ENROLMENT AND MANPOWER
 

5.01 A National Enrolment Policy. One of the major programmes in national reconstruction is the development of our human resources, and in this there can be no limit to the education to be provided. But in any given society and at a given time, the decisions regarding the type, quantity and quality of educational facilities depend partly upon the resources available and partly upon the social and political philosophy of the people. Poor and traditional societies are unable to develop even a programme of universal primary education. But rich and industrialized societies provide universal secondary education and expanding and broad-based programmes of higher and adult education. Feudal and aristocratic societies emphasize education for a few. But democratic and socialistic societies emphasize mass education and equalization of educational opportunities. The principal problem to be faced in the development of human resources, therefore, is pre- cisely this: How can available resources be best deployed to secure the most beneficial form of educational development? How much educa- tion, of what type or level of quality, should society strive to provide and for whom?

5.02 India has committed herself to the creation of a democratic and socialistic pattern of society. The fundamental principles that should guide the provision of facilities at the different stages and sectors of education, therefore, may be stated as follows:

- to provide effective general education of not less than seven years' duration to every child, on a free and compulso- ry basis, and to expand lower secondary education on as large a scale as possible;

- to provide higher secondary and university education to those who are willing and qualified to receive such education, consistent with the demands for trained manpower and the need to maintain essential standards; and to provide adequate financial assistance to those who are economically handicapped;

- to emphasize the development of professional, technical and vocational education and to prepare skilled personnel needed for the development of agriculture and industry;

- to identify talent and to help it grow to its full potential;

- to liquidate mass illiteracy and to provide an adequate programme of adult and continuing education; and

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- to strive continuously to equalize educational opportunities, beginning with the elimination of at least some of the more glaring inequalities.

In this chapter, we shall briefly discuss some of the major implications of these policies.

ENROLMENT POLICIES AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF EDUCATION

5.03 Increasing the Educational Level of Citizens. In the next two decades the highest priority must be given to programmes aimed at raising the educational level of the average citizen. Such programmes are essential on grounds of social justice, for making democracy viable and for improving the productivity of the average worker in agriculture and industry. The most crucial of these programmes is to provide, as directed by Article 45 of the Constitution, free and compulsory education of good quality to all children up to the age of 14 years. In view of the immense human and physical resources needed, however, the implementation of this programme will have to be phased over a period of time. This can be done

- by providing five years of effective education to all children by 1975-76 and seven years of such education by 1985-86;

- by making part-time education for about one year compulsory for all children in the age-group, 11-14 who have not completed the lower primary stage and are not attending schools. The aim will be to make these children functionally literate and stop all further additions to the ranks of adult non-literates; and

- by efforts to liquidate adult illiteracy.

The second and the third programmes are transitional. But the first needs great emphasis as the only permanent solution of the problem. We discuss the details of these programmes elsewhere.*39

5.04 Provision of Secondary and Higher Education. Several complex problems relating to the amount, type and quality of education to be provided arise in respect of secondary and higher education. It is not easy to determine the size of total enrollments in the absence of clear and precise targets about overall expansion rates. Moreover, as education at these stages has to be diversified into a large number of courses to meet varied individual aptitudes as well as social requirements for trained manpower it becomes even more difficult to decide the precise extent of provisions for each course. Unfortunate- ly, an understanding of these problems is still limited. Enrolment policy must,

39*Chapters VII and XVII.

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5.05 Public Demand for Secondary and Higher Education. During recent years, the demand for secondary and higher education has increased enormously. There are several reasons for this, such as:

- the traditional social status attached to a university degree;

- the growing hunger for education among the urban people and the middle classes who have realized that the best, and probably the only worthwhile legacy they can leave to their children, is to give them good education;

- the awakening among the rural people and the lower classes who are now seeking social advancement-just as the urban and middle classes did during the last hundred years-through education and government service;

- the disappearance of the old values' attached to primary education which makes secondary education the 'minimum' and higher education the 'optimum' qualification for any worth- while job;

-the absence of adequate employment opportunities for young persons so that many of them are forced to go in for secondary or university education simply because they have nothing else to do;

-the increasing provision which is being made by State Governments for free secondary education and for the liberal grant of free studentships, stipends and scholarships at the university stage; and

-a rapid multiplication of educational institutions at this level which has made them easily accessible to young persons in thousands of small and out-of-the-way places.

5.06 This situation could have been met in two ways, either by expanding facilities in secondary and higher education strictly on the basis of available real resources in terms of teachers and materials and adopting a policy of selective admissions to bridge the gap between the public demand for such education and the facilities actually provided, or by adopting a policy of open-door access and providing all the resources needed to create the required facilities and to maintain them at the optimum level of efficiency. But as it was neither possible to resist the demand nor to raise all the needed resources, a compromise approach was attempted: the access to all secondary education was

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provided on an open-door basis; and in higher education, both the selective and open-door policies were operated upon simultaneously in different sectors.

5.07 This policy has had several undesirable consequences. As overall resources were limited and were absorbed in programmes of expansion of general education, it became impossible to pay adequate attention to programmes of qualitative improvement or vocationaliza- tion. Most of this expansion has also been non-egalitarian since secondary schools and colleges enrolled students who had access to them and who could afford the expenditure involved, although their preparation and motivation were often inadequate. On the other hand, they failed to enrol a large proportion of talented students who were prevented from studying further by social or economic handicaps. The benefits of expansion thus went largely to the privileged rather than to the under-privileged classes. Moreover, there grew up an imbalance between the development of general and vocational education, the former far exceeding demand and the latter generally falling much below it. Consequently, the output of matriculates and of graduates in arts and commerce was in excess of demand and created problems of educated unemployment while trained personnel for the development of agriculture, industry or research remained in short supply.

