Group10_B | SDG 4: Quality Education

Introduction  

The amount of knowledge in this world is unlimited, but access to the same is not available to all. For years, measures have been taken worldwide to bridge this gap in inequality of knowledge, although in vain. Undoubtedly, quality education is the foundation of sustainable development and promotes socio-economic development. In September 2015, UNGA held its 70th session where the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development first came into existence to align with this ideology. Member states set down 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the targets were to be met by 20301. Included within the 17 SDGs is 'Quality Education' as SDG 4, whose primary focus is to provide inclusive, equitable learning opportunities to every citizen of the state to pave a path for lifelong learning opportunities and sustainable societies. They drafted a roadmap and a comprehensive list of 10 targets to be accomplished under this SDG by 2030. Education committees across the world adopted the Education 2030 framework to meet the goals in place.  

Education is a critical way to not only impart knowledge but also the propensity to be aware and critically analyze what goes on in the world. Equitable education of relatively good quality can help ensure reduced inequalities. It can imbibe the urgency of action that needs to be taken to build a more sustainable environment and tackle critical problems like climate change. The 4th SDG is a step in this direction wherein it aims to achieve this kind of awakening and progress by 2030. The targets include2 free and equitable education (target 4.1), access to childhood development and pre-primary education (target 4.2), access to men and women to higher quality and tertiary education (target 4.3), upskilling of youth (target 4.4), elimination of prejudice and equal access (target 4.5), a substantial number of literate people by 2030 (target 4.6), learners imbibe skills aligning to produce sustainable societies (target 4.7), upgrade educational facilities (target 4.a), increased scholarship opportunities (target 4.b), and well-trained teachers (target 4.c). As we stand today, we have only ten more years to achieve these goals, and it is quite evident that the progress made in the last five years has been below par. This may be due to the subjective nature of the policies, which in turn makes it difficult to assess whether the policies are moving in the right direction. However, it is also because of other reasons like lack of funds (especially in less developed nations), politically unstable countries, and a hidden hesitation of governments to take practical action in this direction. 

Quality Education in the Indian Context   

India is the world's second-most populous country3, with more than 800 million low-income families. Owing to the high levels of political conflicts, poverty, and the below-par infrastructure, achieving high-quality education for all is a daunting challenge. Since independence, the Government of India has made resolutions to improve access to relevant types of education, beginning first with secondary education and moving on to primary education. The government implemented several commissions and periodic policies; they established national institutions, including a diversity of programmes and education financing. As an outcome of these initiatives, there was an augmentation in general education. Yet, difficulties in our education system persist.  

There is the inadequate infrastructure for access to schools in villages or hilly regions of Adivasi districts barring children from attending school. The number of children who drop out increases year on year, with children belonging to low-income families being four times more likely to drop out than affluent families. According to UNDP, in developing countries, 1 in 4 girls4 are not in school. A shocking number of educated students are still not well equipped to attend recruitment procedures. There is an evident lack of quality, training, and accountability of teachers and the content and pedagogy are of little relevance in most cases. 

Another looming problem is access to adult literacy, which involves appropriate vocational and technical training. The amount of funds and budget allocated to educational reforms is abysmally low, and the right metrics are not in place for the assessment of learning outcomes. Additionally, several technical jobs across the world are outsourced to India and having an upskilled workforce can help in the economic growth of India and global economic growth. All the aforementioned reasons layout why implementing and aligning education policies with SDG 4 is extremely crucial for a country like India. However, the New Education Policy introduced in 2020 provides for some light at the end of the tunnel. It looks promising and can pose a positive impact on achieving quality education, as stated in SDG 4. 

Business Implications and Responses  

Education has a cascading effect on business and the economy. The target set by SDG 4, Quality Education, of universal literacy by 2030 is an ambitious one and would require invasive reforms in the educational infrastructure as well as industry. In a country like India, a tertiary sector economy, education is a crucial driver for bringing change. Education entails a high-quality workforce which can be made technology proficient. An informed and skilled workforce can transform various sectors of the economy. 

Recent developments in agriculture, be it in sustainable irrigation, composting, contract farming, KCCs, MSP regulations or APMC contracts, all require the adoption of technology and documentation, derivatives of education. Similarly, scaling up in the manufacturing sector via automation is hindered by the absence of a skilled workforce. In the tertiary sector, services like IT, banking and insurance require computer legibility and extensive documentation and invariably need an educated workforce. 

