High Need for India to Have Better Educational Outcomes to Beat China

India is seen to be a changing country where high-quality education is given most importance for its future prosperity. If compared to China, actually both the countries India and China started their own education systems simultaneously in 1940s. But no one can deny that different educational outcomes have been observed due to the variation in the policies and circumstances of both the countries. Undoubtedly China has greater literacy rate than India and that it has a lot more number of world class institutions in higher education with more research outputs.

The Cultural Revolution, in 1966-76, in China was the major impact where China had more accessibility to primary education which was majorly through democratizing the schools to people reducing thereby the mass illiteracy. However, on the other hand India anyway keep its focus on the higher education system since always and did not pay attention to the primary education system. Later in 1986, India realized the value of the primary education and then it left behind China and other Asian countries in educational development. It is a known fact that China attained the 100% Gross Enrollment Rate in 1985 whereby India only reached that level in 2000. Talking about secondary education, India and China both started at same rates together in the year 1985 where 40% of their people were enrolled in secondary schools. But since China had a stronger primary education base, it grew much faster than India as a result of which China attained 99% of enrollment in 2017 whereby India stood at 79%. As far as access to education is concerned, India is close to China but when it comes to literacy level, it is far behind. China has such government educational strategies that make them come in the line of many world university rankings. There have been initiatives taken by China of giving high scholarships to students of other countries leading to higher rate of international student’s enrollment as well. No doubt that both India and China are more tertiary degree holders due to their large population size over other countries but when it comes to the percentage of the population holding tertiary degrees, only about 10 per cent and 8 per cent of the population possess university degrees in China and India, respectively. India definitely needs to focus mainly on improving its educational outcomes, in order to reduce the gap between India and China education. However Massification educational drive has raised India’s educational enrollment number but India still needs a lot of change to come in front in global recognition. India must focus on building the foundation skills that every student needs in schools because it is true that poor foundation skills have bad effect on our educational system.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/view-india-needs-to-improve-its-educational-outcomes-to-catch-up-with-china/articleshow/67537794.cms