Group4_A | SDG 4: Quality Education

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Quality Education

Introduction:

As an SDG, Quality Education's goal is to "Ensure inclusive and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all." United Nations adopted sustainable development goals in September 2015. These goals are intended to transform the world through the plan of sustainable development.

Education is expansive. Over time, the inequalities in wealth, facilities, and social unrest have led to the deterioration of education quality children in various places receive. Some schools offer world-class facilities, while there are schools that don't have running water. Some students start their education but are forced to leave it mid-way. This issue is especially prevalent in areas where the quality of life is not sustainable. Fifty-seven million children of the primary age never get to attend school, half of them being from sub-Saharan Africa. 1 of 4 girls in developing countries never get to attend school.

Relevance to India:

The 4^thSDG aims to empower current and upcoming generations to achieve quality education and allow them to live in prosperity. This bridges the gap between the poor and the rich and can be a driving factor to build a socially responsible society. It can be a distinguishing factor for India's youth to uplift themselves from the massive unemployment that India has had in the past. This SDG has significant importance in the political discourse and formulation of the Government's policy. It caters to a diverse set of people, from children to adults, from teachers to the Government and everyone in between. Following are the components as mentioned in Sustainable Development India Report 2020:

Early Childhood Development, education, and care
Elementary and school education
Higher Education
Skill Development and Vocational Education
Conducive Education Facilities that are gender and disability sensitive

India has traveled a long way. It had a low 12% literacy in 1947, and it currently stands at over 76%, with the female literacy rate increasing from 8.8% to 65.4%. There still exists a gap between rural and urban India. The Indian Government is trying to curb this gap. In 2019, the Government of India launched Samagra Shiksha. It is an overarching program for students from pre-school to class XII. It focuses on improving education quality by supporting teachers' training, conducting achievement surveys at schools and state and national levels. It subsumes the three previous schemes, namely, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), and Teacher Education (TE) to undertake this one.

The Government has implemented the integrated child development services scheme for children aged 0 to 6. This scheme aims to provide help in dietary supplementation, immunization, and non-formal education. Skill India Initiative is one initiative where the Government aims to provide vocational skills to employ people.

Such initiatives seem to have worked for India so far. As per ASER 2012, 96.5% of all rural children between the ages of 6-14 were enrolled in school. There is rapid growth in the demand for higher education. The Government has also been spending a lot of their GDP on India's development of the education sector. There are a few concerns regarding the continuation of education in India. Over 25% of the students enrolled drop out after completing school. We need to shift from quantity education to quality education, ensuring more equity and inclusion in this need of the hour.

Business Impact

Quality education is the basis of creating human capital, making most businesses critical stakeholders in the development of this SDG. This is particularly the case in India, where there is a generally prevalent skills gap despite having the world’s largest young adult population and relatively cheap skilled labour. It is therefore unsurprising that many corporates have launched various programs dedicated to the development of education in India as part of their CSR activities.

P&G

Since 2005, Procter and Gamble has partnered with NGOs across India to launch its flagship CSR program- P&G Shiksha. Its main goal is to give children access to education, particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds. The company makes donations toward this cause with every sale of some of the products in its range. According to the website, the program has been supportive to over 2100 schools, with a focus on three main areas- enhancing learning outcomes, empowering girls marginalized in society and aiding in the development of education infrastructure. The program has also worked in collaboration with government-run schools and helped build and set up schools for orphaned and destitute children in states like Himachal Pradesh and Goa.

RB’s Dettol brand has collaborated with some government organizations to develop and provide back-to-school kits to children of underprivileged backgrounds who are unable to avail online education alternatives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes basic hygiene necessities such as sanitizers, soaps, masks and gloves. Besides this, Dettol has run the “Banega Swasth India” campaign since 2016 to reach out to and educate school children on the importance of hygiene and sanitation. The program has worked in collaboration with NGOs like CAF India and Water Aid with a committed investment of Rs. 100 crores toward the cause. Apart from driving education on the subject, Dettol has contributed to developing sanitation infrastructure in schools, thereby increasing attendance by as much as 17%.

Facebook

In 2020, Facebook has committed to working with the Central Board of Secondary Education to develop and provide certified online programs for students. This is in association with the Facebook for Education initiative and aims to contribute to the causes of digital empowerment and digital inclusion. In particular, since the COVID-19 pandemic, many students from underprivileged backgrounds struggle with disruption to their education due to inadequate access to online infrastructure. Initiatives such as this would play a significant role in making education accessible to all. Further, this is in tandem with Facebook’s recent investment into Indian education technology start-up Unacademy. It has also partnered with telecom giant Reliance Jio to launch a nationwide digital literacy program- “Digital Udaan” for first-time internet users in the country.