Industry requirements and education go hand in hand. Absence of a robust education and skill development infrastructure results in companies moving out of the country for high cognition job roles while employing the endemic workforce in low wage tasks. This industry scenario forces high calibre students to leave the country, i.e. brain drain. 

Stakeholders 

In the long term, SDG 4 could bridge a lot of gaps discussed. However, implementation comes with its challenges. While the literacy rate is 91% in developing countries, in India, it is a staggering 77%.5 Key stakeholders driving reforms in the education sector are the government, NGOs and corporates. 

In India, education is a part of the concurrent list, i.e. it comes under the jurisdiction of both the central and state government. Interstate disparity in education exists in the country with Andhra Pradesh having a menial literacy rate of 66% while Kerala has a rate of 96%6. This disparity exists owing to the rural-urban spread, budgetary spending on education (4% of the entire budget) and the business climate of the region. Education is a brick-and-mortar service, i.e. it requires infrastructure like schools and skilling institutes along with resources like teachers, admins and books. Hence, to increase adoption, budgetary allocation will have to increase.  

Government norms bound corporates to follow corporate social responsibility directives. In most cases, these directives set thresholds of minimum spending to be done in various ESG domains resulting in ad-hoc spending by companies. Directives can be made more comprehensive to address the pain points in the education system directly. Another way corporates are giving back to the system is via human resource initiatives; for example, industry stalwarts like Unilever and TATA have started prospective employee skilling programs. To increase adoption, corporates can work with the government and regulatory bodies to bridge the gulf between industry requirements and current curriculum as well as come up with campus to corporate skilling programs. 

Finally, a host of NGOs are operating in the education and skill development domain. Organizations like Teach for India and CRY have had a significant impact through their educational outreach operations. However, with numerous players, many in the unorganized sector, there are a lot of overlaps and inefficiencies in the industry. The government and the larger organizations can lobby together to build a framework for NGOs to operate with increased integration. 

Although most policies are directed towards larger economic or welfare goals, the most important stakeholders i.e. the ones being educated are the ones whose feedback should matter the most. 

Analysis & Suggested Path ahead  

Diving deeper into the pedagogy model and understanding the scale of challenges, a detailed analysis reveals that structural roadblocks hinder India’s aspirations of becoming a global knowledge superpower. Having said that, various initiatives and reforms, both policy based and technological in nature, are being adopted to make this ambitious target a reality by 2030. To understand things holistically, the analysis aims to cover aspects specific to the Indian context as well as the innovative pedagogies being adopted to transform education from a global standpoint. 

On a broader scale, the challenges and opportunities can be condensed into 3 fronts – Policy, Monetary, and Innovation. In the remainder of the blog, we will be looking at each of these verticals and explore possible future approaches in each context. 

1. Policy – New Education Policy of India, 2020 

A host of continuing challenges expose the lacunae of the education system in the country. High level of teacher vacancies directly impacts the accessibility of education. Additionally, significant drop out rates combined with poor pass percentages clearly demonstrate the lack of equitable access to quality education. To good effect, while India and the world was grappling with the pandemic, the government finally announced transformative reforms in the shape of the New Education Policy (NEP) of India.    

The policy aims to bring about sweeping reforms on critical fronts like foundational literacy, vocational education and flexibility. Traditionally, the system’s design was viewed to be quite rigid in terms of the choices offered to the students, but the NEP promises to alleviate that problem and offer multiple exit points to candidates. Several policy reforms intersect with indicators of the SDG 4 pertaining to Quality Education. Elaborating on a few, technical skills such as coding will be included in the curriculum as early as the 6th standard. This directly links with the 3rd indicator which talks about access to vocational and technical education. Furthermore, the Ministry of human resource development plans to setup an education technology forum that will be geared towards addressing the challenges of capacity development and knowledge sharing. 

