Quality of primary education far from satisfactory: CII

Bangalore, Nov 16 (UNI) Confederation of Indian Industry President R Seshasayee today said the quality of education in India provided two contrasting facets -- highly successful institutions of knowledge and extremely poor primary and secondary education.

Speaking at the 14th CII Quality Summit here, he said the level of education in most institutions, mainly in primary and secondary levels, remained poor and it was high time the country improved the standards of its education system.

''The Government's decision not to fail any student till the fifth standard is wrong. This will cause severe erosion in the quality of education. Process of elimination is very important. We have to be blunt and bring back the system,'' Mr Seshasayee said.

Quoting a recent survey conducted to study the level of intelligence among primary school children, he said the knowledge level among the children and teachers was shocking. It was found that majority of fifth standard students failed to solve a two-digit multiplication problem and could not read the first standard text book. More appalling was that 25 per cent of the teachers were also not able to solve the two-digit problem.

''Cheap labour is not the solution for the industry to grow. What we need is quality labour that can achieve world standard results,'' he added.

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