Group2_D | SDG 4: Quality Education

Blog Authors:

Devansh Tripathi, Job Joseph, Lakshay Arora, Rishabh Agarwal, Tridib Banerjee, V Lohitha, Wesley John Sunil

Group 2, Section D, PGDM (BM) 2020-22 Batch

Introduction

Quality Education is the fourth pillar of the seventeen sustainable development goals outlined by the United Nations in September 2015. Over the globe, inequitable distribution of wealth, religious disturbances, and social unrest lead to an enormous difference in the quality of education received by children. Some do not even have access to it or are forced to leave academic institutions midway to join the workforce or get married. These are not issues restricted by geographical boundaries but prevalent across various parts of the globe. The seven targets to achieve the outcome of fair education include providing free schooling & excellent pre-primary education for everyone, inexpensive higher education, imbibing the workforce with pertinent skills to achieve monetary success, eradication of all unfairness in education, 100% numeracy and literacy, and finally education for sustainable development and global citizenship. The goals outlined are ambitious but not impossible. Countries could start by designing schools as safe havens where children feel safe. In developing nations, there is also a need to ensure quality in educators and offer scholarships and grants to deserving students. However, even before 2020, achieving all this as laid out in the ‘2030 Agenda’ would have been an arduous task. And now, the existing disparities in the quality of education accessible to all has only been exacerbated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, with students being forced to shun physical classrooms in favour of virtual ones. If this online mode of learning becomes the new norm even after the pandemic subsides eventually, we could be staring at an even greater divide. And these new problems that arise would need unique and innovative solutions.

The Relevance of Sustainable Education in the Indian context

For any country, human capital is the most important resource; this is especially true for India, who has the asset of the population of 1.3 billion. The belief that quality education is the foundation for improving the lives of its 1.3 billion citizens has been the guiding light of India’s education policy. Since leaving no one behind requires improving human capital to make informed decisions in all walks of life, the emphasis should be to ensure the completion of secondary education by all children, guaranteeing equal access to quality and affordable technical and vocational education, while eliminating gender, caste, regional and income disparities and to achieve universal access to quality higher education. The overall Index Score by measuring India’s performance on SDG 4 for the country is 58, and ranges between 19 and 81 for the States on a scale of 0-100. This shows that the distance to target covered so far by India in quality education stays 58, with a huge variety among the subnational units.

Challenges

India with its 28 per cent of the total population as youth, has the capability to make a global imprint in competitiveness, modern technologies and the changing demands of the global labour market. While India has made commendable progress in modernisation of the higher education system, we still fall short of the desirable.

The emphasis on providing the youth, especially women, affordable, inclusive, and industry relevant vocational and technical education, holds the key to building the research-innovation-entrepreneurship ecosystem and unlocking the development potential of the Indian society and economy.

The discerning predisposition against public sector primary education requires predictable cross country endeavors. Enrolment in public primary schools has declined by 23.1 million in total numbers from 2007-08 to 2015-16, while enrolment in private primary schools has expanded by 14.5 million over a similar period.

Gearing the education system towards learning outcomes is a major focus area in the country. To shift the emphasis from quantity to quality in the education sector, while addressing equity and inclusion is the need of the hour.

Generally, lower enrolment of women in STEM higher education, especially in designing and innovation, which right now remains at 18 per cent in IITs, calls for additional motivations.

Business Implications and Responses

Businesses need stable economic conditions to thrive. Conversely, growing inequity in education, poverty, and climate adversities are not favourable for any business. So companies need to address these issues in order to future proof their businesses. Companies commit to specific sustainable development goals by identifying their corporate priorities. They choose the SDG’s, where they can create the most significant impact, after assessing the risks and opportunities over a long time. But Quality Education is a critical sustainable development goal that will also aid in achieving other goals. If companies promote quality education, they can achieve other SDG goals, directly and indirectly, related to their business.

Businesses need to commit to promoting quality education because they want to hire the most talented pool as their employees, and quality education can help bridge the gap between job requirements and qualified and skilled workers. By advancing quality education, businesses are, in turn, developing the capabilities of future employees and building a more diverse employee pipeline.

Companies should identify areas where products or services are developed and strive to achieve corporate as well as SDG goals. Companies can leverage their existing tech platforms to support and offer resources and opportunities to access quality education. If companies invest in closing the gap between the marginalized and privileged students, inequity in education will reduce, and everyone will have an equal opportunity to achieve academic success and improve life opportunities.

These SDGs represent an unprecedented opportunity for companies to achieve broader societal goals. The sustainability and corporate strategy toward Quality Education can be understood by deep diving into the approach, followed by a few companies.

Corning Inc.

