Success Is Irrelevant If It is Defined Terribly And Measured Horribly
· Free Press Journal
Thanks to the Gen-Z unrest, at long last there is some much-needed focus on school education in India. There is nothing more important than imparting quality school education up to the tenth or twelfth standard to all children irrespective of the accident of the womb and circumstances at birth. Quality school education is critical for the child to fulfil her potential and become a productive member of society and contribute to individual growth and public good. Failure to educate all children in the true sense of the spirit will lead to economic stagnation, political instability, democratic deficit, and social cohesion.
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Unfortunately, despite our avowed commitment to education, significant expenditure incurred by the exchequer as well as parents, the Right to Education Act (RTE), and enshrining education as a fundamental right, we have failed to help fulfil the potential of the vast majority of our children. Much of the debate in the media today is centred around budget allocations and expenditure and infrastructure, with very little focus on outcomes and genuine empowerment and capacity building of the child. More resources and better infrastructure are welcome, but excessive focus on them is missing the wood for the trees.
Many economists and commentators urge allocation of 6% of the GDP to education. In the US, the redoubtable bastion of private enterprise, over 90% of all children go to public schools up to twelfth grade, and public expenditure on school education is about 3.5% of the GDP. In India, only 60% of children go to public schools, and the share of children enrolled in government schools is declining. In the past three years alone, public school enrolment has declined from 67% to 60%! Increasingly, even the poorest families are sending their children to private schools in the hope of giving them a head start. But in most cases, the learning outcomes of children in private schools are only marginally better than in public schools. What is more significant is that in the past two decades, after various funded programmes costing trillions of rupees were launched to improve school education, the enactment of the RTE Act, and the incorporation of the fundamental right to education under Article 21-A in the Constitution, learning outcomes have actually declined.
In 2005, Pratham, a voluntary organisation, launched the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) after a massive scientific sample-based rural survey of learning outcomes at the school level. Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia and I released the first ASER report in Delhi. The ASER findings were disquieting in 2005: about 39% of children in the fifth grade could not read even a simple second-grade-level passage, and over 55% could not do a simple division of a three-digit number by a single digit. What is particularly tragic is, since then, in the past two decades, the learning outcomes all over the country have substantially declined by about 12–15% in both the fifth and eighth grades. The outcomes are not better; they are not stagnating; they are actually becoming worse!
The National Achievement Surveys conducted by the government show that though about 93% of children pass class X, only about 20% of them have grade-level competency! The 2023 ASER survey of foundational skills of youth between ages 14 and 18 shows that more than half of them cannot calculate time or apply discounts. By any standard, these are extremely troubling findings.
There is no doubt that we can and should improve our infrastructure. But many traditional arguments and analyses on school education do not withstand closer scrutiny. In many states the government expenditure per child at school exceeds ₹100,000. The pupil-teacher ratio in government schools is very healthy—19, 15, and 23 in primary, secondary, and higher secondary classes, respectively. And yet, there are thousands of schools with zero enrolment and over 100,000 schools with fewer than 30 kids and only one teacher! Teachers are much better paid than a few decades ago and several times more than what the market pays. So, what has gone wrong?
The central failure has been in assessment and examinations. In the past four decades, examinations either did not matter because they had no consequences, were meaningless exercises at best testing rote memory, or have become increasingly irrelevant with mass copying being rampant. The RTE’s neglect of outcomes and sensible assessment made the situation worse. As state governments are the custodians of outcomes, all education—private or public—failed in equal measure. Our kids are bright and hard-working, the parents are highly motivated and are willing to sacrifice anything for their children's future, governments are spending money, and society values education. And yet outcomes are appalling and declining because there is zero focus on learning outcomes. The minimum basic skills that a child should learn are comprehension and communication (language), understanding concepts, and applying them for real problem-solving (math), and logical analysis and critical thinking (science). We can add usable skills, vocational education, citizenship, basic economic literacy, environment, teamwork, social interactions, and emotional intelligence. We are floundering at the basic skill level. When demand is strong, the best way to improve learning outcomes is to have sensible, stress-free competency-based testing, measuring conceptual understanding, application, and critical thinking. Once the child, the parent, and the teacher understand what the learning is expected to be, and if the testing is sensible, competency-based, stress-free, and honest (without cheating) and the test performance has clear consequences, outcomes will improve.
Every child, parent, teacher, and educator wants 'success'. If success is defined terribly and is measured horribly, we get pass grades, marks, and ranks which have no relevance. If we define success meaningfully and measure it competently and with integrity, all stakeholders are incentivised to improve real learning. On top of it, regular monitoring, rational utilisation of teachers and resources, and empowerment of parents, teachers, and local communities will ensure that school education is vibrant, purposeful, and productive. The most important function of a good physician is accurate diagnosis. A bad diagnosis leads to futile and potentially harmful treatment!
The author is the founder of Lok Satta movement and Foundation for Democratic Reforms. Email: [email protected] / Twitter@jp_loksatta