Introduction

The world, today, boasts of an 86% literacy rate, whereas India, with a large population, still has a 74% literacy rate. Programmes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Mid-day meal schemes have been going on for ages, information about projects like ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, ‘Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat’ can be seen and heard around the corner. It looks like it is all going rosy and well, right? Let’s see, then, the 86% literacy rate hides the fact that 63 million children are out of school globally, 74% overall literacy rate does not show that some districts and states in India are hovering at below 20%, 100% enrolment in primary school covers the real stat that only a fourth of the enrolled students actually reach the secondary school. Though SSA has increased the school enrolment in the 6–14 age group, the increasing rate of degrading PTR (Pupil-Teacher ratio), poor infrastructure, and awareness have put the scheme’s future in danger.

As G.K Chesterton said, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another”, quality education is everyone’s right and builds a premise for a sustainable and self-reliant society, in turn, harnessing the economic and social growth. Malala Yousufzai said, “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”. Two of the essential concerns today are — climate change and lack of proper education, in turn, leading to unemployment and poverty. One cannot emphasize more on the importance of education, India has put it as one of the fundamental rights in its constitution, slowly and steadily an increasing number of corporates are investing in social initiatives related to education, for instance, L&T, Mahindra and Mahindra, Adani Group have all launched innovative programs providing educational relief to young minds from disadvantaged communities.

Relevance of SDG to India

India has made significant strides in providing free and compulsory education for the children in the age group of 6–14 years since freedom. Various government initiatives such as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Right to Education (RTE) have been vital in driving the higher rate of enrolment at the primary school level. India has achieved a net enrolment ratio of 100% at the primary school level for boys and girls and 74.04% adult literacy rate at the national level. However, there is still a long road ahead to achieve equitable quality education which promotes lifelong learning and prepare the youth for jobs of the future. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 indicates that Indian students lack the quality education and students of both private and government schools do not fare well when compared to the students of other developing South Asian countries. When compared within India, rural states such as Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have substandard performance as compared to other states, mainly because of the low-quality education trap. The Indian education system and structure requires a transformational change to impart quality education and calls for higher investment in the public education system. This is needed to harness the true potential of the people in the age group of 6–23 years which constitute around one-fourth of the Indian population.

The quality of education level has a direct relationship with the skills and expertise of the youths which are required to sustain in a highly competitive and technological advanced environment. It also bears a direct correlation with the performance of the Indian economy in the long run and the living standards of citizens in the country. Thus, it becomes imperative to focus on improving the quality of learning at primary and higher education levels to accomplish the targets set for India under the quality education SDG.

Business Implications and Responses

We live amid a global learning crisis where even as the population is rising, the number of institutes required to sustain the knowledge needs of this population is falling short. There exists international affirmation to the right of education, yet its provision is still not a given. The skills learnt in institutes are not always imparted as per the long-term workplace needs. This leads us to question the decision making going behind the investments in education.

Education helps bring everyone up to the same platform, harbours equality and harnesses the opportunities which otherwise would have been difficult to come by. The business sector has shown that it holds power to change the status quo and bring about a transformational impact in this sphere, as it has in many others. The interest in promoting and providing education is not limited to the advantages it offers to society. Investment in education is as smart for the business as it is for society. In PricewaterhouseCooper’s reported 66% top level executives felt that lack of the right skills was their biggest talent challenge. The symbiotic relationship between society’s needs and business needs is what drives businesses to invest in education increasingly. For instance, female employees in a Japanese company, Sumitomo Chemicals, were not returning to work after having children, which in turn was affecting the quality of work and business continuity. To overcome this, the company explored multiple avenues and targeted children lifestyle and educational development programmes near their larger campuses. Employees could enrol their children there at the minimum possible cost or opt to receive a subsidy from local providers. Through this initiative, Sumitomo Chemicals was able to attract and retain female employees, besides taking care of the large lingering issue of lack of support for Japanese working mothers.

To ensure that the commitment made to the society and its members, is fulfilled, businesses are increasingly investing smartly in education. There has been a rise in coordinated and systematic investments which plan for the long term and ensure an equal distribution as well. A conglomerate in Nigeria, Dangote Group constructed a training academy to provide technical and vocational training to Nigerian youth and simultaneously solve the difficulties they were facing in finding employees in Nigeria with the right technical skills. They partnered up with domestic and international trade organizations to efficiently achieve their goal. Principles for Responsible Management (PRME) helped change the business principles, executive decision making and thought leadership by bridging the gap between the educational institutions and Nations around the world.

