·
Lack of clarity of
measurable objectives of education at all administrative levels (from central government to individual classrooms):
At any level of administration, there is no consensus on what kind of future
citizens do we want. I understand some objectives may differ depending on the
social context. However, objectives in India differ depending on who is
responding to the question even at school-level. Therefore, educators and
administrators often do not see any unified purpose of their actions. In
addition, the idealistic goals that various governments declare often find
little policy support and are hardly ever systematically evaluated.
· Cycle of Deteriorating Teacher
Quality as explained in figure below:
·
Highly Hierarchical
Centralized Structure: Curriculum, school calendar,
text books, school fees, all physical resources are usually decided by state
governments. System is based on lack of trust and assumption seems to be that
people will abuse their power if granted to them. Furthermore, the hierarchy descends in order of Ministers → State administrators → district administrators →
cluster coordinators → principals → teachers (full time senior, junior,
contract teachers). Generally, person at lower-level is “supposed” to be an obedient
servant of the higher authority. It is highly unlikely that a teacher expresses
displeasure regarding policy decision to a district or state administrator face
to face in Indian system.
·
Low accountability of teachers, principals, educational administrators at all
levels in public education: Government jobs in India are often considered as the
most secured jobs. Educational administrators at any level and teachers/
principals in government schools may get fired only in rarest of the rare cases. In
their study Kremer and colleagues found that during unannounced visits 25% of
teachers were absent from school, and only about half were involved in teaching
activity (Kremer, Muralidharan, Chaudhury, Rogers, & Hammer, 2005). This
study surveyed nationally representative sample of more than 3700 schools
during three unannounced visits. Results suggested that a 10% increase in
teacher absence was associated with 1.8% lower student attendance, as well as
with a 0.02 standard deviation reduction in test scores of 4th-grade children. One
good thing is that inefficiency of teachers is at least being studied
systematically. There is no research done to examine how efficient the principals
or educational administrators at district or state-level are. Nonetheless,
India does not have any effective mechanism to tackle irresponsible behaviour of
her public servants.
·
Memory-based
assessment: Research shows that the
teaching methodology of teachers and the learning methods of students greatly
depend on the type and quality of questions asked in educational assessments.
Thus, if the majority of Indian students are choosing rote memorization and
superficial learning strategies to crack the scholastic examinations, something
must be wrong with the assessment system. Most educational assessments focus
excessively on knowledge and understanding levels of cognition (as per Bloom’s
Taxonomy). The students rarely get opportunity to exhibit their in-depth
learning. In addition, replication of the text of the textbooks is often
considered as an “ideal” answer and is well rewarded by the examiners. Thus, persistence
of this trend and high proportion of knowledge-level questions have basically
converted educational assessment into memory-tests.
·
Poor understanding of Educational Science: Education as a field of
study is often narrowly understood as “teacher training”. India has not
developed educational infrastructure for producing curriculum designers, educational
administrators and school leaders, school psychologists, educational
policymakers, psychometricians and so on. In addition, educational researchers
have hardly ever found significant voice in national or state-level policy
making. Also, educational researchers have shied away from both electronic and
print media and there has not been informed public debate on various
educational issues. I would be surprised if any Indian, except an educational researcher
him/herself, would be able to name even three Indian educationists.
I hope this article helps address the last point at the very least.
