Education system in India

On the one side Indians are considered as the proud owner of glorious education system in the past and on the other side we the same Indian are considered as one of the nations with poorest education structure in the world -with millions of illiterates in the country- even poorer than the countries those stands nowhere near us in the development in the last few years. On the other hand various other countries are amazed by the quality of the human resources that the Indian education system has produced.

There was a time when India's education system was considered as the best in the world and followed and adored by renowned scholars from every part of the world. But with the time this glorious system lost its luster and a time came when it hit its lowest ebb. There may be varied reasons behind this continued and long decline in the quality of education system in India. One of the prominent reasons was the social structure of the Indian society. Like Women and people of lower castes were not considered good enough to be educated thus denied the right to educate themselves and this continued for centuries altogether till eighteenth century. It was only in the middle of the eighteenth century with the spread of Jainism, Buddhism, Bhakti and Sufi movements did some liberating effects on the condition of the women and lower caste people known as sudra started to appears.

But in the real sense it was the English language and the reformation movements of the 19th century that had the most liberating effect in pre-independent India. Although there was no real change in the education system or level of education in the India but certainly there started a thought process to check this menace of illiteracy. So it is the Britishers that can be credited for bringing a revolution in the Indian education system.

Education scenario in the post independence India

According to the constitution of Indian Republic Education falls under the control of both the central government and the states, with some responsibilities lying with the centre and the state having autonomy for other.At the time of independence the Government of India was dealing with so many critical issues like union of states to mother land, peace in the troubled area, poverty and increasing population and shattered economic condition. In all this chaos government of India give priority to the development of the education as this was seen as one of the main cause of the some other evils of the society. Main impediment in this was considered to be indiscrimination in the society on the basis of caste and creed. So to remove this evil strict laws were made and implemented. Special emphasis was started to be given to girl children education. So many schemes were started so that there will not be any discrimination as far as imparting education to the girl child is concerned.

With the 86th constitutional amendment Indian Government has made elementary education a fundamental right for the children of the age group- 6 to 14.

According to the 2001 census, the total literacy rate in India is 65.38%. The female literacy rate is only 54.16%. The gap between rural and urban literacy rate is also very significant in India. This is evident from the fact that only 59% of rural population is literate as against 80% (approx) urban population according to the 2001 census.

Present Scenario of Education in India

Education is being given utmost priority by both the state and Centre government of the country in the present past. Every effort is being done to organize the education system in India to tackle all ready grown up illiteracy rate of the Indian population for this the central government of India formulated the National Policy in Education (NPE) in 1986 and also re-enforced the Programme of Action (POA) in 1986. The central government initiated several measures like setting up of Navodaya Vidyalaya selective schools in every district, advances in female education, inter-disciplinary research and establishment of open universities. India's NPE also contains the National System of Education, which ensures some uniformity while taking into account regional education needs. The NPE also stresses on higher spending on education, envisaging a budget of more than 6% of the overall national budget.