Improving
the quality of school education
-
*Dr. Subhash C. Khuntia
The
21st Century global economy can thrive in an environment that has
focus on skills around creativity and
imagination, critical thinking and problem solving. Empirical
analysis reveals a strong positive relationship between education and economic
growth. India has a large population of 30.5 crore (Census 2011), in the school
going age of 6-18, which is more than 25% of the total population. India has
the full potential to use this demographic dividend to its advantage if the
children can be imparted education that prepares them to face the real world
with confidence.
With the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 2030
the focus now has shifted to Quality with Equity up to the Secondary level of
Education.
Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, some
months back, in one of his addresses through Mann Ki Baat emphasized the
importance of quality in the following words: "So
far, the government's focus was on spreading education across the country. But
the time has now come to shift the focus on quality education. Now, the
government should emphasise more on learning rather than schooling,"
HRD Minister Shri
Prakash Javedkar also announced that “Raising the quality of education in the
country will be the top priority”. This shift from schooling to learning would
mean a shift in focus from inputs to outcomes.
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a Centrally
Sponsored Scheme implemented by Government of India in partnership with State
Governments, has achieved considerable success in
universalising elementary education. Today,
there are 19.67 crore children enrolled in 14.5 lakh elementary schools in the
country. The dropout rate has reduced considerably, but is still high at 16% at
primary and 32% at upper primary level, and needs to be reduced significantly.
As per a survey, the number of out of school children has declined from 135
lakh in 2005 to 61 lakh children in 2014, all efforts must be made to bring the
last child back to school.
As is evident, India has
done well in terms of ensuring access and equity in schooling. However, the
level of learning by the average student is a matter of concern. As per the recent report of the National Achievement Survey
(NAS) for class 5 students, the percentage of students getting more than half
the questions correct is only 36% for reading comprehension and the
corresponding figures for mathematics and environmental studies are 37% and 46%
respectively.
Both
the Centre and the State Governments are devising comprehensive approaches and
strategies to address the issue of improving quality of education in schools. Some
of the key focus areas include working on issues related to Teachers, Classroom processes, Assessments and Evaluations of
student’s learning, School Infrastructure, School Effectiveness and Community
participation.
A. Teachers
While
children are at the centre of school education, it is the teacher who plays the
most critical role in ensuring learning among children. Since inception of
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan 19.48 lakh additional teacher posts have been created for
elementary classes; appointment of teachers against these posts has resulted in
improving the pupil teacher ratio from 42:1 to 24:1. However, there are still schools
having single teachers or inadequate number of teachers. For this State
governments need to redeploy teachers for
equitable distribution and also have an annual schedule of recruitment of qualified teachers,
so as to replace the retiring teachers.
Presently 85% of regular
teachers in government schools are professionally qualified. In 20 States and
UTs, all teachers have the requisite qualifications. Government is taking
steps to ensure that over the next 2-3 years all teachers in the remaining 16
States/UTs would be fully qualified.
As per the findings of
a study done in 2013 by the Ministry, the average teacher attendance was found
to be around 83%. This needs to be improved to close to 100%.
Need based professional development of
teachers working in schools is being taken up under both Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan schemes. Online programmes are also on
the anvil to supplement the efforts.
The school system needs
to attract bright students to the teaching
profession, 4-year integrated B.A B.Ed and B.Sc B.Ed teacher programmes have
been introduced by the National Council of Teacher Education and these
programmes need to be popularized to catch the attention of those who are
genuinely interested in nation building through a quality schooling system.
B.
Classroom Processes
These
have the strongest association with learning achievement of children, and include
classroom management, effective student teacher interactions, and quality of
instruction; structured teaching and nature of activities focussing on learning.
Ensuring regular attendance of students as well as teachers in the classroom is
a pre-condition for the same. The model for improving learning outcomes needs
to focus on clearly benchmarking expected learning outcomes for every class and
every subject, easily understandable by teachers, school heads and widely
disseminated among parents and community; ICT enabled teaching and learning.
Recognizing
the need for a strong foundation for learning the Government launched Padhe
Bharat Badhe Bharat in 2014, with a framework emphasising the importance of
learning to read with understanding. In order to build an interest and
popularizing learning of Mathematics, Science and Technology this government
launched the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan in 2015. Through this initiative
schools have an opportunity to be mentored by institutions like the IITs and
NITs amongst others. The recent launch of Atal Innovation Mission and Atal Tinkering
Lab would give a fillip to critical analysis, creativity and problem solving
among students.
All
the Government Secondary schools in the country are being ICT enabled so as to
leverage ICT in teaching the children and also for improving IT literacy among
them. The National Repository of Open
Educational Resources (NROER) and recently launched E-Pathshala are bringing
together all digital and digitisable resources across all stages of school
education and teacher education.
