Japanese takeaway

Japan and India are getting serious. Last week, the cosiness and mutual rediscovery yielded not only those splendid, soft focus shots of Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi witnessing the Ganga aarti at Varanasi’s Dashashwamedh Ghat together, but also a deal that was front-page news all over the world. Japan will provide $15 billion in soft loans with 0.5 per cent interest to build India’s first bullet train. After its success with financing the Delhi metro, this brings Japan to the centrestage of infrastructure development all over India.

There is a lot to learn from Japan. But for India, one compelling lesson that Japan offers is its fierce focus on education. This is the backstory to Japan’s emergence as a technological powerhouse. Japan did not get to the bullet train without long effort. There were decades of hard work that went into firming up the basics.

As anyone with a nodding acquaintance of Japanese history knows, the state identified mass education as a critical input in the modernisation process. It started with the introduction of universal education in 1872, just four years after the Meiji Restoration took power away from the warlords.

It is this sustained and single-minded focus on education which has given Japan one of the world’s top labour forces. This is the basis of the country’s pre-eminence in so many technological fields, from consumer electronics to the bullet train.

India has similar aspirations. But to fulfil them, some harsh truths must be faced. India has some of the best institutions of higher learning. But as far as the base — school education — is concerned, the score is pathetic, except for those who can afford good private schools.

The latest United Nations Human Development Report indicates that in recent years, India has not seen much growth in a key educational indicator — the “mean years of schooling”, which is the average number of years of education received in a lifetime by people aged 25 years and older. India’s score has been stagnating at 5.4 since 2010. In stark contrast, Japan has mean years of schooling score of 11.5.

It is not that there has not been any progress in India. By 2011, primary education attendance rate and literacy expanded to approximately three-quarters of the population in the 7-10 age group. Under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act of 2009, education was made free for children from the age of six to 14, or up to Class 8. Child labour has been declared illegal.

But the fact is that there is insufficient political will to ensure that all this is enforced. More than 95 per cent of India’s children attend primary school. But just 44 per cent of 16 year olds complete Class 10. This is a huge loss for a nation that will soon have the largest and youngest workforce in the world, as a recent World Bank report has pointed out.

Once upon a time, Japan struggled with similar issues. But it recognised very early the strategic role quality basic education plays in industrialisation and economic growth. The leaders of the Meiji Restoration set up an education ministry in 1871, a few months before they introduced universal education.

Japan was not a rich country at that time. Nor did it have sufficient infrastructure. But it went ahead and established thousands of schools anyway in new buildings where there was no option, but much of the time in abandoned warehouses or Buddhist temples or wherever else some space could be found in a country as crowded as India. To teach in these schools, Japan called around 5,000 teachers from abroad. And from the beginning, the government paid a lot of attention to teachers’ training.

Compulsory education did face a lot of public resistance in early years. In Japan as elsewhere, poor families were keener to send their children to work rather than to school. But school attendance was one thing that was strictly enforced. There were inspectors going from lane to lane, looking for children who should be in school but were not.

By 1900, within less than 30 years, elementary school enrolment climbed from 30 to above 90 per cent. Still, the government faced protests, now largely against school fees. So, Japan abolished tuition fees in 1900.

The school education system remained strong and an area of focus right through the turbulent years leading to the Second World War and defeat. The system was tightened with a new law after the war. Now there were six years of elementary school, three years of junior high school and three years of high school, all compulsory. This would be followed by two or four years of university education for those who are inclined and able.

This system, still in place, played a central part in the country’s recovery and rapid economic growth in the post-war decades.

A highly educated workforce that can produce a bullet train does not spring up overnight.

What can we learn from the Japanese experience in education?

First, you don’t have to be rich to accord top priority to education. Second, passing a law does not automatically lead to compulsory schooling. It has to be backed by intense political will to enforce that law. Third, the government has to focus on upgrading the skills of its teachers and then to pay them well. Teacher training is at the core of Japan’s education system. And schoolteachers are paid at least as much as government officials with the same number of years in service.

It is vitally urgent to strengthen teacher training in India. Many times, children drop out because school is not a place where they learn much. Far too many teachers do not have the basic language or math skills to teach even primary classes. This cannot be the way to develop an educated workforce.

Just increasing salaries without stepping up training or accountability will not produce results. With teachers poorly trained, poorly paid and unmotivated, far too many Indian children go to school mainly for the free mid-day meal. But to stay motivated, a student must also learn something worthwhile.

It took Japan more than 90 years from the introduction of universal education to the start of the bullet train. In this Information Age, India can telescope that into far fewer years. But it cannot leapfrog basic education. No developed country has been able to do that.

The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com
 

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