Education reforms are making India's classrooms undergo a sea change in numbers and otherwise. Higher education appears to be on top of the agenda, with more universities and institutions of higher learning getting established under both public and private categories. All these efforts may not yield the desired results if they are not adequately staffed with quality faculty. A teacher deserves to be cared for just like any other employee of an organization.

It is encouraging to see the Indian education sector getting poised for major reforms, with something new from the HRD ministry appearing regularly in the media. The systematic changes being proposed, if implemented, are likely to bring the Indian education sector at par with the best in the world. The lead initiative is the envisaged establishment of a National Council for Higher Education and Research, an umbrella body which will subsume all the existing regulatory bodies. The hundred odd deemed universities are being reviewed to let only those that deserve to retain the tag. An impetus to research and exchange of students and teachers are also on the anvil.

Now, no reforms in higher and further education could be thought of without touching the primary and the secondary education. "India has given importance to primary education in a big way in the recent years while secondary education has been a neglected area. It has remained as a forgotten middle," said Sam Carlson, Lead Education Specialist, South Asia Human Development Sector of the World Bank. The Sarva Shiksha Abhyan and Rashtriya Madhyamika Shiksha Abhyan have, to a reasonable extent, addressed the situation. However, there is still a long way to go as we still rank low in GDP per capita spending per pupil on primary education as per UNESCO statistics. As per Ernst & Young (E&Y) and FICCI reports, India has a Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) of only 12.4% in higher education, as compared to about 60% in the US and Canada and around 21% average in BRIC countries; and quite alarmingly, the present higher educational institutions in the country can accommodate barely 7% to 8%, of the college going youth.

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