The inadequate facilities for early education in rural India are
failing students, says the ASER 2019 report

Age-appropriate learning and schooling, rather than a plunge into formal education at a tender age, is an issue of much concern in education today. Many policy initiatives the world over have highlighted the importance ofearly childhood education, and this includes several efforts in India as well.

Early years refer to the period of 0-8 years known to be pivotal to human brain development. According to UNESCO, early childhood care and education (ECCE) aims at the comprehensive development of a child’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs that can build a robust foundation for all aspects of life ahead. “It is one of the best investments a country can make to promote human resource development, gender equality and social cohesion, and to reduce the costs for later remedial programmes,” it adds.

Throwing the spotlight on this key life stage, the annual ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) 2019 released in January 2020 focuses on ‘Early Years’ reports on the pre-schooling or schooling status of children aged 4-8 in rural India. It also explores their competence on certain parameters that research has identified as markers of future success: cognitive development, early language, early numeracy and social and emotional development.

India is home to the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, one of the largest and oldest public sector projects for early childhood progress. Further, more recent policies and frameworks such as the National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) Policy (2013), the National Early Childhood Care and Education Curriculum Framework (2014) and the draft Framework for Implementation of Samagra Shiksha (Integrated

Scheme for School Education) include the pre-primary stage as a critical component of all other levels of schooling. The draft National Education Policy 2019 (NEP) prescribes guidelines for pre-primary education. The NCERT in 2019 issued guidelines for pre-school curriculum. The NEP points out that a learning crisis occurs well before children enter Class 1 due to the paucity of pre-primary school options – and these are the children that remain the most behind in primary school and beyond.

Early schooling does more harm than good?

A good education is a common and natural aspiration– but one that often leads to children being sent to school before they are ready. While child development experts know that a range of skills and experiences are important in the early years, parents and policy-makers do not, says ASER. ASER data from 2018 across rural India shows that 10 per cent of children aged four, and 34 per cent of children aged five are already attending primary school. Research worldwide has also revealed that the lack of ECCE facilities deprive children of the expected abilities when they enter school, and make it difficult for them to catch up. ASER research over the past 14 years shows that a large proportion of children do not have the reading and numeracy skills to keep up with the lessons in their textbooks.

The latest report found that over 90 per cent of children aged 4-8 are enrolled in some type of educational institution. The proportion of young children in pre-school (anganwadi, LKG/UK, government or private) or school (government, private, other) rises as the children grow older, from 91.3 per cent among four-year-olds to 99.5 per cent among eight-year-olds. More girls than boys are enrolled in government institutions and more boys than girls in private institutions. Among 6-8-yearolds, the gap is larger, with 61.1 per cent of all girls going to government schools as against 52.1 per cent of all boys.

Although almost half of the four-year-olds (44.2 percent) and over a quarter of five-year-olds (26.3 percent) are enrolled in anganwadis, these children have much lower levels of cognitive skills and foundational abilities than their counterparts in private schools’ kindergarten classes. The mothers of about half of the children surveyed for this study have completed eight or fewer years of schooling. Where the mothers had studied beyond elementary school, those children were likely to have been sent to private LKG/UKG classes, ASER found.

Books vs play

The children’s performance in tasks requiring cognitive skills (such as sorting, seriation and pattern recognition) is strongly related to their ability to do early language tasks (such as describing a picture) and early numeracy tasks (for instance, relative comparison of objects.) This suggests that focusing on play-based activity that builds memory, reasoning and problem-solving capacity is more productive than book-based knowledge. The report points to the uneven nature of early education across the country. Depending on the State and the type of institution, standards, infrastructure, expectations and outcomes vary.

There’s a right time for Class 1

The Right to Education Act, 2009 stipulates that children should enter Class 1 at the age of six. Many States permit admission to this class at five-plus years. However, four out of ten children in Standard 1 are younger than five or older than six. Overall, 41.7 per cent of children in Class 1 are six, 36.4 per cent are seven or eight and 21.9 per cent are four or five years old.

Even within Class 1, children’s performance on cognitive, language, numeracy and social and emotional learning tasks is strongly related to their age. Older children fare better on all counts. For example, within the Standard 1 cohort, almost no children aged four or five can read a Class 1 level text (5.7 per cent). This proportion increases steadily with age, with 12.7 per cent of 6-year-olds and 26 per cent of 7- and 8-year-olds in Class 1 being able to do so.

Children in Class 1 in government schools are younger than those in the same grade in private schools, the ASER report observes. More than a quarter of these students in government schools are either four or five years old (26.1 per cent), while the corresponding proportion for private schools is 15.7 per cent. On the other hand, 30.4 per cent students in Std 1 in government schools are 7-8 years old, while this proportion in private schools is

far higher at 45.4 per cent. This makes comparing learning levels in Class 1 between government and private schools problematic. Since there is a clear advancement in learning with age, the higher learning levels observed in Class 1 in private schools may be partly due to the fact that Class 1 in those schools have a higher proportion of older children.

