[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Shyaam Subramanian, Chief Program Officer, Teach for India and
Pradyumna Bhattacharya, Senior Manager, Strategy, Teach for India
The challenge of addressing the crisis of education inequity lies at the root of resolving several societal and humanitarian crises that plague nations around the world – be it poverty, injustice or inequality of various kinds.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
India has made massive strides in ensuring access to education for a majority of its children. As Urvashi Sahni notes in a Brookings Report, the enrolment rates have hovered over 96 percent since 2009, with even majority of girl children attending school.
With over 1.4 million schools, 98 percent of habitations with a primary school within a kilometer radius and 92 percent upper-primary schools within a 3 kilometer radius, the issue of access appears to have been solved for. However, in the same past decade when we’ve had such growth, we’ve also realised that placing a child in school doesn’t lead to quality learning. In India where high drop-outs and abysmal learning levels mean that only 42 percent children complete high school, Goal 4 of the SDGs holds a lot of promise. While there are several promising elements in the SDGs – such as acknowledgement of the importance of early childhood education and vocational education, its inclusion of the need for ‘quality’ education, especially towards sustainable development – deserves special mention. Ensuring these are delivered by stakeholders through the entire length of the education system in fact, is probably one of the most ambitious goals set by the SDGs.
The kind of leadership required to reach these ambitious goals can be built through people immersing themselves in the relevant contexts and creating lasting impact and reflecting on what such immersive experiences teach them. Such experiences anchored in the on-the-ground reality build a level of understanding and commitment that is hard to replicate otherwise. In addition, because in experiences such as teaching children, human lives are affected every day, the commitment to sustaining the energy and focus to solve the education problem also rises over time.
The other aspect of such leadership is building a sense of community and collectiveness. Complex problems such as education require buy-in and action from all stakeholders starting with the children being educated who will be the citizens of tomorrow. For the belief (that as many people in the country and around the world as possible need to be a part of this and that everyone does have a role to play) to set in, shared experiences such as Fellowship play a pivotal role. Collaborative problem solving and shared visioning are hard to practise and so experiences that promote these capabilities and attitudes will build the kind of leadership that the society needs.
According to technology research firm Gartner, a third of the jobs in the world are set to be automated by 2035. In that context, the leadership that will make a difference is the one that combines emotional intelligence with cognitive abilities. Experiences such as the Teach For India Fellowship teach our youth the value of emotional labour and the kind of skills and attitudes required to be highly emotional intelligent, and deeply committed to a cause such as educational equity.
Lastly, Fellowship like experiences pass on the responsibility and the freedom to solve problems such as educational inequity to where they truly belong – the youth and the children of the country. By bringing together highly capable and committed people and the children being educated in an intense experience of deep personal growth, we are setting the stage for true democratisation of education – of children and adults alike. That in turn would start to build a movement of leaders comprising children, communities, people who serve them, the policy makers and citizens – which is the true lasting solution to building an equitable society for the future.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]