCERT. But the states have considerable freedom in implementing the education system. The National Policy on Education, 1986 and the Program of Action (POA) 1992 envisaged free and compulsory education of satisfactory quality for all children below 14 years before the 21st Century.

Levels in School System:

The school system in India has four levels: lower primary (age 6 to 10), upper primary (11 and 12), high school (13 to 15) and higher secondary (16 and 17). The lower primary school is divided into five “standards”, upper primary school into two which is in action under the secondary education level, high school into three and higher secondary into two. Students have to learn a common curriculum largely (except for regional changes in mother tongue) till the end of high school. There is some amount of specialization possible at the higher secondary level. Students throughout the country have to learn three languages (namely, English, Hindi and their mother tongue) except in regions where Hindi is the mother tongue.

Main Streams in School:

There are mainly three streams in school education in India. Two of these are coordinated at the national level, of which one is under the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and was originally meant for children of central government employees who are periodically transferred and may have to move to any place in the country. These schools follow textbooks written and published by the NCERT. In addition to these government-run schools, a number of private schools in the country follow the CBSE curriculum though they may use different text books and follow different teaching schedules. They have a certain amount of freedom in what they teach in lower classes.

The second central scheme is the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE). It seems that this was started as a replacement for the Cambridge School Certificate. All these are private schools and generally cater to children from wealthy families. Both the CBSE and the ICSE council conduct their own examinations in schools across the country that are affiliated to them at the end of 10 years of schooling (after high school) and again at the end of 12 years (after higher secondary).

Exclusive Schools:

In addition to the above, there is a relatively small number of school that follows foreign curricula such as the Senior Cambridge, though this was largely superseded by the ICSE stream elsewhere. Some of these schools also offer the students the opportunity to sit for the ICSE examinations. These are usually very expensive residential schools where some of the Indians working abroad send their children. They normally have fabulous infrastructure, low student-teacher ratio and very few students. Many of them have teachers from abroad. Apart from all of these, there are handful of schools around the country, such as the Rishi Valley school in Andhra Pradesh, that try to break away from the normal education system that promotes rote learning and implement innovative systems such as the Montessori method.

State Schools:

Each state in the country has its own Department of Education that runs its own school system with its own textbooks and evaluation system. As mentioned earlier, the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation method are largely decided by the SCERT in the state, following the national guidelines prescribed by the NCERT. Each state has three kinds of schools that follow the state curriculum. These are government schools, private owned schools and grant-in-aid by the government schools. [12] After the higher secondary study there is also a higher education provision following the three streams like General, Medical and Engineering belonging to the undergraduate program (3 years), masters (2 years) and doctoral (3 years) for general education, undergraduate program (5 years), post graduate program (3 years) for medical education, and undergraduate program (4-5 years), masters (2 years) and doctoral (3 years) for engineering education.