Catalyzing Performance
NEP Vision 2040
“A formidable Vision with humongous Challenges”
NEP 2020 has been a great policy. I enjoyed and connected with all the ‘Big Thinking and Vision’ set in it. Out of many, the one which I absorbed the most is the Vision 2040. The very 1st page of the policy document states it as:
“The aim must be for India to have an education system by 2040 that is second to none….”
With my vivid and exciting professional journey working with multiple industries including more than a decade spent with both School and Higher Education leaders and Teachers, equipped with market leading and innovative products and offerings; I observed that formidable visions by government and industries like the one above require enormous amount of fresh thinking, training, alignment, collaboration, and ownership by all stakeholders, in addition to robust and comprehensive planning, skilling and precise execution.
The most critical part of a journey leading to phenomenal success starts with ‘Fresh and Visionary Thinking’. But there are always big hurdles in fresh thinking, one of the biggest bottlenecks is the blockade created by respective sectorial leaderships with the giant walls of glorified past achievements and a great amount of satisfaction in what they know and how they are doing. Education is no different from this. The point is, there is always a scope of improvement, big or small, and one of the top priority of the leadership is to be able to visualize future demands and set the preparation right for visionary achievements.
Driving India to the World Education Leadership by 2040 is one of the most cherishing dreams and undoubtedly, every stakeholder right from institutions, educational leaders, teachers, parents and the centre of all, our students/youth; all of them have to think and act differently and pull themselves up for a bigger challenge; a challenge to lead the world.
Frankly speaking, the dream “Vision 2040’ is herculean… But Why?
Let us examine a few data inputs and facts:
- Peeping through the history of the United States of America, we find that post-unification of America in 1787 and since the first presidential term of Sir George Washington (1789-1797), they kept moving upward the graph learning through several ups and downs in the last 3 centuries. They are leading the world with technological inventions, innovations and industrial revolutions for more than a century now.
- Ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States
- On the other side, since opening up to foreign trade and investment, and implementing free-market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world’s fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 9.5% through 2018, a pace described by the World Bank as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” The backbone of this gargantuan growth is highly focussed skilling through education system spread across the domain.
- Ref https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33534.html
- Ancient India was the World Education Leader and if we explore more about the history of Inventions from India, we find that India lead the chart till 1000 CE. So, it’s been more than 1000 years now that India has lost that edge. Post-independence in 1947, we started crawling again to relive the old glory. With a lot of struggle and resilience, we are in a fairly strong position today that we are setting the expectations to lead the World of Education by 2040.
- As per the latest WIPO Indicators 2020; China and the US have filed 64 times and 15 times the resident IP (Patent) applications respectively in contrast to India. Please refer numbers below:
- According to ‘Worldwide Educating for the Future Index 2019’, India stands at 35th position. Refer to the image below.
Few important data facts from ‘Educational Statistics at a Glance 2018’ Report:
Ref Table-7 below, there were 1.2 lac enrolments in PhD and 39.17 lac enrolments in Post Graduate programs in India during 2015-16. Ref Table-9 below, technical fields viz. Agriculture and Allied, Engineering and Technology, IT and Computer, and Science attracted 56.46% enrolments in PhD and 26.48% enrolments in PG. Thereby, approx. 71,700 enrolments and 10.3 lac enrolments happened in PhD and PG level respectively in technical areas during 2015-16.
KEY OBSERVATIONs:
Firstly, having 71000 enrolments in technical areas including Agriculture and Allied, Engineering and Technology, IT and Computer, and Science in the year 2015-16, we can assume that India would have approx 18 lac PhD scholars under the age of 60 years as of now.
But India filed only 19,454 resident IP (Patent) applications in 2019?
China and the US filed 64 times and 15 times the resident IP applications respectively in contrast to India.
Question: Are Indian Educational Institutions and Leaders finding it important? If yes, we are in seriously bad shape. There seem clear gap in implementing educational learnings in problem-solving. Rather, the problem is in the way we are imparting Education which is not able to deliver learning and its application. NEP 2020 clearly states in the 4th paragraph of the 1st page itself; “it is becoming increasingly critical that children not only learn but more importantly learn how to learn”.
China became the manufacturing hub of the world by skilling its workforce and if India has to compete with it, Patents and IP rights will become one of the major bottlenecks. Thus both skilling and IP rights are critical which depends largely on our education system.
A good news, maximum IP applications in India in 2019 were filed by Chandigarh University. An Institution in India within the same environment.!
- Secondly, ref Table-7, we had a total of 26cr students in our schooling system in the year 2015-16, out of which 2.47cr students in Class XI-XII and 3.91cr students in Class IX-X.
- Whom do we expect to lead, students from resourceful private schools or government schools? Obviously, the premier schools in India have to take the onus and create examples for others. And the very first set of training and collaborations have to be done for these premier institutions and educational leaders.
- Thirdly, the way we moved 5 ranks upward to 35 in 2019, I strongly believe that by training and collaborating in addition to dedicated government efforts in raising the performance of government run schools, India can climb 10-15 ranks in this period, but to be in top 5 and to lead the scorecard, we need absolutely FRESH THINKING, training, alignment, collaboration, and ownership by all stakeholders right now and right away.
- To sum up, if we are serious to realize Vision 2040, we have very little time and require urgent action for Fresh and Visionary Thinking.
- School education has to play the most critical role, rather the problem is centered out here. If we set the school education right, HEIs will be able to ripe the true potential of a talent and consequently not only the issues focused in this blog but most of the issues pertaining to our Children, their Parents and Teachers will be resolved.
- We at ActuatorVivek are proud to have researched and worked out a specific strategy for the Indian education system filled with Fresh Thinking which can be very much realized with the current manpower through training. Having conducted a number of “Train the Trainer” Programs at prestigious schools and HEIs, we have gathered enormous response from the teachers’ fraternity and thus we are confident that our teachers can make this happen through rejuvenated and dedicated efforts.
ActuatorVivek offers:
Uniquely crafted “Train the Trainer” Programs for educational leaders and teachers across Schools and HEIs;
Parenting Programs for school parents and
Career Programs for students from Class 9 onwards till Young Professional.
For queries, please contact us @ actuatorvivek@gmail.com