For years, Indian policymakers were in denial about the scale of the problem facing the education sector. Is it too late?
Driving along the first ten kilometres of the beautiful, six-lane expressway that links the popular Delhi suburb of Noida with the immaculately planned Greater Noida, swanky office buildings, hotel developments and upscale condominiums vie for valuable real estate with newly-built, sprawling schools with names peppered with words like ‘international’, ‘global’ and ‘world.’
Gaia, a playschool for children aged two to five, is tucked away on a plot of land just off the expressway, its red-brick classroom huts looking relatively quaint next to the ‘major’ schools nearby.
But the unassuming nature of the buildings belie the grander plan schools like Gaia have in mind—to help reshape primary education in India. The shift away from conventional concrete is a carefully thought out one. Gaia has three huts for classrooms, an aquarium, an aviary, a duck pond and intricately carved stone and wood sculptures of animals including snails and caterpillars. A typical school day begins with a nature walk for students around its verdant campus, and children are encouraged to learn about colours, shapes and sizes outdoors.
‘We don’t want our children to learn by rote. We’ve done that for too long in this country,’ says Aditi Jain, the school’s founder. ‘Nature is the biggest teacher. Children need to discover, they need to be curious. Telling them isn’t enough.’
Jain’s school may be small, with only about 100 pre-primary students, but the challenges that the school is trying to help tackle are immense in a country struggling to revamp its shackled and creaking learning infrastructure.
The bulk of education in India is managed by the state and only the urban, upper middle class elites have access to more expensive private education options. Although surveys aren’t really needed to highlight the mess the education system is in, they do help illustrate how consuming the rot has become. According to a recent study by ASSOCHAM, the country’s highest body for its chambers of commerce, India came in a shameful second from last among seven developing countries in terms of education quality, scoring minimum points in primary, secondary, tertiary and demographic parameters when compared with Russia, Brazil, China, South Africa, Mexico and Indonesia.
Primary education in India was found to be most underdeveloped, while the quality of tertiary education in India also scored the lowest in the survey. On a scale of 2, India managed a meagre 0.1. Meanwhile, only 12 percent of school graduates were enrolled in tertiary education in India, again the lowest among the 7 nations.
Last year’s Indian Education Report had even more startling findings. Only 36 percent of Year Five students, it said, can actually do division sums correctly, while around 40 percent of all rural children in the same grade were at least 3 full grades behind in terms of education.
India desperately needs to put more children in school, educate them better and ensure its college graduates are employable global workers if it is to maintain its current economic growth rates and bring tens of millions out of poverty.
Photo Credit: Tom Maisey
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Shruti Bali
Being a member of GAIA family for the last two years make me always believe that through Aditi Mam ,God’s blessings are being showered not only on me but also on my 4yr old daughter who is pursuing nursery in the same school .I wish and pray that each child should be blessed with quality education and the eco-friendly environment ,which will take them a long way to be a good citizen of India and thus serving Mother Earth, which is the utmost need of the day .
Nirmala Chauhan
I have visited Gaia Green School a few times and found that for lesser than 100 children that pay the fees, it is educating, on an average, 150 under-privileged children and poor women. The same staff,after midday, in the same premises and the same class-rooms, provides education to those that can’t pay. Ms Aditi provides not only education absolutely free of charge, she also provides refreshments to them, most of whom are destitute rag-pickers and children that have already fallen in bad company and habits. It gave me a sense of God’s miracle to see how with her selfless love she has rehabilitated many of them. To awaken a sense of dignity in merely being human, perhaps, one needs little more than love.God must be watching this great yagya that she is performing without any help from the famous rich galaxy. That’s why this miracle is taking place every day for every one to see and exclaim, “Yes! God hasn’t forsaken ungrateful humanity, even if those in power are busy expelling God from India, maddened by pseudo-secularism and the lust to occupy God’s seat, on being vacated by disgraced God.”
Here is Gaia’s website: http://www.gaiaschool.in
aditijainanil
I would like to answer Meiji for his concern.Gaia is a school which has been started without any funding coming from anywhere.I was allotted this piece of land and had to purchase it at the market rate available then.Yes the Chairman wanted me to take at-least 20 acres to run a school but i did not have the resources to do so.I had to sell my old parental property plus take heavy personal loans at around twenty percent interest rate to achieve my dream.I am sure Meiji would be very happy to know that Gaia,the green school is teaching the under privileged children absolutely free.We also run a free stitching school for the under privileged girl child and the women living in the village nearby.The idea is to extend the same infrastructure to the kids who are from a very very poor background and can not pay.Now i am trying to do my best to also get some computer education available to these kids.I do not know how but i am sure it will happen soon as i know that- GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES. Gaia is also trying very hard to run the school on renewable energy thus educating the kids the importance of saving the environment.At Gaia we teach our kids to love the plants and animals and also protect them.The kids in the school consider themselves the body guards of nature around.They celebrate their birthdays and other important occasions by planting a tree.
I was delighted to see this article last night, accidentally,while surfing the net.I am very grateful to Ms Shreyasi Singh for writing this article and spreading the word about Gaia.And also to you Meiji for raising this issue.
Let me end with something i learnt in my moral science class…..
WHY DO WE COME TO THIS EARTH?
TO MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN.
Meiji
This is a good article, but I fail to see what the contribution of a school like Gaia can do for the state of primary education in India. Undoubtedly, this kind of learning is a great for little children, but this kind of infrastructure(aviary,eco buildings,duck pond et al) can only be available to children who are highly privileged and can only be provided at high cost to a chosen few. From what I know, primary PUBLIC education is in a totally different category than private primary education, and schools like Gaia can only provide this education to the few who can afford it, and to the few who can be driven through “the six laned Noida expressways” to get to these educational institutions! While it is easy to say that “India desperately needs to put more children in school and educate them better”; what’s missing in your article is the analysis and the resolution to these larger social issues by correspondents such as yourself, and educators like Ms. Jain- ideas that should help make education like this available in the public arena; into a system where this kind of education is accessible to everyone, not just to children of the rich and the famous, and for whom, going to a preschool with a different philosophy is the flavor of the month. Lets not talk about faddish educational systems, lets really think about what we can do to provide the basic educational infrastructure to kids, strengthen what we have and work with the kids that DONT have access to the kind of resources that private preschools like this one you propound and help make their lives better. How about community outreach programs that dictate that for each 100 rich kids we educate for profit, we educate 100 for free. If this school did that, I would be more hopeful of the social intent of improving the primary educational infrastructure in India. But until then, I fail to see what one more school with a different philosophy– and one that operates on profit, can do to change the educational system of India.
Serendip
This is a nice blog message, I will keep this idea in my mind. If you add more video and pictures because it helps understanding :)
Meenakshi Kohli
An extremely well researched story. While including the varied points of view, it leaves the reader with no doubt that quality education is the right of every child and it is up to the Indian government and its people to ensure it. We look forward to more such write ups that make people aware of the reality leading to positive change.
Bidisha
A well-researched piece on the question of quality in education. A lot of private players are looking at India as a potential education market citing the quality needs the country has, especially in elementary education. The crux of the new Right to Education Act is that it promises quality free of cost to children, because you shouldn’t have to pay for what’s yours by right. Look forward to more pieces by you making the point about the need for free, quality education (otherwise it’s not a right!)