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Winston Mok

The resignation of Indian education minister Dharmendra Pradhan last month, yielding to pressure from the “cockroach” youth protests, was an example of democracy in action.
Outraged over the leaking of the medical school entrance exam question paper, protesters, led by a group calling itself the Cockroach Janata Party, demanded accountability and reforms. At least 20 young people had taken their own lives after a retest for the medical entrance exam was announced, underlining how such exams have become life-or-death affairs, providing many young people with a rare chance of economic security in India’s hypercompetitive job market.
In both India and China, education is often a key pathway to social mobility. In social systems with perceived inequalities, fair admissions to elite higher education institutions are a safety valve for social discontent. Undermining that valve led to predictable social consequences in India.
The hard part comes now. Fixing India’s education system is an intractable challenge. It is also foundational to realising the potential of a country with a vast youth population. Unlike China’s ageing population and declining workforce, India has a growing working-age population. That demographic difference, however, does not automatically give India an economic edge over China. A young population can be an asset or a liability, depending on whether young people are well trained and can get decent jobs.
In the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests for 15-year-olds in mathematics, science and reading, Singapore and East Asian economies have consistently ranked at the top. East Asian economic successes have been built on human capital development.
In the 2022 Pisa test results, Singapore, which has often been the top performer, led the world again. In 2018, when China’s regions of Shanghai, Beijing, Zhejiang and Jiangsu were assessed, they narrowly beat Singapore.


India took part in Pisa only once, in 2009, and was ranked at the bottom – 72nd to 74th (depending on the subjects and which Indian states participated). It dropped out of the Pisa assessments subsequently. But burying one’s head in the sand is not the answer. How can India improve its performance without international benchmarking?
Leading Pisa performers are often small jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Mainland China’s sterling Pisa performance did not reflect the country as a whole but the regions with the best schools. Unlike China with one unified national language, India has no national language but 22 official languages. While 57 per cent of Indians can speak Hindi, it is the mother tongue of only 44 per cent of the population.
With the notable successes of Indian Institute of Technology graduates in American commerce and industry, it is often assumed that many Indians speak fluent English. In fact, only about 10 per cent of the Indian population do. EF’s ranking of English skills in non-English-speaking countries put India at 74th place versus the Philippines’ 28th and Hong Kong’s 39th.
What are India’s options? It could follow Singapore and adopt English as the national working language. But the political, cultural and implementation hurdles may be too high.
A lack of good teachers and diverse local languages are classic impediments to upgrading K-12 education. But these challenges are no longer insurmountable in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The best science and maths teachers in Shanghai or Singapore could deliver their lessons in local Indian languages – in the form of a contextualised avatar.
The same lessons could be delivered multiple times in English, Hindi and local languages – with the necessary subtitles – as appropriate. Through such multilingual delivery of reinforced learning, students can upgrade their skills in English and Hindi at the same time as they learn science and maths.

The bottlenecks to improving K-12 education include training good teachers and deploying them to less-developed regions. This takes years, with the accumulated impact unfolding over decades. In the AI era, the implementation timeline can be compressed.
Information technology (IT) infrastructure can be adapted for different regions. In well-resourced schools in Delhi, access could be on-demand and interactive, tailored to the needs of individual students. In rural schools, content could primarily be delivered through large screens in classrooms, perhaps repeated after school in English and Hindi for motivated students. Over time, IT labs can be added if budgets allow.
India should apply its strengths in IT to address a key weakness. In deploying AI-enabled K-12 education across different states, it could experiment with content from different countries, and compare the outcomes with domestic curricula.
India must also marshal the courage to rejoin the next round of Pisa tests. Much more important than “saving face”, the prospects of India’s future generations are at stake. Like all good parents, the Indian government should focus on helping students improve over time, rather than on competing with others.


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How India’s government can be a good parent to its young people

Indian Youth Congress party workers hold placards featuring India’s education minister Dharmendra Pradhan during a protest over the alleged national medical school entrance exam irregularities, in Mumbai on June 2. In July, Pradhan announced his resignation after countrywide protests. Photo: AFP

A girl uses a microscope during an open-air class outside a house with its walls converted into blackboards following the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 outbreak, in a village in India’s eastern state of West Bengal, on September 13, 2021. Photo: Reuters 

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Protesters in Mumbai, India, celebrate after the country’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, resigned following nationwide protests over irregularities in the conduct of the national medical school admission exams, on July 26. Photo: AP 

India’s ‘cockroach’ protests reveal a deeper social mobility crisis

A child holds a placard during a gathering in solidarity with the Cockroach Janta Party to celebrate the resignation of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, in Mumbai on July 26. Photo: AFP

A man holds a placard during a victory gathering organised by the All India Students’ Association in Bengaluru on July 26, a day after the resignation of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged examination irregularities. Photo: AFP

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While recent protests were triggered by irregularities in the national medical entrance exam, the quality of education more broadly warrants attention


While recent protests were triggered by irregularities in the national medical entrance exam, the quality of education more broadly warrants attention.


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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

How India’s government can be a good parent to its young people

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While recent protests were triggered by irregularities in the national medical entrance exam, the quality of education more broadly warrants attention

While recent protests were triggered by irregularities in the national medical entrance exam, the quality of education more broadly warrants attention