C.
Evaluation and Assessment
Assessing the learning progress of a student is one
of the primary roles of a teacher. Regular and continuous assessments of
students in the classroom are meant to provide, feedback to the child and
parents, feedback to the teacher, remediation for addressing the learning
deficit among children. A robust classroom based learning assessment mechanism
can ensure that both the teacher and the student are focussed on learning.
What gets measured can be improved. Along with the
classroom based assessment of learning, large scale achievement surveys are
needed to look at how students are progressing in their learning as well as how
the system is performing as a whole to achieving the goal of education.
Government has initiated a process whereby, every year, children will be
assessed through a National Achievement Survey. This will cover students in
government schools, government aided schools and private schools. The primary
purpose of the survey is to provide schools an opportunity to understand their student’s
performance against the benchmarked learning goals. Based on the results,
schools will develop a school level plan to improve the learning levels. Such a survey
will create a positive environment focussed towards improving learning
outcomes. The feedback for the teachers and students will be immediate so that
they can take timely action to address the learning gaps; track the performance
of students over the period of time and provide systemic feedback to curriculum
developers, teacher training institutions and educational administrators about
the health of educational system. This is essential for educational quality
improvement.
D.
School Effectiveness
For schools to perform effectively,
empowerment of the school head is crucial. Government of India has suggested
State Governments to take steps to develop a separate cadre of school
headmasters. With a full time head teacher in place capacity building can be
done in a targeted manner. In order to nurture the leaders for the schools of tomorrow,
the National Centre for School Leadership at NUEPA has developed a training
package, which is currently being implemented across the country. Plans are
afoot to set up Leadership Academies in States that would be able to meet their
State needs.
Schools need to be continuously assessed
in various dimensions so that the need for improvement is internalized. Initiatives
like Gunotsav in Gujarat, Pratibha Parv in Madhya Pradesh, Sambalan in
Rajasthan and Samiksha in Odisha are good examples. Comprehensive school
assessment framework called Shala Siddhi has been developed at the national
level by NUEPA and launched in November 2016. This has a component of self-assessment
and a third party assessment. The self -assessment will be used by schools to
develop and implement their improvement plan.
Steps are being taken to have Aadhar
enabled data of students and teachers. This would help track children from one
class to the next, thereby enabling the system to identify children who drop
out; ensuring that all eligible children are receiving the entitlements such as
mid-day meal, textbooks, uniforms and scholarships as well as monitoring
student and teacher attendance.
E. School
Infrastructure
Through
the interventions under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhymik Shiksha Abhiyan
major strides have been taken in provisioning of school infrastructure. Since
inception of SSA, school buildings have been added for 2.23 lakh primary and
nearly 4 lakh upper primary schools. States, UTs, Central PSUs and private
corporate sector responded to the call of the Prime Minister to have a separate
functional toilet for girls and boys in every school. Under the Swachh Vidyalaya
initiative 4.17 lakh toilets have been constructed. Steps are being taken towards
ensuring that the toilets are kept clean, functional and well maintained.
Today
we are looking at schools to be more than just buildings and classrooms. For a
school to have basic learning conditions it must have electricity, functional
library and reading corners; science labs; computer labs, toilets and LPG
connection for cooking of mid-day meal. All
States and UTs have been advised to ensure electricity in all Secondary Schools
in the current year itself while the remaining schools may be covered within a
short time frame.
F. Community
Involvement
In such a large and diverse country the
key to success is decentralization of decision making and accountability. In
case of school education, communities play a vital role in school
management through the School Management Committees. So far these committees
have been involved in provisioning of inputs like construction of school
building etc. Moving ahead the School Management Committees will need to be
strengthened to hold the school accountable for their children’s learning.
Parents and SMC members will need to be aware of the class wise learning goals;
efforts like SMC meetings, social audits or gram sabha meetings on school
education would need to assess student learning. In order to ensure that moving
forward parents and community members can hold schools accountable for their
child’s learning, efforts are on to prepare class wise learning goals in easy
to understand language and the plan is to display these in the school and also
do a wide dissemination.
On the eve of the passage of the nation
to the 70th year of Independence, we must commit ourselves to a
positive campaign for improving the quality of school education. This campaign
will need the efforts of one and all – government, civil society organisations,
experts, parents, community members and children. It is time that a Team India
is built around this issue of improving Quality of School Education so as to
build a solid foundation for the next generation to enable them to face the 21st
Century with confidence.
*******
*Author is Secretary (School
Education & Literacy), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of
India, New Delhi.