Educators addressing the various difficulties in this task should begin by focusing
on the student as an individual
Taking education to every village and every panchayat in India and ensuring access and opportunity to every child in the last 70 years is a big milestone that we can be proud of. Governments at the centre and the state took education, once accessible only to a privileged few, to the masses with a deeper understanding of how it can reduce social disparity and uplift and ensure an equitable society through various initiatives and policy decisions.
Irrespective of class, caste, creed, wealth, religion and several other aspects, people send their children to school, pinning all their hopes on the school for the future of their children.
With that kind of strong sentiment and faith invested in schooling, how far do educators
live up to such expectations and are able to stick to what should be the real purpose of founding schools or working with them?
Far from it
Recently I visited a school on the outskirts of Mettupalayam to assess and understand the
students’ abilities in English reading. It was worrying to note that Class 8 students were
struggling to read even threeletter words. While they were able to read CAR when written
on the board, they couldn’t read FAR. The students could read CAR because CAR is registered as an object or a sight word, which is not the same case with FAR.
That a student of Class 8 could not read a three-letter word cannot be dismissed as a small
concern. The child has had eight years of schooling – and is still struggling with a simple word.
This raises a lot of questions about the existence of that school and the capabilities of the teachers all these years. This is not a rare or singular case but a very common one, especially in rural India. It’s not just the learning outcome that is in question but also the
teaching as well. Assessing the teaching outcome must be the first step before assessing the learning outcome.
Varying levels of difficulty
While talking at Dasra Philanthropy week 2019 on ‘Big Data to Big Impact ’ about the
ASER report, Dr. Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham Foundation, says: “The thing that is known or the headline of ASER that is known is that 50 per cent children in Standard 5 can actually can read at Standard 2 level or more, but there is a whole long tail that can’t, and the long tail is not all similar. We have about something like 18 per cent kids who are still struggling with just letters perhaps. We have another 13 per cent who can read words and then we have another about 20 per cent just about beginning to read sentences. And this presents, according to me, one of the biggest problems in education in India which is that I’m a teacher and who do I teach out of all this?’
The ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) study is an annual survey that aims to provide reliable estimates of children’s enrolment and basic learning levels for each district and state in India. It is widely recognised as an authoritative source of information on children’s learning outcomes. The study is conducted by Pratham, which is a non- governmental organisation that works to enable quality education for underprivileged children.
Though delayed, the efforts of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the Ministry of Human Resource Development in coming up with expected age-appropriate learning outcomes in every class in every subject is a laudable move. The
governments should take steps to make schools aware of these yardsticks and let them know they are going to be assessed for the School Education Quality Index (SEQI). Most of the schools are still not aware of the SEQI and the parameters on which they are going
to be evaluated.
Focus on the individual
The learning outcomes are the new deliverables of schools. Trying to achieve them through the old pedagogy may or may not yield the desired results. The most critical challenge to achieving learning outcomes is that they must be addressed at an individual level and not at a class level. The factors that play a key role in the learning outcomes, such as the child’s exposure to the world, parents’ education or socio-economic background, vary by individual and have to be factored in to address the concern.
Assessments which are a mere formality in the majority of the schools must be made more
purposeful. The exercise should focus on giving a clear picture of the understanding of every child, in every subject and in every concept. This diagnosis is the first critical step. Depending on the findings, teachers should be able to support the children according to their specific needs.
The intention and purpose as educators should be to teach children, and not just physics, chemistry or biology. Put the children first, subjects next. Teachers must be supported with enough tools in this process to develop an understanding of their students. Teachers should have clarity about the learning indicators and the scales on which they can grade the
learning. Schools can look at exploiting technology to their advantage in supporting them.
Now that the government is working on finalising the National Education Policy 2019, there is a better grasp of the change in deliverables of schools, the challenges in achieving them and the support system that the schools and teachers will need to meet these expectations. Investing in teacher education, enabling and empowering them to face these new challenges must be one of the first steps administrators should focus on.
Moral, economic crisis
The challenges we face are not just that of India. World Bank in its World Development
Report 2018 warns of a ‘learning crisis’ in global education. “This learning crisis is a
moral and economic crisis,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said. “When delivered well, education promises young people employment, better earnings, good health, and a life without poverty. For communities, education spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion. But these benefits depend on learning, and schooling without learning is a wasted opportunity. More than that, it’s a great
injustice: the children whom societies fail the most are the ones who are most in need of a
good education to succeed in life.”
Within a school campus, learning as a concept need not be confined to students and their goal. Schools should become learning environments for all – even for teachers, parents and administrators. Most of the lessons in the curriculum are available in social media and on the internet. This in no way makes the role of a teacher redundant. Instead, the role and
expectations of teachers have become more challenging and have increased multifold. It’s time we move from teaching to facilitating learning. Let us have the love for learning to ensure learning and be a learner to explore ways to support every learner.
