QUALITY OF CA EDUCATION – NEED FOR A MAJOR UPLIFT

ICAI has been making keen efforts to regularly upgrade the quality of education, training and examination and today the Indian CA qualification is the best in the world. However, in view of the fact that India is growing at a rapid pace, businesses are becoming larger and regulations are becoming complex, expectations from Indian chartered accountants are increasing phenomenally not only in India but also internationally. It has also been noted that the legal profession has significantly upgraded their level of education in the recent past by introducing national law schools and universities in various parts of the country, specially through their 5 year programme. The CA education has been primarily delivered as a distant education coupled with training under a chartered
accountant firm. The successful model followed by the profession for more than 6 decades has been recently impacted by a section of students and members by not undertaking their training and education seriously and by concentrating only on somehow qualifying the CA final examination. It is important for the Institute to examine the following suggestions :

• To significantly upgrade the level of examination at the CPT (enter) level, IPCC (CA intermediate) level as well as in the final level by ensuring high level practical oriented questions in the examination papers. This may include case studies and projects.
• ICAI may also consider to make it mandatory that all the students undergoing training are required to take permission of the Institute, on the recommendation of the chartered accountant concerned (Principal) before undertaking any kind of coaching or tuition.
• It may very import to ensure that the quality of such coaching institutions are up to the mark and they meet various norms prescribed by the Institute including  teaching timing, number of students in a class, number of hours for which continuous education can be give, level of fee charged and the quality of education is at high level on the lines prescribed by ICAI and compliance of similar other parameters as may be decided based on consensus arrived at after a debate.
• ICAI may also consider mandating class room teaching by ICAI itself by creating necessary infrastructure, all across India to ensure high quality education at reasonable cost. It is important to ensure that a minimum 3 months to 6 months class room education is provided to every CA final students, before the final examination by the Institute itself. This may require small restructuring and if necessary training period can be curtailed to 2years 6 months, which may be followed by the class room training of about 3 to 6 months before the CA Final examinations. This will require massive financial resources. This is not difficult to achieve over a period of 2 years from the date of the finalization of the blue print plan and once the council is convinced through consensus.