Infosys

The Infosys Foundation has actively engaged in numerous initiatives to offer the youth of the country quality education. For example, it has sponsored and provided mid-day meals to children falling in the Below Poverty Line category as an effective way to increase attendance in Bannerghatta, Bangalore. Further, it has partnered with the Chennai Mathematical Institute to provide grants that aid and encourage students to pursue higher education in one of the STEM fields. The foundation has also played a direct and vital role in providing and setting up over 60,000 libraries and computers in schools in rural areas across India.

HDFC Bank

HDFC’s Project Disha is an initiative started in 2016 intending to help improve literacy rates in parts of rural India. The bank has since funded the project and partnered with several NGOs to address problems at the grassroots level. Innovative and activity-based teaching methods have been utilized to improve the quality of education. HDFC also sponsors the Educational Crisis Scholarship Support, which is specifically targeted to help students who are most at risk of dropping out due to their financial circumstances. This includes economically and socially disadvantaged groups.

Analysis

Education influences the world in many more ways, than those that dominate public discussion. The recent Capitol Insurrection at the Capitol Building in Washington DC, by armed protestors challenging facts (Biden won the election and public support) with their “alternate facts” (The election was stolen for Trump) shows us the dangers of quality education, when it fails to instil a critical thinking mindset in the people. USA has a near perfect literacy rate of 99% (Ref 14), yet is home to the world’s communities of conspiracy theorists and freedom of life propagators. At least one third of USA millennials still believe that the Earth is flat. Americans shunned masks with a 99% literacy rate, while Indians with a 74.4% literacy rate (Ref 17) turned the pandemic around with their resolve and the strong decisive government policies (Ref 16).

Education is the precursor to a sustainable critical thinking mindset, which in turn is essential for shaping public discourse in a nation. Public discourse dominates politics and then finally finds its way into the elected leaders and subsequently, state policies. This fact can be observed with the fact that, USA under Trump, left the Paris Climate Agreement (Ref 18) while India is one of the only G20 nations, to make significant progress (Ref 19). Education policies in India, has made educated Indians more environmentally aware (Ref 20) and they have driven this change.

United Nations recognised the need of education for a better world, and had declared the decade 2005-2014 as the decade for Education for Sustainable Development (Ref 21). Schools, Colleges and Educational Institutes can no longer exist in their own silos. They have to make sure that the knowledge and skills they are imparting to their students, is relevant to the outside world. If the world outside continues to destroy itself, while students learn their subjects in a theoretical framework, then it is a offence to call such a program, education.

Students in every subject and stream, science, math art etc., need to understand the sustainability aspects of their fields, and they need to factor that in all the decisions that they make. As a reputed CSO, Anirban Ghosh, Chief Sustainability Officer at Mahindra puts it, sustainability is no more an option, it is the only way forward to ensure our survival. B-Schools are trying to make up for the lack of overall sustainability awareness, by offering courses in the domain, and by tweaking all their existing courses to include a sustainability component.

B-schools are working hard to bust the myth that sustainability and profits cannot go hand in hand. (Ref 22). As Anirban Ghosh (CSO Mahindra) says, there is always a way to increase profits by aiming for sustainable practices. It just takes a keen eye.

The way forward

Schools of Higher Education have to take the lead in not waiting for Government or UN initiatives to tell their students about sustainability. XLRI is one of the pioneers in that regard, having been one of the first B-Schools in India to introduce the Sustainability course as a mandatory course, in its programmes. EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) took initiative with the UN to start the PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) in 2007. All institutes which pledge allegiance to the PRME, promise to arm their students with the skills to balance economic needs with social ones.

Certification bodies need to step up their game to promote sustainability in education, as done by EQUIS (EFMD Quality Improvement System). The EQUIS certification makes it mandatory for the awarded institutes, to mandatorily provide sustainability as one of the chief takeaways from their courses.

More celebrities and influential figures, have to come out in support of quality education for all, and just like water and air, quality education also has to become a undeniable necessity. Take the example of Mr. Sridhar Vembu (Ref 23), Founder of Zoho Corporation, who moved back to his village in Tamil Nadu to teach at schools. This has driven the public and government to talk about the issue. Why did it take a wealthy founder, to go back to his village, for the world to discuss about the poor quality of education there?

Teachers need to be incentivized. Until teaching becomes a sought-after role for its career prospects and remuneration, the problem of quality of education will not be solved. Teachers in the “best nation of the world” USA are paid paltry salaries and many are forced to work multiple jobs to support their families (Ref 24). This needs to change. Drastically. Forever.

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Group4_A | SDG 4: Quality Education

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