5.08 During the next two decades, the demand for secondary and higher education will increase still further as primary education be- comes universal and the general economic conditions improve. Under these circumstances, a continuation of the earlier enrolment policies will merely accentuate these evils. It is, therefore, necessary to adopt some definite policy of 'selective admissions' so as to relate enrolments to facilities available and to maintain standards.

5.09 The Pool of Ability. Providing secondary and higher education to all the potentially able students generally sets up a very high target which even affluent societies find it difficult to achieve. It will be obviously beyond our reach, at least in the immediate future, in view of the limited resources available. This should, however, be the goal towards which we should continually move. In the transitional period, immediate effect should be given to one important implication of this policy, viz., to ensure that all gifted students (at least the top 515 per cent of all students), who complete primary or secondary education are enabled to study further in institutions of secondary (or higher) education. For this purpose, it will be necessary to provide a large number of scholarships on the lines to be discussed later.*40

40 *See Chapter VI.

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5.10 Capacity to Provide Facilities. In planning enrolment facilities, it is essential to take into consideration the real resources available and the capacity of the society to create the educational facilities needed or in demand. There are internal constraints in every educational system which limit expansion of facilities, especially in secondary and higher education. These are the availability of competent teachers, of physical plant and of finance. Even in affluent societies, these built-in constraints make it almost impossible to provide all those facilities, quantitatively and qualitatively, which would be required on the basis of public demand or for the development of the total pool of ability. This is all the more so in a developing economy like our own. In trying to meet the pressures of the public demand, these constraints are often overcome by diluting standards. There are many instances where institutions have been started without the necessary teachers being available, without the needed equipment and without adequate financial allocations. This all too common practice must be resisted in the larger interests of the country. If a society does not have the resources to meet the entire public demand for secondary and higher education, that is really unfortunate; but it would be tragic if this limitation was ignored and educational standards were thrown in jeopardy.

5.11 Manpower Needs. We would also like to stress the need to pay due attention to the relationship between enrolment and manpower requirements. If India is to achieve its targets of economic growth it must have an adequate supply of educated specialists for each cate- gory of job to be performed. Conversely, if there is an excess of trained people in any category, it implies an imprudent use of scarce resources and also creates difficult problems of unemployment of the educated. Even from the point of view of the individual, some matching of educational patterns and job opportunities is vital. Nothing is more frustrating than to be under-qualified or over- qualified for a job, or to be unemployed because there is no call for one's qualifications. We believe, therefore, that estimates of future manpower needs form a useful basis for regulating enrolment patterns above the primary level.

5.12 This broad recommendation of relating the provision of educational facilities in secondary and higher education to estimated manpower needs has to be understood in the light of some general reservations. Manpower forecasting is not a precise operation because of the large number of imponderables involved. It is, therefore, necessary to make a continuous effort to improve the collection of necessary data and the techniques of forecasting. This should

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be done regularly by the Central and State Governments. As manpower forecasts are ordinarily expressed in quantitative terms, the expansion of educational facilities tends to receive undue emphasis in translating them into enrolment terms. It is, therefore, essential to emphasize the quality of manpower produced because economic growth can be hindered rather' than accelerated if appropriate standards are not maintained. Moreover, manpower needs cannot be the only criterion for regulating the provision of facilities. Before final decisions are taken, its indications will have to be checked with the conclusions drawn from calculations based on the other criteria. However, even after making due allowance for these limitations, estimated manpower needs provide four broad indications in terms of magnitudes, e.g., the total enrolments needed in secondary and higher education; enrolments needed in different types of courses; shortages and surpluses in the manpower situation; and priorities involved.

5.13 A Strategy of Development. It will be seen from the foregoing discussion that the minimum level of expansion is provided. by the capacity to expand facilities in terms of real resources and that the public demand for secondary and higher education as well as the need to develop the available pool of talent to the fullest extent possible generally set high targets which are difficult to realize in the immediate future. The gap between these high and low targets can be bridged by considerations which emerge from manpower needs and equalization of educational opportunities. These will indicate the priorities to be adopted, the different courses of study to be de- veloped, the extent to which facilities should be provided in the different courses and the manner in which enrolments in them could be made to include at least the best students in the community.

A FORECAST OF MANPOWER NEEDS

5.14 The ISI-LSE Estimates. We have recommended that educational facilities at the post-primary stage should be broadly related to manpower needs. Our task now is to forecast these needs and study their educational implications. In this, we have been fortunate in having two estimates prepared for us: one, a series of elaborate investigations carried out by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research; and the other, a part of a longer study undertaken by the Planning Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, and the Unit for Economic and Statistical Studies on Higher Education,

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London School of Economics, in collaboration with the Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission. In broad orders of magnitude, the results of the two estimates are similar; and the differences between them can generally be explained by the different assumptions used. For the main presentation of this chapter, we adopt the ISI-LSE estimates as they are more detailed, offer estimates up to 1986 and assume a higher target of economic growth. We believe that the risk involved in over-estimation is comparatively less than in under-estimation and that it is less harmful to have some surplus trained personnel on hand for some time rather than hold up the progress of agriculture or industry for lack of such personnel. At any rate, precise figures are less important than broad directions of policy. On this, both estimates largely agree.