The Opportunity to upskill and reskill people in India

India is busy constructing roads, tech campuses, airports and factories and growing by 6% a year  - but its education system leaves  a lot to be desired / says the Economist 

500m of its people are under 20— there is India’s brainy elite getting quals and the best education but for most Indians they are jobless and do not have the basic language literacy and numeracy skills! 

This could bring India’s economic development to a premature stop.

Why? 

What are some of the root causes of this lack of education ?

It’s the teachers - says the Economist

Teachers are poorly trained and badly supervised: 

• a survey of rural schools found a quarter of staff were absent. 
• Officials sometimes hand teachers unrelated duties, from administering elections to policing social-distancing rules during the pandemic.

Why is Vietnam’s kids doing so well ? It’s the teachers -  they are better prepared, more experienced and more likely to be held accountable if their pupils flunk.

The good news is that there has been a splurge on infrastructure. A decade ago only a third of government schools had handwashing facilities and only about half had electricity; now around 90% have both. 

Since 2014 India has opened nearly 400 universities. Enrolment in higher education has risen by a fifth.

BSI is proud to help solve this wicked problem by being a part of a collaboration between Australian and Indian educational institutions! 

BYJU is in Pain 

In the meantime , India’s biggest ed-tech firm has been slashed from 22b -6 b as a result of non compliance and a $1.2b debt around its neck ! 

Byju’s, who is trying to fix this problem of educating Year K-12s - and says it educates over 150m people worldwide . Deloitte has resigned  for non compliance -  resulting in many of its backers directors to resign Prosus, Peak XV Partners and ! 

Investors in BYJU include Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, Prosus and Tencent.