Age notwithstanding, children in Class 1 do better at numeric arithmetic tasks (addition and subtraction problems presented in written numeric form) than oral word problems involving similar operations. For example, while 50.6 per cent of Class 1 children could solve a one-digit numeric addition sum correctly, only 39.5 per cent could do an oral word problem involving one-digit addition.

As children move up classes from Standard 1, the age gap within each class narrows. However, older children perform better at every task. By Class 3, most children in both government and private schools are either seven or eight. But while 53.4 per cent of 8-year-olds in that class could read Class 1 level text, 46.1 per cent of 7-year-olds could do so.

Needed: A gentler course of study

Though skills and abilities improve as the children grow older, the huge jump between curriculum expectations at each class means that by Class 3, their early language and numeracy outcomes are well behind curriculum expectations. For example, children’s ability to read Class 1 text improves from 16.2 per cent of children in Class 1 to 50.8 per cent children in Class 3. This means that half of all children in Class 3 are lagging at least two years behind where the curriculum expects them to be. Similarly, 41.1 per cent of students in Class 1 can identify two-digit numbers, while 72.2 per cent of students in Class 3 can do so. But according to NCERT’s specifications, children should be able to recognise numbers up to 99 in Class 1 itself.

More recommendations

The ASER report calls for some changes in policy. Anganwadi centres cater to great numbers of children well before they reach pre-primary classes. Their network should be strengthened to reach children who have not accessed it yet.

Given the connection between age and performance on development criteria, State and national norms for admission into school/ classes should be reviewed.

Breadth of skills is important, and focusing too early on formal subject learning is counter- productive. ASER 2019 data shows a clear relationship between children’s performance on cognitive tasks and measures of early language and early numeracy, suggesting that children may be better off doing activities that strengthen cognitive skills rather than subject learning in the early years. The entire age band from 4-8 needs to be seen as a continuum and curriculum progression across classes and schooling stages should be designed accordingly.

ASER chose only one or two districts (26 in all) across 24 states to conduct the Early Years survey. Districts were shortlisted based on the availability of survey partners. Of these, districts that were close to the average state learning levels of children in the age 5-8 (as measured in ASER 2018) were chosen. No district in Jammu & Kashmir, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh was included due to logistic difficulties. A total of 1,514 villages, 30,425 households and 36,930 children aged 4-8 were surveyed.

MORE FINDINGS FROM ASER 2019

» The ASER report on Early Years found that within each category, there is a vast difference between the children’s capabilities. For instance, at age 5, 70 per cent of childrenare in anganwadis or pre-primary classes, but 21.6 per cent are already enrolled in Standard 1. At age 6, 32.8 per cent children are in anganwadis or pre-primary classes, while 46.4 per cent are in Standard 1 and 18.7 per cent are in Class 2 or higher.

These enrollment patterns vary substantially across districts.

» In the pre-school age group, i.e., from 4-5 years, children’s ability to do all tasks improves considerably, in line with what child development experts expect and findings of other studies. Regardless of whether or where they are enrolled, the ability to do cognitive, early language, early numeracy, and social and emotional learning tasks is higher among 5-year-olds than among 4-year-olds. For example, while 31 per cent of 4-year-olds enrolled in anganwadis or government pre-primary classes were able to do a 4-piece puzzle, 45 per cent of 5-year-olds attending these institutions could do so.

However, ASER found that despite the age 5 milestone, when all children should be able to do most of these tasks easily, a large proportion is unable to do so. Children from less advantaged homes are affected disproportionately. Although almost half of all 4-year-olds (44.2 per cent) and more than a quarter of all 5-year-olds (26.3 per cent) are enrolled in anganwadis, these children have far lower levels of cognitive skill and foundational ability than their counterparts in private LKG/UKG classes.

» As seen among the 4- and 5-year olds, a clear relationship is visible between children’s cognitive skills and their ability to do early language and early numeracy tasks in Class 1. For instance, children in Class 1 who could do three cognitive tasks correctly (seriation, pattern recognition, and puzzle) could read better and were also more likely to solve oral word problems than their peers who could not. Irrespective of age, children in Class 1 do better in numeric arithmetic tasks than oral word problems involving similar operations. While 50.6 per cent of Class 1 children could solve a 1-digit numeric addition sum correctly, 39.5 per cent could do an oral word problem involving 1-digit addition.

» As before, there is a strong relationship between children’s cognitive skills and their performance on early language and early numeracy tasks. For example, in Class 3, 63.2 per cent of children who did all three cognitive tasks correctly were able to read at Class 1 level, as compared to 19.9 per cent of children who were able to do one or none of the cognitive tasks correctly.