If you are dealing with the stress of a school-going child in your life, Parliament feels your pain. This week, Lok Sabha members called for an all-party meet to discuss how children could best “pursue their dreams”, how their creativity could be unleashed from a wantonly cruel education system. The Indian education system has plenty going for it, and much that needs reform. Our primary school standards are demanding, and the very things that some of us slam — learning more at an early age, memorisation and rigorous grounding in the basics of math and science — are what some other countries envy and emulate today because it gives Indians a competitive edge in the world economy. Which is not to say that childhood must be given over to this hollow pursuit of excellence, or that school education should be a test of endurance. But the fact remains that the battery of tests and tuitions and the childhood slog are part of what makes India an ascendant force.The education system can certainly do with a child-friendly makeover, but cosmetic changes will not alter the make-or-break pressure of the Board examination. One single test becomes the performance of a lifetime, and a few marks — sometimes less than a percentage point — can decide whether you make it to the tiny clutch of quality colleges in this country, or are consigned to the bulk of no-name institutions that pass as centres of higher education. The heartbreak and self-loathing caused by the admissions process to many smart and ambitious young people who don’t manage to clamber into the few seats of a good college is something that parliamentarians can fix, but have not.Despite committee after committee offering suggestions, there has been no political will to improve our public universities and encourage the good private ones. Without a structural overhaul in higher education, without rapid expansion, it is meaningless to talk of easing the pressure of school life.
