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Child Prodigies in India

Child Prodigies in India
An estimated 5 to 6 million child prodigies in India have IQ levels of 135 or above. Only a few will have a shot at big moves in life; the rest will remain in urban slums. Gaining admission to a university is seen as a privilege for the social elites. Discovering the child prodigies is akin to mining for diamonds in the rough.

The Vidya school has members who survey for children by collecting details of each child’s socio-economic status and testing their logic in a standardized and timed packet of problems. It has been empowering underprivileged children via integrated methods of admission. This campus boasts over 11,000 students with a nearly even ratio of boys and girls. The children from poorer families are sponsored. The minimum requirements to keep their scholarships are tenuous; the children are expected to maintain high grades and partake in extracurricular activities.

Success for the Future

These programs can put the students on a track to success in academia and career opportunities. Child prodigies in India can be instilled with a sense of fulfillment and leave a positive impact on not just the Indian economy, but the global economy.

Aside from the pressure to maintain top grades, there is also pressure to be the sole breadwinner of their families. Often the parents of these geniuses are uneducated and see little value in academia. Instead, they pin the child’s future on working immediately from childhood in roles such as housemaids for girls or physical labor for boys. If the students can’t find support from their parents, then the next best option for the child prodigies in India is mentors.

Child Marriage

An unambiguous hindrance for millions of Indian girls is child marriage. The marriage of underage girls can have a negative impact on health, education and increase the likelihood of intergenerational poverty. The marriage of underage girls in India has nearly been cut in half. Of Indian girls younger than 18, the percent that get married is 27 – compared to 47 percent just a decade ago. Better access to education for girls and better public awareness of the negative impact of child marriage are credited for the decrease.

Formative Early Years

The early years of childhood can affect the outcome of adulthood. The gap between the rich and the poor can manifest as early as nine months of age; for example, underprivileged children are enrolled in primary school a year later than their privileged classmates. Quantitative research reveals the number of vocab words and mathematics skills a student possesses can determine academic accomplishments in secondary school.

The initiative of providing opportunities to the child prodigies in India will pay off in the long run. A healthy and educated population in any country is a positive indicator that a country is making positive strides and on course to great achievements. The achievements not only benefit the nation of India, but for humanity through their contribution in science, medicine and human rights. Investing in the child prodigies in India is synonymous with investing in the future of India.

– Awad Bin-Jawed

Photo: Flickr

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How Foreign Aid Has Advanced Education in India

How Foreign Aid Has Advanced Education in IndiaIndia, located in South Asia, has a population of 1.2 billion people and is on its way to becoming the world’s most populous nation by 2030. However, the country still struggles with providing its growing population with access to quality healthcare, potable water, education and clean energy. The education sector in India, in particular, requires special attention, since so much of the nation’s personal and national development is based upon it.

India, being a developing nation, has struggled in this area for a very long time. For instance, even in the late 1980s, between 30 and 40 million children of primary school age were out of school. Foreign aid to India, as a result, proves to be an effective investment in this arena, and there are many ways foreign aid has advanced education in India.

One of the ways foreign aid has advanced education in India is by initiating projects that focus on improving the sector from its core. For instance, one of the three major goals of USAID’s Global Education Strategy is “improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades.” Focus on the children in primary grades is essential, as so much of a country’s future depends on it. For instance, according to the World Bank, “an increase of one standard deviation in student reading and math scores is associated with an increase of two percentage points in annual gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth.”

In order to advance this target, USAID supports 10 initiatives in the country and partners with the government of India to “identify, support and scale early grade reading innovations developed in India.” Additionally, USAID focuses on improving the capacity of educators to improve pedagogy and teaching.

For instance, the Teacher Innovation in Practice program works to positively impact the teaching practices of 14,657 teachers to improve early grade reading outcomes of more than 564,000 primary school children in the states of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in India. By developing teachers’ mindsets, building an enabling environment and improving pedagogical skills and knowledge, the main goal of this program is to reignite teacher motivation to drive better student learning outcomes.

Other initiatives focus on improving the literacy rate in the country, which was as low as 19.3 percent shortly after independence in 1951. USAID, in partnership with Tata Trusts and the Center for microFinance, is leading an initiative called the Nurturing Early Literacy Project that aims to “shift the prevalent rote-based pedagogy in India to one that views the child as an active learner.”

