Enhancing quality in education and training across emerging economies requires greater public-private partnership, a panel of international experts concurred at The Growth Net 2014 event.
Acknowledging the need to make education an international priority, panelists from UK, Brazil, Israel, India and Singapore discussed ways for private and public sectors to complement each other for building an optimal educational system. One of the key areas of discussion was enhancing quality in public and private sector education while maintaining profitability.
S. Ramadorai, Vice Chairman, Tata Consultancy Services and Adviser to the Prime Minister of India conveyed that "There has been significant progress in primary education in India. The largest progress is in reducing the number of the out of school children. We have 1.5 million schools and 35000 higher education systems. The way forward is to bring about vocationalisaton of the education system."
Ashish Bhatt, Managing Director, Xynteo, U.K said that "For India to grow, it is a must that the real India should be educated. Aspire to Achieve should be our motto. With this, enhancing the role of women in this sector can spur the process at various levels."
Guiomar Namo de Mello, Chairman, State Board of Education of Sao Paulo, Brazil called for the need to make teacher training more effective and stressed on the fact that teaching as one of the challenging activities in this century as preparations of training teachers were getting expensive .
She advocated for public-private partnership in this particular area as one solution to face the challenge.
Joseph Klafter, President, Tel Aviv University, Israel stated "There are similar problems that India and Brazil faces when it comes to education. The major challenges that we face today are reversing brain drain and encouraging students to take up science and technology."
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Tan Tai Yong, Vice Provost, National University of Singapore gave out the facts for his country's shinning education system which drew much attention as he listed the fact that the education sector in Singapore draws the second highest allocation in the government's budget which is just next only to defence.
Moreover, he said that since the government funds most of the education of its people and prepares curriculum which is industry friendly was a plus that helped the education scenario in his nation and created youths who were more employable in the market.
What emerged from the discussion was that education as a major development goal for emerging economies. It threw light on the fact that in most countries, public education systems find themselves unable to keep up with rising demand and expectations, despite large investments.
Although, the private schools and universities were stepping in to fill this gap, providing good education, contributing to developing the much-needed skills and leveraging attractive business opportunities.