How Business Leaders Can Strengthen the Indian Government Schools We need to determine ways by which business leaders can partner more effectively with government, educators and non-government organizations to support India's students and schools

The Indian Education market space is growing at an exceedingly great rate with a supposed market industry size of 570 crores by 2020. The segments include pre-schooling, K-12 Schools and, Higher and Vocational Education. If one considers investing in this field, market size is one amongst the top 5 industries in the country. There are various reasons for businesses to invest in the education industry. Firstly, with the enormous growth in interests of parents in the International education and schools, a whole pool of opportunities have opened up for Edupreneurs. Secondly, over the last century, the education sector in India has not shown many changes.

India Not in Pace With the International Standards

Where the world has transformed, Indian classrooms still follow old approaches and methodologies. The urgent need to transform the education system promises enormous benefits for everyone associated with it. The full support provided by the government, desperate call to introduce digitization and technology to classrooms, delayed but high ROI, and access to diversified sectors alongside, all of this comprise to show, that investing in the education sector is sure shot to provide a boon to any business leaders investing in it.

Business leaders today are engaged in education in ways that are noble, well-intended, and quite effective at alleviating the symptoms of a weak education system, but also inadequate to help strengthen the system. We need to determine ways by which business leaders can partner more effectively with government, educators and non-government organizations to support India's students and schools. Numerous studies have shown, that the economic development of a nation, depends on its Human capital. And with such alarming literacy rates, it has become very important to bring business leaders to take the main lead and contribute their bit to the society.

But How do Leaders Fit in the Arena?

There are many categories that if financed in, give a quite high return-on-investment and also significantly contribute towards the improvement of the education sector. Business leaders have a great hand in policymaking and legal decisions. They along with education superintendents can bring along new policies and decisions that support the betterment of education space, like the most popular Mid-day meal policy, which on implementation showed tremendous growth in the literacy rates of children in the rural areas. Similarly, new policies based on various areas of the education sector can influence the industry in a lot better ways.

Many non-government organizations working in the education sector, those mainly focused on improving the quality of education provided especially to rural children, can also use some partnerships with business leaders. Rural sectors show the most alarming drops in literacy rates, where students not being able to cope up with the system, tend to stop going to schools. A safe and much friendlier space needs to be created for them. Business providing the required support to these organizations will definitely ensure the same.

The need of the hour is to bring technology to classrooms. With the fast-growing advancements in digitization and the technical space, Indian education system lags behind by still following orthodox approaches. It is very crucial to give students the required technical exposure in classrooms itself. Business leaders are often adept in bringing up new innovations to work, their expertise can be leveraged to make our classrooms much advanced and techno-friendly.

Shortcomings

Meanwhile, there are many obstacles we face when it comes to businesses investing in the education sector. One of them primarily includes the mismatch between business leaders' engagement and the school educators' expectations. There are generous efforts and they are effective on their own, and it mostly includes, helping in form of cheque money and donations", says school superintendents, "but the donations and charity aren't resulting in beneficial long-lasting improvements in the system.

Educators and non-government organizations working in the education sector are happy with the kind of interaction, but most of them expect better collaborations and openness to new kinds of engagement.

Inference

Businesses have an approach to partnering with educators, but their efforts haven't been sufficient enough to take care of the opportunities in the future. It is important that the partnership between business leaders and the education sector continues to be long-term which can ensure that the education system and ultimately the country's human capital is set right. Sooner, it is anticipated that the sector would be modernized to a larger extent paving a path for a 'Better India'.