When it comes to the impact of businesses on the SDG of providing Quality Education to all, a major change that has occurred is the introduction of diversity and inclusion into the workforce, which have, in turn, been tied to increasing revenues and better performance of companies. It has been noted that corporate citizenship, that is, a corporates dedication towards its responsibility towards society, has become an important criterion. There is an emerging belief that the more diversity there is in the boardroom, the more innovative the solutions, and hence more efficient the results.

In today’s day and age, all over the world, the scenario in education is alarming. Research goes as far as to say, just like the climate crisis, the world is facing an education crisis. And when we take a look at the statistics, it isn’t hard to see why. A quarter of children are dropping out of high school, and out of the ones who do graduate, as many as 57% lack comprehension of even basic maths. This is where corporates and businesses are starting to play a very crucial part, in triggering a systemic change, by working in complement with the government. And the approach of corporates towards this goal is not just limited to ‘education wash’, that is only donating millions, but they have started acting as proactive stakeholders. Microsoft’s Partners in Learning program is an excellent example, which has granted $500mn and reached 196 mn teachers and students across 114 countries.

To ensure quality education in India, several corporate organisations have been collaborating with the government to realise this Sustainable Development Goal. A very prominent example is the TATA group, with a consistently humongous CSR budget, year on year. Right from 2014, it has been active in the education space, with TATA Motors launching an award-winning education program in Pune, where every year they identify around 600 promising students from multiple secondary schools and support their education. As a result of this program, the overall pass percentage of the secondary schools in Pune has increased to 98%, and the dropout rate has reduced from a whopping 35% to less than 5%. P&G’s Shiksha Program has empowered 280000 students by realising their right to quality education. The program aims to make India 100% literate and is working wholeheartedly, by collaborating with numerous NGOs, establishing new infrastructure such as schools and nurturing it to evolve into a national consumer movement, with support from numerous thought leaders and personalities.

Analysis and Suggested path forward

The net adjusted enrolment ratio for India is 76% compared to the world average of 90. Enrolment shows the accessibility and availability of education but measuring learning outcomes helps in understanding the quality of education disseminated. Only 55% of those enrolled were able to attempt the 5th grade learning outcomes correctly while the number drops by 10 percentage points as we move to the 8th grade. So, there is not only a high drop-out rates as we move to secondary education, but the quality of education also take a serious hit.

The non-government organisations also play a pivotal role in transforming the education sector and acting along with the government to help improve the quality and accessibility. Teach for India, Make a Difference, and Akshay Patra are some of the few organisations that are helping improve grassroot level education in India. Teach for India has tried to understand the problem in the Indian education sector and tackle it from all fronts. They not only work to improve the school enrolments but also work on development of teachers and principals, designing curriculum, empowering the community for better educational outcomes, and integrating technology in the current educational system. Akshay Patra Foundation on the other hand aids education by providing healthy meals in schools to more than 17 lakh students across India.

Private players play equally important role in transforming the education sector. Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and the man behind Aadhar, with his not-for profit initiative could prove to be one such influential player. He has launched Ekstep which aims to provide an open infrastructure and tools to help aid education, especially in teaching, assessment and accountability of teachers.

While earlier programmes were aimed more at the reach and spread of opportunities for all to study, there has been an increased focus on the quality of education over the years- which is possible only due to the efforts initially made in first making education available for all. Saransh is an initiative that provides educational institutions help in recognising the improvement areas concerning the various stakeholders, namely the students, teachers and also the curriculum itself. This helps in achieving a better system as the final implementations are based on the comparison of results. The Unified-District Information System for Education (U-DISE) is the largest database on schools and also includes information on not just the public schools but also private schools.

India can take learnings from the initiatives of other countries as well. Finland, for example, had decentralised the school management system and adopted flexible structures. A major feature of this system was the ‘special teacher’ system which helped provide focussed assistance to the students in need can be major learnings. However, these will come at a much later stage as there are still strides to be made in infrastructure and other verticals of the education system.

Moving forward, we need to work both on policy and implementation techniques to improve upon all the parameters of quality education. India currently spends around 4.6% of GDP on Education which should increase to 6% to achieve the SDG goals chosen by 2030. We also need to look at effective public-private partnership to bring in innovative solutions. One such partnership of the state of Jharkhand along with BCG has tried to reduce the number of schools, clubbing small schools into bigger to pool resources, make schools more efficient and increase the quality, tracking and accountability.

The government can focus on imparting specialised trainings which will be relevant in securing jobs in the industry- such as the ITI centres. Another focus area should be creating a database of all students- this will help provide personalised care to students based on their needs. It will also help the government pin-point the pain areas- such as location where the dropout rates are high, low teacher to student ratio, etc. This can be an extension of the current Saransh programme, but concerns regarding privacy will need to be tackled with care.

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