xunil

A study by Rand corporation. Worth reading !

A Comparison of the Education Systems in India and China
By: Charles A. Goldman, Krishna B. Kumar, Ying Liu

China and India have faced similar conditions and challenges in education during their rapid industrial and social transformation. The two countries started building their national education systems under comparable conditions in the late 1940s. However, different policies, strategies, and historical circumstances have led them through different routes. China has outperformed India in primary and secondary education along a broad spectrum of access, quality, and delivery indicators. India, on the other hand, enjoys a competitive edge over China in higher education. Recently, India has begun catching up with China in K-12 education, while China has already overtaken India in terms of the college enrollment and number of graduates. The respective successes and challenges of the Chinese and Indian education systems offer valuable lessons for both countries and for the rest of the developing world. The authors identify issues that deserve further attention of researchers and policymakers.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_...RAND_OP218.pdf

pravin

I don't know about Chinese Education but Indian Education definitely got an edge over many educational systems.We learn around two or three languages and that report is a whole load of crap

antimony

I am not so sure off that. In one of the key parameters identified in the report, "Access", we are woefully lacking. To be honest, apart from the cities and towns and some villages, we really have a very low level of access too educational systems.
I also dispute the literacy figures, most of them are cooked anyway. Some of the "literates" are barely capable of writing their names

pravin

About the 'access' thing it is quite uneven and varies from state to state,We can say the south has more access than the north i think.We don't the real 'access' in China as it is said that there is huge disparity between coastal and interior .Other than that the other part of article is crap

Super Dude

toooo mcuh India VS china. Why cant it be France VS england

Blademaster

This is the South Asia forum, right? So why are you *****ing about a topic that belongs in the South Asia forum?

Go play in the European forum.

antimony

Regardless of this "variance" in access, the overall level of educational reach is still extremely poor, especially compared with the West and the Far East. Please also note the high incidence of child labour. The populations that does have access to quality education is actually very small.

By the way, variance in education quality among different states is not a good thing.

China's basic education system seems far more mature. I especially likes the concept of bonuses for teachers when students enroll from other catchment areas.

Pravin,

Please feel free to point out specific reasons as to why you think the report is worthless

bolo121

I remember how much i was shocked when i went to the UK for my masters.
I was so used to mugging and spewing results on to paper in the exam, that actual critical independent thought was extremely difficult to get used to.
I remember what one of my lecturers said, "I know what the textbook says, what i want to know is what you think". It took me a whole semester to adapt.
In that respect Indian school and higher education is badly flawed, critical thinking is discouraged and rote learning emphasised.

Oneday

One could argue that education systems in both countries are pretty rubbish, otherwise why they have been developing country with so much poverty for so long?

One of the very least target of the education system: ensure people all around the country could communicate effortlessly, still not 100% fulfilled. I'm a Chinese, I don't know much about education system of India but I guess so.

Learn three language doesn’t necessarily means advantage, you may have to do that since maybe you couldn't enforce the usage of a single official language, and in fact only English is useful in international business. I remember there was an argument that said have to learn foreign language will affect the amount of energy that a student can put into his major, thus affect the ultimate achievement he/she can get, especially in engineering fields because students good in math tends to bad in language/literature.

pravin

Antimony
I think the access to education may be right .the drop out rates are exaggerated

pravin

Learning more languages is the thing that gave us the edge in IT

pravin

that is an understatement it may be the otherway round

antimony

The Indian boards try to inculcate theoretical rigour, which is ok for the lower levels. However they carry that approach into the higher levels too, and therefore really mess things up.
Some boards like ICSE try to inculcate this free thinking approach into their pedagogy. Interestingly, they are openly reviled by some of the state/ vernacular boards.

Oneday

Same for Chinese. Chinese students are good in reciting and taking the exams and never think for themselves, and after left school (after taking the exam to be exact), they forgot what they had learned.

bolo121

No its not. I know so many extremely talented people, they can speak telegu, tamil and kannada but in english they are hopeless. Why? Because their schooling was in vernacular language and english was only one subject.
If only the politicians would have been pragmatic and enforced universal english language education, many more of my countrymen would have come up out of poverty.