Innovative Secondary Education For Skills Enhancement

Section 2: Innovative Models of Secondary
Education In South Asia 15
Education systems in South Asia still face huge challenges
in providing high-quality education to millions of secondary
school students, many of whom live in remote rural
areas or areas frequently affected by natural disasters. In
this paper’s focus countries—India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—the
scale of the challenge far exceeds anything
faced by any other region of the world.
In India, secondary school enrollment now exceeds 100
million students. India stands far above most other countries
in the region with gross secondary enrollment rates
reaching 58 percent in 2009–10. But India, like the other
countries in the region, faces continuing problems in raising
the standard of learning in secondary schools; ensuring
a steady supply of high-quality and well-trained teachers;
and finding programs that provide secondary education
to large numbers of the urban and rural poor and other
marginalized communities such as scheduled castes and
tribes. India has recognized the need to stimulate innovation
in the sector by establishing an innovation fund that
provides incentives to state governments and public and
private education providers.
In Pakistan, there are more than 24,000 high schools, of
which nearly 60 percent are in the private sector. The
government of Pakistan made a major shift in education
policy in the mid-1990s and started involving the private
sector and civil society organizations in the financing,
management, and delivery of education services. This
move was officially recognized by the Education Sector
Reform Action Plan, 2001–2005, which stated that the
government was unable to singlehandedly manage the education
sector and thus actively encouraged public–private
partnerships as a critical innovative strategy for expansion
and effective delivery of education in Pakistan.
Bangladesh, like other South Asian countries, has seen
the number of teachers in secondary school significantly
increase over the past decade, to 210,000 in 2010. However,
only just over half of those teachers are formally
trained. In its education policy, Bangladesh is committed
to improving the management and quality of education
administration at all levels, and puts particular emphasis
on public–private partnership and the role of non-state
providers in improving access, participation, and excellence
in secondary education.
This section summarizes a selection of promising innovations
in the South Asia region that are improving education
delivery at the secondary level (see Table 2), and that
may also offer lessons for other countries struggling to
deal with similar demographic challenges.
Innovations to Improve
Existing Systems
The government of India has embarked on a massive
program of expanding and strengthening secondary education
in India, pioneered by the Rashtriya Madhyamik
Shiksha Abhiyan (“Secondary Education for All”) program.
Building on a similar program at the elementary level,
the government aims to universalize access to secondary
education by opening additional schools, appointing more
teachers, and upgrading elementary schools.
To achieve this ambitious goal, the government has
acknowledged that it will need to work in partnership
with a range of private and nongovernment providers to
promote innovative approaches to delivering high-quality
secondary education and skills development, in particular
to the poor and scheduled tribes. Many of the programs
working to improve existing systems in India, therefore,
are either run by or in close consultation with the Indian
government. Programs include innovative financing mechanisms,
re-imagined schooling models, creative use of
technology for educational administration, and teaching.
Rashtriya Madhyamik
Shiksha Abhiyan (India)
The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)
(“Secondary Education for All”) program, a country-wide
secondary education development program, is implemented
in partnership with states and union territories
and aims to make secondary education of good quality
available, accessible, and affordable to all young persons
aged 15 to 16 years, while also removing gender, socioeconomic,
and other barriers by 2017. It also aims to make
all secondary schools conform to the prescribed norms
relating to infrastructure, teaching and nonteaching staff,
and the teaching–learning environment.
15 This section draws heavily on Mohanty and Zaidi (2012).
44 Innovative Secondary Education For Skills Enhancement (ISESE)