The introduction of entrepreneurship education in the Indian schooling system has been spoken over a decade but has not gathered momentum as it should have. With the new National Education Policy (NEP) articulating the need for learning life skills and entrepreneurship in schools, the central education ministry encouraging boards to bring the alignment in policy-level initiatives and various state governments taking initiatives to foster entrepreneurship in state board schools, one would have expected overwhelming response among schools and mindset shift among parents. Some derailment can definitely be attributed to challenges posed by pandemics and lockdowns over the last two years, where schooling has got the worst affected in keeping track of basic education itself. But as we, hopefully, see the woos of pandemics withering, it would call for extraordinary efforts for bringing entrepreneurship education into the mainstream conversation of the Indian school system.

While one needs a fresh perspective in building curriculums, learning pedagogy, evaluation frameworks, and deployment methodology of any such new initiative to be driven, we have to also look at overcoming systemic challenges that entrepreneurship learning would face, in order to make it work:

1. The classical drawback of the Indian education system inherited from the British colonial era is its focus on nurturing a job centric mindset. The schools, parents and society as a whole, spend all their energies on preparing children for the perceived ‘successful’ jobs/ careers, ignoring the latent talent of a child. These jobs need degrees and degrees from reputed institutes need marks/ grades as they pass out from schools. Naturally, an acute shortage of ‘good’ and ‘high paying’ jobs/ careers, throws back pressure on school education in the form of intense competition for getting marks in examinations. Earlier this was restricted only to board examinations but now trickles down to even lower grades. Entrepreneurship skilling is considered to be counterintuitive to this mindset. During my conversations with parents in PTA, I have witnessed anxiety among parents that learning entrepreneurship would ‘confuse’ their children and would lead to ‘de-focus’ them from their (or their parents’ rather) dream of getting a corporate job. While coming from corporate jobs in the field of education, I can vouch for how the new age corporate world encourages, promotes and rewards ‘entrepreneurial’ employees to take on higher responsibilities, it’s weird to see parents who would probably have a similar experience as mine in their careers fail to acknowledge this shift when it comes to their own children.   

2. The obsession with securing marks,  among parents more than children, has often led to putting children through a narrow tunnel. Enlarged school timings, tuition classes, and private coaching on subjects have packed the time available on hand as well as the mindshare of a child. A high-schooler neither has the bandwidth nor time to pursue anything other than academics. I have seen parents putting pressure on schools to halt extra-curricular activities, clubs and projects during examinations. A team of students, from one of the reputed schools,  who had built a groundbreaking innovative idea during our entrepreneurship course and had great chances to win the Global Entrepreneurship Challenge run by a US-based entity, refused to even take a part because their exams were around. 

3. Schools are being measured largely on the academic performance of students in board exams like the percentage of students passed and how many students secured more than 90%. It’s also true, in some sense, that the credit of a student’s career achievements is more attributed to the universities/colleges than their respective schools unless individuals have shown exceptional achievements in sports, culture or arts. While most of you would agree with me, that the time we spend at school contributes more to our development as human being and therefore have a long-lasting impact on what we shape into, the larger appreciation of success is attributed to ‘finishing’ skills acquired during graduation/ post-graduation. This makes schools reluctant in trying something new in holistic development because there are no tangible, measurable and commercial payoffs for schools to drive programs such as entrepreneurship education in schools. This gets driven only when the school leadership is visionary and committed. My interactions with many such school leaders and principals echoed the frustration and helplessness in driving new initiatives in the confined and rigid ecosystem of school owners, parents and society.  

4. Entrepreneurship is a less preferred career option among larger sections of society.  It is meant to be only for those who either have resources or have family-owned businesses or some track record in the family. That’s primarily on account of (a) fear of failure, (b) perceived need for large capital and, (c) perceptions about long gestations to make them viable. However, technology disruptions are helping new-age entrepreneurs in collapsing cycle times in building ‘awareness’, making solutions ‘available’ at a  click of a button and effective tools to make solutions more ‘affordable’. While there is a strong case for substantial improvements in the existing entrepreneurship and start-up ecosystem of India to encourage young minds to break psychological barriers, take a plunge and seek support in nurturing their ideas, the process has clearly begun.  Parents need to be educated to let their children try building their own careers, learn from failures and create value rather early in life, rather than never attempting.  

5. We also carry a lot of confusion and misinterpretations when it comes to Entrepreneurship learning. The larger section of society, including some of the principals and heads of schools, believe that entrepreneurs are born and one cannot be taught to be an entrepreneur. Many believe that it’s a subset of commerce and business studies and hence students inclined to take commerce faculty should be exposed to entrepreneurship skills. Some argue that, therefore, entrepreneurship learning is more relevant if taught during post-graduation as a ‘finishing’ course. On the contrary, entrepreneurship coaching should focus more on nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset among children. Research shows that early teens and tweens (8 – 18 years of age) are formative years for children in their lives as they start becoming independent and build their own beliefs, habits & thinking. Most life skills published by OECD as ‘Skills of 2030’ resonate with an entrepreneurial mindset. This generation, as they hit the workforce in their mid-20s, will be the main drivers of the Indian economy. Early introduction of such mindsets enhances the probability of students growing up by adapting to a fast-changing economy, identifying opportunities that are aligned with their true potential, building innovative ideas in any career that they choose and creating value for themselves & for society. 

As it is popularly said that ’whatever gets measured gets done, whatever gets reviewed gets done even better!’ Once entrepreneurship education would be introduced in schools for grades and marks, we would see an exodus among all stakeholders to cope up with. We would then see books being printed and coaching classes mushrooming at every corner to teach entrepreneurship, students rote learning definitions and attempting to secure 90 per cent marks. Sadly, that would be the greatest injustice that one can do to the core faculty of entrepreneurship. This, therefore, needs fundamental rethinking in curriculum, deployment, assessment and making it experiential for students to feel ‘empowered’ and think like an entrepreneur, as a way of life.