The project incorporates different approaches, including in-class sessions for teachers and equitable access to libraries for children, both in schools and communities. The aim of this project is to improve the reading skills of more than 90,000 primary school children in the states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

India reportedly spends a mere 3 percent of its GDP on education, making foreign aid geared towards development in the educational sector crucial. Foreign aid has advanced education in India significantly over the years. For instance, the literacy rate increased to 65.4 percent in 2001, and currently sits at 74.04 percent.

Hopefully, with continued support from foreign investments, India will be able to develop its education sector, thereby potentially boosting its economy and reducing poverty.

– Mehruba Chowdhury

Photo: Flickr

Helping India’s Education System for Global Development

India's EducationIndia is the world’s seventh largest country by size and the home to the second biggest population after China. With these features, India’s education system has an enormous responsibility. Some of the main problems that affect education in India are a lack of infrastructure, poor global rankings, social/gender gaps and lack of economic resources to support education.

However, there are efforts to reform education in India through the National Skill Council (NSC) that works with the Confederation of Indian Industry. These groups are focused on improving vocational and management schools through renovating curriculum and faculty.

The government hopes that by the year 2022, there will be 500 million people trained in varied skills that would match tomorrow’s demands. The real challenge for the success of this initiative is to the creativity and involvement of non-governmental organizations.

Quality education will make India’s youth gain valuable skills to tackle societal and economic challenges. It would “provide children with the protection they need from poverty, exploitation and disease; and give them the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reach their full potential.”

The global corporation Microsoft also aims to improve the quality of education by decreasing the gap between those who have the opportunities and those who don’t. Microsoft launched a global initiative known as YouthSpark. It aims to provide opportunities for 300 million youth over the course of three years. In India, the project targets 80,000 youth.

The problems that India faces in its education can be also improved by bringing new technologies into the classrooms and schools. Efficiency will cut down the running costs for a massive education network. Also, there needs to be an inclusive and a quality education while utilizing the public-private model of sources.

– Noman Ashraf

Photo: Flickr

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Global Schools Foundation Set to Build Five Schools in India

Global_Schools_Foundation
Global Schools Foundation (GSF) is a leading name in global education across South East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and India. The organization, which operates 20 schools in India, South East Asia, Japan, is looking to expand its reach with five new schools in India.

GSF plans to have the five schools up and running in India within the next two years according to the organization’s Chief Operating Officer, Karmal Gupta. The schools will be built in the populous cities of Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Bangalore.

The foundation will introduce the International Baccalaureate program in each school, adding to its offerings of a Central Board of Secondary Education curriculum and the Global Montessori Plus program.

In addition, GSF has created the Global Indian International School (GIIS), an international network of award-winning institutions with 21 campuses in seven different countries. GIIS schools offer holistic personality development and learning opportunities for all students.

The GIIS institutions have been honored with several international and national awards for excellence in education. The schools have also been lauded because they provide a home for students of diverse nationalities.

According to Gupta, the foundation hopes to build the schools in collaboration with property developers in new housing and commercial estates in India who will help to manage the capital investment in assets.

In addition to it’s plans in India, GSF is in the process of completing its goal to build a $100 million dollar campus in Singapore by 2017. The campus will be the foundation’s largest since it began operations in 2002.

– Jordan Connell

Sources: The Economic Times, Global Schools Foundation 1, Global Schools Foundation 2
Photo: Flickr

Challenges Persist Within India’s Education System

Although India’s constitution guarantees all children under the age of 15 the fundamental right to free education, this goal has yet to become a tangible reality. Several major social and economic forces continue to strain the Indian education system, depriving many children—especially girls—of access to basic primary education.

India has witnessed several important improvements in its education system over the past few decades. School attendance is currently on the rise as more children between the ages of six and 14 across the country are regularly attending class than ever before. Nationwide enrollment in government-run primary schools has increased from approximately 19 million in the 1950s to about 114 million by 2001. The nation’s overall literacy rate has also seen significant improvement, growing from 52 percent in 1991 to 65 percent in 2001. Furthermore, the total number of illiterate Indians is on the decline for the very first time. Despite these improvements, the number of children who remain illiterate or completely out of school is alarming. Approximately 90 million girls remain illiterate despite the recent growth in literacy rates, and 20 percent of children in the six to 14 year age group do not attend school. In Rajasthan, India’s largest state, 45 percent of girls compared to 55 percent of boys are enrolled in primary school. This discrepancy drastically widens when the children reach secondary school, where a mere 36 percent of girls attend class.