Corning has taken steps to encourage education that induces innovation in students from an early age. Corning has a Future innovator competition in 2015 for university and college students specializing in material science. Corning Life Sciences hosts Career Days, which aims to show students that a career in science does not necessarily have to deal with chemistry, biology, or physics. 'Corning Gorilla Class' is an initiative that uses interactive methods of education to expose young students to material sciences.

State Street Corporation

In many developing nations like India, women are vastly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects and professions. State Street Corporation works to improve the quality of STEM education offered to female students in government high schools. State Street Foundation grant supports resources and training for STEM teachers, funding student visits to science and technology centres.

AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca launched a new STEM program. This program is established to inspire the next generation about science and build a strong foundation for R&D. The program is designed to make learning about health and disease engaging, accessible, and exciting for students in grades 6-8, primarily in under-resourced schools.

Vodafone Idea

Vodafone Idea leveraged its technological capabilities and used its mobile technology to provide young people access to new learning opportunities. The group has started providing free and subsidised education resources and technology. This program has been started to offer enhanced opportunities to achieve academic success, particularly to marginalised groups.

RBS(Natwest Group)

Natwest Group launched ‘MoneySense Mondays’ to support parents who are home-schooling their children. The interactive online lessons are streamed live on Facebook every week by a Community Banker and a teacher.

Beam Suntory

Suntory Mizuiku - Education Program for Nature and Water provides children with on-site lessons at schools where they learn about the importance of water, hygiene management, the importance of water source conservation. Water is a local issue, and this program is customized for all the countries Beam Suntory is operating.

Analysis and the Suggested Path Ahead

Despite the vast technological advancements made in recent years, education has failed to keep pace. Institutional education is estimated to be a generation behind the actual learning required to thrive in the modern world. The relevance of formal education in terms of its application has seen a steady decline with the increase in the number of educational institutions. Companies have started to use education and academic performance only as an indicator of a prospective employee’s aptitude and follow up recruitment with their customized training programmes.

In order to ensure sustainability in education, care must be taken to modernize the pedagogy and outcomes of formal education programs. We must recognize the futility and inefficiency of having to deal with an outdated education system and steps must be taken to ensure that education does not merely revolve around a set of prescribed books but rather deals with real-world problems including. Education must be focussed on being connective and collective such that the gap between the world of education and the professional world grows narrower and not wider.

Rather than being seen as a commodity, education must be seen as a life skill by The relevant governing bodies. Education standards across institutions should be focused on imparting knowledge to learners and not designed to meet a set of criteria without actually fulfilling the entire purpose of education. Being confined to broad and outdated standards brings the risk of knowledge being lost and additional resources being invested in re-learning the same essential skills that were overlooked favouring more regulation-friendly education.

In the past, we have allowed human-made causes to set history back by hundreds of years with occurrences such as the burnings of the library of Alexandria. In today's world, however, knowledge risks being lost in an ocean of information instead. Humans as a species must try and ensure the systematic assimilation of knowledge into the education system to provide a solid foundation for people from all walks of life to build on and preserve it for future generations instead of leaving behind an entangled web of disconnected information.

Affordability is a major hurdle that prevents a lot of Indian parents from providing their children with education. Affordable/Budget Private Schools (APS) offer an alternative to parents who want their children to attain quality education at affordable rates. 70% of these students pay less than Rs. 1,000 per month which has led to the enrollment of more than 35% of all school going students in India, with the average number of students per school being over 240 compared to the 120 per government school. APSs are private unaided schools and is one of the fastest-growing segments in the education industry. Most APS charge lower fees for their services and are a third of the government’s expenditure per child in public schools.

Students attending APSs consistently score better than those attending government schools in all subjects. Parents have noticed this scope for improvement, especially the poorest families of India, and have trusted APSs to deliver quality and hope for a better education for their children.

The regulation of the Indian education system is input-based and not based on learning outcome, and this has made entry and operation complex for schools. Infrastructure requirements, teacher salaries and fee capping that are mandated by the government as well as a host of licenses and permissions prove difficult to follow for a model of schooling based on families that have very little money to spare. The non-profit status of these schools has made it difficult for high-quality providers to enter or scale these institutions.

One of the drawbacks of APS is the dearth in learning data that often offers an incomplete picture to both institutions and parents. Since most APS education does not extend all the way to board examination, parents are left with proxy metrics, like infrastructure and an English learning medium, when they have to choose a school for their children.

Private Institutions have improved their education standards, but Government Colleges are struggling to get to those standards due to lack of funding and government employees' will to improve on the standards and quality of education. Corporates can fund and take up contracts to improve upon government schools. Taking up schools for five years as projects for their CSR and improving their standards of education and facilities can help set up schools and provide formal education and facilities to underprivileged students who are not able to afford private schooling and help the country grow by helping the young generation of the country grow.

References

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