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Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
Friday, July 17, 2020
Monday, July 13, 2020
Today's educational crisis....
Education is fundamental to an
equitable society. An excellent education equips children and youth with the
knowledge, skills, values, and mindsets needed to be empowered individuals and
responsible citizens. The fact that a high-quality education has wide-ranging
benefits for individuals and societies has been demonstrated, time and again,
by countries across the world. With nearly 1 in 4 people below the age of 14
years, India today stands at an inflection point; where we go from here depends
in large part on our ability to provide equal opportunities for all children to
attain an excellent education.
The truth is that today, more
than 50% of students in Grade 5 cannot read a Grade 2 text or solve a simple
subtraction problem. The truth is that today, the socio-economic circumstances
that a child is born into determines the type of school she attends, the kinds
of co-curricular opportunities that are available to her, the quality of life
outcomes she attains as an adult, and the kinds of opportunities she passes on
to her own children.
The truth is that today, we are
failing the majority of our children.
The causes underlying this
collective failure are numerous, varied and complex. I believe that at the root
of this crisis in education lies a crisis of leadership. There is a severe
deficit of people at all levels of the education system who are committed to
working together to improve the capacity and quality of our nation’s schools.
The fact is that teachers alone cannot solve this crisis; we also need
excellent school principals to support those teachers, informed parents to stay
engaged with the teaching-learning process in schools, visionary bureaucrats
and politicians to create an environment that enables for principals and
teachers to thrive, active civil society leaders to hold stakeholders
accountable, and committed corporate leaders to mobilize the necessary
resources to support school systems.