need for family life education in india
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An HSBC study on the hopes and expectation of parents on their children’s education brings out very some interesting insights on how different cultures value learning. The study which covers more than a dozen countries including India shows that though parent’s aspirations differ not only across both developing and developed counties and also within them there are some still areas where their preference overlap substantially.
According to the study the most important goal that Indian parents have for their children is that they build successful careers in their adult life. This is the ultimate goal for 51% of the Indian parents surveyed. Only Mexican parents are ahead of India in rating a successful career of the children as the ultimate goal with 52% vouching for it.
Asked to ranked three most important goals that they wanted their child to achieve as an adult 51% of the Indian parents choose successful careers, while 49% choose happiness in life, 33% identified a healthy life style, 22% wanted them to earn enough for a comfortable life and 17% rated fulfilling their children’s potential as the ultimate goal.
However, parents in most developed countries did not give much weightage to successful careers. Only one fifth of the parents in the United States regards successful careers as an ultimate goal. The share of parents supporting such a goal is even lower in United Kingdom and Australia (17% each). Asian nations like China, Taiwan and Hong Kong also don’t rate successful careers as too important with the share of parents supporting it as an ultimate goal being 15%, 17% and 19% respectively.
What is even more interesting is the substantial differences of opinion between Indian and other parents on the goals they have set for their children. Being happy in life was the ultimate goal of parents in more than a dozen countries ranging from 56% in Indonesia, 58% in Hong Kong, 60% in UAE to 77% in UK, 78% in Canada and 86% in France. However, only 49% of the Indian parents rated happiness in life as one of the three most important goals.
Indian parents aspiration also differ substantially from that of other nations in terms of choice of subjects, university education, post graduate qualifications and additional tutoring. What is rather strange is that while Indian parents have the highest preference for engineering as the preferred subject of their wards despite the nation’s frail industrial sector Chinese parents have the least preference for the subject even as their nation is dubbed as the manufacturing hub of the world.
When it comes to choice of subjects the largest number of Indian parents wanted their children to study engineering (23%) which was followed by business management and finance (22%), computer and information sciences (16%), medicine (14%) and law (2%). The academic choices Indian parents have for their children varies substantially from that of Chinese parents whose top choice for their children is business management and finance (25%), followed by medicine (15%), computer and information science (7%), law (7%) and engineering (6%).
However, Indian parents emerge almost at the top when it comes to the higher education qualifications they aspire for their children. In fact the survey shows that 91% of the Indian parents wanted their children to have at least an undergraduate degree or more 88% wanted them to secure a masters or even higher degree. In contrast only 60% of the parents in the United States wanted their children to get an undergraduate degree or more while only 31% targeted a masters or higher degree.
One thing common to most of the Asian nations was their steady faith in additional tutoring. While China has the largest share of parents paying for additional tutoring (74%), it was followed by Indonesia (71%), India (71%), Malaysia (63%), Singapore (59%) and Taiwan (59%). In contrast additional tutoring was very marginal in advanced countries like France (20%), Australia (21%), UK (23%) and the USA (26%).
And Asian countries also believed that university education provided good value for money. The parents who had the highest regards for university education were in Singapore (84%), Malaysia (78%) and India (78%). However, more than half the parents in Brazil, Turkey, Mexico and Taiwan thought that university education offered only a poor value for money.
Similarly the preference for international university education is valued very high in most Asian economies. While 69% of the Chinese parent would pay at least 25% more for an international university education 59% of the Indian parents too would opt for such a choice. Other nations which give preference would international university education include Hong Kong (625), Taiwan (59%), Indonesia (52%) and Singapore (50%).
All these certainly show that Indian parents have set the bar a bit too high for the children to easily match.
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