Gender discrimination issues are largely responsible for the nation’s discrepancy in educated girls. Societal norms generally instill in girls the notion that marriage is the utmost priority, often in lieu of a substantial educational background. Financial problems contribute to this when poor families cannot afford to send all of their children to school. In most of these cases, parents choose to enroll their sons over their daughters with the belief that doing so will prove to be the most fruitful option for all parties involved: the girls will stay home and learn how to become good homemakers and wives, while the boys will eventually enter the workforce prepared to secure a well-paying job that will ensure their financial stability and allow them to take care of their aging parents.

Issues arising out of India’s social class system further hamper the nation’s ability to provide equal education for its students. Much like gender discrimination separates girls from boys and allows each group disparate opportunities, caste and class differences strip children of equal educational access. Child labor in certain regions further aggravates this problem.

Insufficient funds and a rapidly growing population are additional factors that contribute to India’s persistent education problems. Public funds simply cannot cover education costs for every child, and schools across the nation regularly experience major shortages of school supplies, teachers and essential facilities. Low retention rates are a serious issue in regard to both students and teachers, an issue that most strongly affects the nation’s rural areas. With a single upper-primary school established for every three primary schools, even those children who manage to complete their primary school education cannot necessarily advance to the next level due to a sheer lack of available space. A related contributing factor is a general lack of quality ranging from educational curricula to school management to teacher training, an obstacle that shortages of classrooms, supplies and staff further exacerbate.

Despite improvements in literacy rates and primary school enrollment over the past few decades, India’s education system remains plagued by specific and significant shortcomings that must be met with serious attention. Young girls in marginalized social and economic groups are especially disadvantaged by the current system as the children most likely to leave school permanently at an early age.

– Shenel Ozisik

Sources: Foundation for Sustainable Development, UNICEF
Photo: Flickr

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Big Cuts in Education Aid for India

The recently released 2013/14 UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report has some unfortunate statistics. The report estimates that global education is underfunded by $26 billion. In 2011, 69 million adolescents and 57 million children were out of school. Adult literacy has barely improved by increasing only 1 percent since 2000.

The report stresses that investing in quality teachers is key as around 250 million children are not being taught basic education despite having been in school for an average of four years. The biggest shock was that international funding for global education is down almost 10 percent since 2010.

India will see the most significant decrease in aid. Education aid for India fell by $278 million between 2010-2012. This is a serious problem as India relies on this aid to continue developing its education system. It is one of the top five countries with the most children out of school.

There are many statistics that show why aid is essential for India’s educational development. In the poorest state of Jharkhand there is a 42 percent absentee rate. A study showed that only 33 percent of Indian children between the ages of 14 and 15 could properly answer a two stage math problem that used multiplication and addition. Only 50 percent of children in India are learning basic education.

Positive results from aid can also be used to stress its importance. The report gives dozens of examples of how and why education is key to helping the poorest in Indian society. For example, “women in India with at least secondary education were 30 percentage points more likely to have a say over their choice of spouse than their less educated peers.” There was also a study on the use of technology in four schools in the Uttar Pradesh region. Students were able to listen to a lecture from an expert teacher via digital video recordings. Around 72 percent of the students had increased test scores after eight months.

There is no question that aid for basic education is essential to developing countries as well as the general well being of the world. The Board Chair for the Global Partnership for Education Julia Gillard said that, “education is a long-term investment – not an expense. We owe it to the children of the world – particularly the poorest and most marginalized – that both international donors and developing country governments step up and commit more funding to education.”

The news of decreased funding in India coupled with the not so spectacular statistics in the EFA report show that more needs to be done to support global education. To take a step back and decrease aid is moving the world in the wrong direction.

– Eleni Lentz-Marino

Sources: UNESCO 1, UNESCO 2, DNA India, PakTribute
Photo: Tauheedul Relief