STEM Education in India — The current scenario
In India, STEM education can prepare skilled task force capable of adopting scientific and technological innovations. However, the current education system faces a lot of challenges in implementing STEM and creating skills to meet demands.
Roadblocks for STEM Education in India
There are four major factors which act like hurdles on the way of STEM implementation:
- Lack of clear guidelines on how to implement STEM
- While STEM is technology based, most schools of India, especially from rural regions, do not use technology
- Lack of infrastructure support
- Crisis of qualified STEM teachers
STEM Education in schools
A child in India usually starts attending school at the age of 3–4. Academic system is uniform across all the states — it is 10+2 system or higher secondary. State boards/councils and the national boards like CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) or Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) develop the curricula. While all curricula may be not same, they all intend to provide the basic knowledge of science and mathematics to students till 10th grade. Unfortunately, there’s no space for STEM education in curricula.
Financial backwardness prevents families from sending their children to schools. It means most of the students do not even receive basic education. If this was not enough, families do not prefer to send girls for primary education. Under these conditions it is clearly very difficult to keep pace with the scientific and technological innovations.
Initiatives in the field of STEM
NITI Ayog is now providing opportunities to schools to organise Atal Tinkering Labs within premises and encourage students to get engaged in STEM subjects. Under this program, the government also provides financial help to schools to do the needful. Qualified vendors like StemBridge Labs organises these labs and also provides necessary equipment for hands-on training. In fact, they also pay attention to practical training of teachers. With these initiatives, India aims to create a highly skilled taskforce of innovators who can lead the path to innovation.
Originally published at stembridgelabs.com on August 16, 2018.