'Strengthening Primary and Secondary Education Will Strengthen Tertiary Education'

Formal learning of children through primary education system followed by secondary education system has been prevalent since decades and the educated ones coming out from them become aspirants for the tertiary education system, popularly known as higher education system. Quality concerns have been often discussed and the higher education system of the country is under fire. There is no doubt that the quality of graduates/post-graduates churned out from the portals of higher education institutions depend upon various aspects under their mandate, but the role of inherent capabilities and competence of the admitted students cannot be ignored. In fact, the quality of students as provided by the secondary education system does affect the possible extent of value addition in them and the quality of outcome in the form of graduating students.

What is the problem ?

It is quite relevant to dwell upon certain issues which need introspection by all those involved in the education system and the students as the primary stakeholders. An assessment from the higher technical education perspective indicates that there are some gaps which make education incapable of offering work for survival and livelihood. Poor communication skills, technical skills, presentation skills, analytical skills and other required capabilities could be lagging in respect to expectations of employers and community in general.  These gaps need to be overcome with the concerted efforts of all those involved in creation of well trained and competent human resource. At the same time in this context, it is also important to look at the total numbers of takers of higher technical education and evaluate whether the tertiary education system does have capability to shoulder such onerous responsibility of educating them all with requisite quality. Statistically, the situation appears to be grim with the large number of higher education institutions lacking in teaching and non-teaching human resource and the necessary infrastructure.  These higher education Institutions will never be in position to roll out the requisite quality in graduates/ post graduates unless they are fully equipped with the requisite human resource as trainers and the infrastructure to support teaching learning processes.

It is interesting to note that there exists one more dimension to this problem of poor quality outcome from tertiary education system and the onus lies on the deficient outcome of secondary education system. It has been seen since last few decades that there is war like situation in the minds of students at secondary levels and they are desperate to pursue higher  education in various courses of engineering or medicine or law or accountancy depending upon their subjects. Students get themselves tutored and prepared for getting the problem-solving skills for the sake of succeeding in competitive examinations for admission to such courses during their study at secondary level. It is seen that the coaching infrastructure for facilitating success in such competitive examination has started offering services even to the students at middle standard and thus prepare them for about four years in continuation. It is obvious that prevalence of such coaching culture is simply pushing the school education to take back seat and because of it the focus for learning and comprehensive analysis is significantly lost from the secondary education. Such situation in secondary level schools/colleges needs correction and the students should be suitably educated in all aspects because the skewed focus on selected subjects eventually leads to certain deficiencies in these students which exhibit its’ negative implications when they finally come out from higher education institution.

How to resolve?

There appears a critical need of having regular counselling in which students are apprised and motivated well for completing their education up to secondary level with the objective of learning and not for the sake of merely cracking certain examinations. It should be understood that the requisite learning at secondary level will automatically fetch them opportunities for proceeding ahead in higher education as per their real capability and not the tutored capability. It is very important for all aspirants of higher education that they should make candid assessment of their capabilities before fixing the goal and then seriously work for its’ attainment. Secondary educators should strive hard for imparting the knowledge through their class room and laboratory teachings instead of focus on rote learning. The schools / colleges also need to identify the outcomes expected from teaching at respective level so that capability upgradation and assessment of its attainment can help in finding suitable stuff for respective higher education. Amongst different possibilities, the activity based learning and problem solving capability assessment are the potential additions to supplement the routine class room activities at secondary and primary level of education so as to make it much more meaningful and fruitful. Class rooms need to be transformed into living laboratories where children and teachers get engaged effectively for making learning fun. Teachers need to continuously adapt newer teaching pedagogies so that they can provoke creativity of the children. There are various instances in which the conventional teaching supplemented with innovative teaching through gamification has helped children and shown evidences of effective learning as compared to traditional teaching-learning processes.

India’s education system being one of the large in terms of quantity should be holistically strengthened in all dimensions. Concern for imbibing knowledge to students in primary and secondary level will automatically improve the quality of students for higher education. The higher technical education system expects its aspirants to have scientific temperament and lust for fructifying their creativity which can be certainly imparted through the existing schools and colleges. The efforts to embed personality skills, communication skills and positive attitude in children in primary and secondary education level along with imbibing ability of critical thinking, problem solving analysis and scientific temperament will ease out the job of higher technical Institutions to create holistic professionals with requisite skills. These requirements of different attributes in aspirants of technical education need to be understood by the students too so that the quality of technical education may get improved with requisite inputs in higher education system.

What should students do?

Students should realize their importance in the sustenance and upgradation of present day civilization and the state of technology. Apart from their mentors being asked to redefine their roles, the students of secondary education system may be from high school standard should freeze their career option and work towards its attainment. Every child should carry out the analysis of their personal likings & disliking, family requirements & constraints, their personal strength and weakness before setting up their goals. We know that the present era is offering enough growth opportunities in almost every field and under these circumstances there should not be any mad rush against any of the few career options rather, the student should have ample freedom to choose and freeze under guidance of their elders from family, colleagues and school/college teachers. The choices and capabilities of the child should be allowed to prevail over all other expectations. Often, it is seen that creating pressure over students for fulfilling the aspirations of family or others, hampers the natural growth of capabilities and thus the humanity gets deprived from getting benefited from the inherent capability of such children. After choosing the right path, the students should be provided congenial atmosphere at home, school, surroundings for their holistic development and polishing their natural potential. It does not matter whether the potential of a child can be harnessed to its maximum potential through formal or informal ways of teaching-learning systems in any of the available streams of education system. Thus, the students should not blindly follow what others are doing and instead achieve the highest degree of satisfaction by doing the things of their interest be it at the level of secondary education, vocational education, or higher education. Presently, the students with varying interest choose for certain stereotyped path of higher education despite possessing different inherent interests is disastrous from the perspective of utilizing full potential of every child. Thus, the country will be getting opportunity of strengthening itself in all dimensions and everyone can contribute in economy in the most effective manner.

Present information age is a boon for the students for mitigating the challenges posed due to poor quality of teachers, if any. Predominance of display technologies in dissemination of knowledge, learning resources, live videos, sharing of expertise, etc. should be adapted for supplementing their learning and problem solving capabilities. In the present scenario, a new world of virtual teaching – learning system is emerging quite fast and will have deep penetration in time to come. This kind of facilitation of the web enabled learning should not be considered as a substitute to the traditional contact type teaching-learning environment and the whole academia should continue its focus on creative and innovative ways of teaching for keeping students glued to the class room and laboratory exercises and have real life experiences. Students should not be solely reliant on such technology enabled learning because it will incur serious deficiencies of real life systems and processes. Continued exploration and utilization of the knowledge subjects and self-learning in comprehensive manner in the areas of their interest will open new vistas for future and yield success with satisfaction.

Conclusion:

The ensuing era of demographic dividend of the country is very opportune time for all stakeholders of the primary and secondary education system to think out of the box and look for solution of challenges, which may be different for different parts of the country. The primary education system needs maximum focus for inculcating the value based education through a team of dedicated and committed mentors in very large number as the present teacher student ratio at these level is of serious concern. It should be understood that the concerns about the poor quality from higher education system can be significantly helped through improvements in the primary and secondary education levels.

Contributed by Prof. Onkar Singh

Vice Chancellor, Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology

Gorakhpur (U.P.) – India

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article by the author are his/her personal views and have nothing to do with click4college.com