Learning from the ASER Survey: the outcome of our education policy in India
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Learning from the ASER Survey: the outcome of our education policy in India
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of 2012 — the largest nationwide survey that tests the learning levels of children across all rural districts —was released last week.
Last year I had the opportunity to conduct, albeit a very small part of this survey, in some villages of the Gautam Buddh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, as one of the 25,000 volunteers that ASER recruited. Apart from being able to reach out to 3,00,000 households and 7,00,000 children, through this massive volunteer network, ASER also manages to spread a vital message to the young people of this country, on the importance of learning outcomes. While communicating this message to every household that you survey can become cumbersome, seeing the response of the community — in most cases a mother or father’s anxiety to understand how his or her child is performing, whether he or she is learning English well, a primary concern in the villages we surveyed, or eager friends and siblings eagerly gathering around to see the math sum being solved or the sentence being read — only confirms that learning levels are seen as an important outcome of the education system for those at the consumer-end as well.
The results of the latest ASER survey show that learning levels are declining across the country, whether it is in reading or arithmetic, the primary areas in which children are assessed. From 46% of children in Std. V who could not read a Std. II level text, this has increased from 52% in 2011 to over 53% in 2012. More than half of all children in Std. V are at least three grade levels behind where they should be. Similarly,from 29% of children in Std. V who were unable to solve a simple subtraction problem in 2010, this has increased from 39% in 2011 to 46% in 2012.
Where does RTE stand on learning outcomes?
A major development in our education policy came with the passing of the Right to (Free and Compulsory) Education Act, or RTE in 2009. RTE has been a crucial step in mandating education to be an entitlement, or a fundamental right, as Article 21(a) of our Constitution envisages. However it has also been criticized for remaining more silent on the issue of the quality of education, and more specifically on the learning levels of children.
While the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Act acknowledges that “the quality of learning achievement is not always entirely satisfactory,” and that “every child has a right to be provided full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality,” the benchmarks set out in the Act for ensuring the quality of education are more focused on infrastructural and human capital, that that schools must provide, rather than the actual learning outcomes.
For instance, the ‘Norms and Standards’ that schools must adhere to in order to obtain a recognition certificate include an extensive list of material inputs, from the type of building, boundary wall, toilets, kitchen, and playground that a school must have. It also sets out a detailed list of pupil teacher ratios, learning equipment and minimum hours of working for teachers. While inputscan of course be key in providing an environment that is conducive to learning —one of the often-cited examples being the lack of girl toilets owing to low female attendance rates —inputs alone cannot guarantee better learning outcomes. Section 24 of the RTE also lists out the duties of teachers, which includes ‘assessing the learning ability of each child. However there are no standards for this assessment. The same problem arises with respect to the curriculum and evaluation procedure to be followed by schools under Section 29. Apart from undefined terms like, ‘Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation’ of a child’s understanding and knowledge, or a ‘learning in a ‘child friendlyand child-centered manner,’ there are no measurable criteria specified in the Act, through which learning can actually be tested.
In response to a Parliamentary Question asked in the last Winter Session (2012) on the ‘Learning Levels of Children,’ the Government assured that the RTE ‘mandates several features to improve the quality of elementary education,’ citing these same problematic provisions of the Act. “In order to improve the teaching learning process, Section 24 of the RTE Act lays down the duties of teachers.”It goes on to talk about the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) and the other criteria to ensure there is a sufficient number of teachers, which are mandated in the Act. While it also outlines the Continuous and Comprehensive evaluation, as an outcome based learning model where children are assessed continuously to ensure that their learning difficulties are assessed, it does notmention the manner, the timeframe nor the actual content of such an evaluation.
Shifting the discourse of our education policy:
The problem then perhaps lies in the disproportionate focus that the our education policy gives on inputs, as seen in the RTE, as well as on enrollment rates, evident right from the grass root level in the Gujarat enrollment drives, to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, the first of which is to ensure that, “children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education.”While the most recent statistics would indicate that as a nation we are doing exceptionally well in terms of achieving this goal, with primary school enrolment rates having touched almost 97%, according to the last States of India Report, it has also remained a known fact that enrollment rates on their own cannot tell us a complete story. For one, enrolment does not translate to attendance, whose figures have continued to remain much lower than the net enrolment rate. Moreover these statistics do not include drop out rates, which continue to remain high, especially for children in the age group of 15-16 that often get excluded in these statistics. Second, as has been evident from surveys like ASER is that neither enrollment, nor attendance rates can speak for the quality of education being imparted from children. This story can only be told by mandating certain measurable criteria through which schools can evaluate the performance of children.
The ASER survey provides a good starting point for how learning outcomes can be measured in schools. More importantly it signals the importance of shifting the discourse on education policy from enrollment rates to the quality of education, from material inputs to measurable outcomes; a shift that if we can take and institutionalise, could be a learning experience for all.
Saanya Gulati is a LAMP Fellow at PRS Legislative Research
