Last night after dinner, I happened to watch a panel discussion on K-12 education quality in India on NDTV Profit Channel. In general I find their academic program to be of some interest. But what I don't understand is that none of the participants in such programs brings out the single most powerful cause of lack of quality in our K-12 education system: Quantity laden curriculum at the cost of Quality.
Participants in such media programs usually criticize our exam and school education systems. This seems to be somewhat reasonable. But if we take a deeper look, we can easily find that the basic culprit is the school curriculum which in countries like ours is derived from syllabus drafted by people who may have never worked as competent teachers at all.
If we are to raise the bar in this aspect, the first steps in the right direction would include the following:
Our syllabus boards should drastically revamp their current syllabi by replacing quantity with quality
Our exam system should test higher order cognitive and process skills
Our teacher training programs should include realistic issues
School affiliation agencies should insist on quality
Government Departments, Corporates and NGOs should work hand in hand on a consistent basis to make quality education accessible by all children