Education Scenario in India

Education is an important indicator of social development. It is increasingly becoming the primary determinant of overall development in the emerging knowledge economy. India is a meeting point for students, teachers, and all those who are concerned. India has a large number of schools, colleges and universities across the whole country. There are important educational institutes like IITs, IIMs, JNU, DU and other MBA colleges. There are many institutions that also offer distance-learning courses. In fact, India is a home for education. There are over 300 universities and 45,000 colleges of various types in the country. Three Indian universities were listed in the Times Higher Education of the world’s top 200 universities: Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2005 and 2006. Although, no Indian university made to the top 300 of the Chinese conducted (Academic Ranking of World Universities) in 2006.

Education in India has a history stretching back to the ancient urban centres of learning at Taxila and Nalanda. Western education became ingrained into Indian society with the establishment of the British raj. Education in the Republic of India falls under the control of both the central government and the states, with some responsibilities lying with the centre and the state having autonomy for others. The various articles of the Indian constitution provide for education as a fundamental right. Most universities in India are private establishments.

India has made huge progress in terms of increasing primary education attendance rate and expanding literacy to approximately two thirds of the population. However, education is still far behind developing countries such as China or Thailand. Most children never attend secondary schools. An optimistic estimate is that only one in five job-seekers in India have ever had any sort of vocational training.

K-12 Education in India and International Baccalaureate

Various researches in education show that pre-schools and K-12 segment contribute approximately 50% of the education industry. There are many demand drivers that contribute positively to the segment such as:

• Increasing competition in admission and selection process due to demand supply gap.
• Growing middle class with the ability to afford higher fees.
• Higher portion of younger age population.
• Selection for higher education is mostly linked to performance in K-12.
• Significant gap in the demand and supply of schools with quality education.

There are 85 IB World Schools in India offering one or more of the three IB programmes. 31 schools offer the Primary Years Programme, 8 schools offer the Middle Years Programme and 77 schools offer the Diploma Programme. The first school was authorized in 1976.

Radiant Group Enters the Education Sector

After having successful presence in different industry verticals such as manufacturing, construction, automotive and marine; Radiant Group is now on its way to step into the education sector with its vision to provide quality education with world class infrastructure in its first project in Gurgaon.