Additionally, as opposed to the older 10+2 model, a new 5+3+3+4 structure is being introduced to solve for flexibility. This reform strives to unbundle the current offerings and recalibrate them in order to establish an alignment between student interests and curriculum offerings. Eventually, this will not only provide candidates with multiple exit options for higher education but will also result in better employment signalling ability. Projecting employment capability more effectively will help India in leveraging its demographic advantage and invariably increase the number of candidates possessing relevant skillsets (4th indicator) 

2. Monetary – Arranging Financial Fuel 

While the reforms look very appealing on paper, their successful implementation is a huge challenge in itself. For instance, propositions to setup infrastructure catering to digital learning have been suggested under NEP. Solving nation-wide infrastructure challenges related to network bandwidth and IT infrastructure is a humungous task, not only logistically but financially as well. Therefore, financing will have a huge role to play in the 10 year long journey ahead of us. 

In recent years, there has been a rise in novel financing and funding mechanisms globally. A combination of public as well as private contributions will need to be sourced to ensure effective mobilization of resources. Few examples include outcome-based financing, social and developmental impact bonds, etc.  

Impact bonds belong to the club of innovative financing mechanisms that have been gaining traction to further the cause of social outcomes and achieving SDGs. These bonds allow private funds to flow into social development causes with the promise of capital and interest repayment upon achievement of the outcome. These bonds are not floated only by Governments but also philanthropic organisations of credible standing and repute. Additionally, outcome based funding is a tool that can be leveraged in order to facilitate allocation of funds and resources based on the performances and outcomes achieved by the institution. This is in clear contrast to the erstwhile approach of allocating based on input requirements. It can help in achieving accountability, efficiency and effective utilisation of funds. The MHRD has designed Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) which aims to facilitate disbursal of public funds contingent to performance in the areas of access, equity and quality of education. 

3. Innovation – The role of EdTech  

As world leaders and organizations strive to develop various reforms to meet the SDG targets, it is but natural to include technology as an important lever in developing effective and innovative solutions. Variety of technologies including 5G, Natural Language processing, cloud and gamification platforms are expected to facilitate huge changes in the field of education in the years to come. Artificial Intelligence is expected to enable reforms that can solve structural issues quite effortlessly.  

With an increased amount of learning taking place on digital platforms and websites, innumerable data points on parameters like retention level, attention spans are captured and analysed. These data points can be modelled to identify students’ issues and possibly highlight predictive drop out in advance, especially in the higher education segment where drop rates are a cause of concern. Customized adaptive learning and vernacular content delivery are possible use cases to solve for accessibility and delivery for inherently disadvantaged students. For instance, initiatives to digitise Tigrinya, a language spoken in the war-stricken area of Eritrea has made possible continuous learning for refugees and children in the region. The power of technology and computing can be harnessed to develop similar scalable solutions globally. 

The way forward from here should be to make a uniform and a stable long-term plan keeping in mind the above-mentioned challenges and opportunities. Local issues pertaining to the respective geographies will have to be considered while executing the plan. Innovative financial and technological tools should be leveraged in our pursuit of improving education worldwide and we should be well on our way to achieving the quality education SDG by the end of the next decade.   

References

1. https://sdgs.un.org/goals

2. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4

3. https://www.census.gov/popclock/print.php?component=counter

4. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-4-quality-education.html#:~:text=This%20goal%20ensures%20that%20all,to%20a%20quality%20higher%20education

5. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/international-literacy-day-2020-how-literacy-rate-is-calculated-in-india/articleshow/77991200.cms#:~:text=India's%20literacy%20rate&text=As%20per%20NSO%2C%20India's%20average,Delhi%20stood%20second%20with%2088.7%25

6. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/at-96-2-kerala-tops-literacy-rate-chart-andhra-pradesh-worst-performer-at-66-4/articleshow/77978682.cms

7. https://www.businessgreen.com/opinion/3072035/educating-for-sustainable-economy-the-role-of-business-in-delivering-sdg-4  

Sustainability Reports

https://corporate.walmart.com/media-library/document/2019-environmental-social-governance-report/_proxyDocument?id=0000016c-20b5-d46a-afff-f5bdafd30000 

https://www.itcportal.com/sustainability/sustainability-report-2020/sustainability-report-2020.pdf 

https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/pdfBuilderDownload?name=sustainability-all-in-june-2020

https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-91/Accenture-DK-Sustainability-Report-2018-02.pdf

https://assets.ctfassets.net/oe48y40ukei6/ZptYlWrJaUIqgMgEe6qwo/7d46b27aa002999f59cf9df1aa6ea098/2014_Full_Sustainability_Report.pdf