Page 38 - EW-June-2024

Cover Story

STATE OF INDIA K-12: RESILIENCE AMIDST UNCERTAINTIES 2024 REPORT

BRIGHT FUTURE FOR

PRIVATE SCHOOL EDUCATION

Against the backdrop of dismal conditions in Indian
education, a mint new report authored by LoEstro
Advisors, a Hyderabad-based education focused investment
banking and consulting firm, says that a positive
sea change is manifesting in private K-12 education
countrywide

Dilip Thakore

S EVEN DECADES AFTER UNDER THE flush of freedom against the advice of Mahatma Gandhi and

Sardar Patel, under the guidance of Prime Minister Jawaha-
inspiring leadership of Mahatma
rlal Nehru, who was enamoured with the communist Soviet
Gandhi the country won its freedom
Union, independent India adopted inorganic socialism as
from oppressive foreign rule, strong
winds of change are blowing over
its official ideology.
But although communist/socialist Soviet Union (now
post-independence India’s moribund
education sector. Especially after the
belated liberalisation and deregula- Russia) and the communist People’s Republic of China ac-
corded high priority to the State providing universal high
tion of industry in 1991 and after EducationWorld was quality primary education, for various reasons (canalisation
launched in 1999 with the avowed mission to “build the of national savings into capital-intensive white elephant
pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item public sector enterprises; neglect of agriculture, binding tax
on the national agenda”. revenue-generating private sector enterprises in red tape)
New awareness has dawned that resuscitating and up- public education was under-funded ab initio. In 1967, a
grading the country’s 1.7 million pre-primaries, 1.50 mil- high-powered Kothari Commission strongly recommended
lion primary-secondary schools, 45,473 colleges and 1,168 investment of 6 percent of annual GDP (Centre plus states)
universities is the essential precondition of 21st century in public education. That recommendation has remained
India harvesting its demographic dividend — 700 million on the back burner with national expenditure averaging 3.5
citizens are aged below 30 — and attaining the status of a percent of GDP for over seven decades.
middle class nation. Moreover with 40 percent of meagre budget outlays
First, the back story of open, continuous and uninter- of the Central and state governments allocated for over-
rupted neglect of Indian education is necessary. In the first subsidised higher education, the government school system

38 EDUCATIONWORLD JUNE 2024