India's education system needs to be oriented towards skill development to address the issue of growing unemployment, says eminent scientist G Madhavan Nair.
The former Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation also said the school syllabi is overloaded putting pressure on students.
Assessment of Internal tests in schools is not proper, Nair said, noting that invariably every student gets full marks (20/20).
"There was a time when we used to depend more on descriptive type of answers, than on objective ones. Objective tests actually do not bring out the skills, how far the student has understood the subject...whether he can express properly. We may have to convert at least 50 per cent of the questions into descriptive mode," he said.
General complaint is that most of the school syllabi is "overloaded" resulting in students always being under pressure. "You have to reduce the burden."
According to him, the unemployment problem is aggravated mainly because the educational programme is not oriented towards skill development. "How to apply knowledge for solving practical problems is a must. People should get oriented towards that."
"Today, graduation level students are doing what can be done by a 12th standard student. For computer related tasks, what is needed is some programming skills and knowledge of English, which is very much available with 12th standard students."
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