Let me be upfront and state it clearly –
“I do not have any magical solutions”. In fact, no one can prescribe any
solutions to an entire nation as big and as diverse as India whose problems are
unthinkably complex in nature. Having said that, I also firmly believe the
status quo will lead India on the path of major “demographic disaster” (as
pointed out in this article) and it must be challenged. Now, the million
dollar question is – “what is the way forward and from where to begin?”
Based on the results of international
comparative educational assessments like (TIMSS and PISA) it is widely accepted
that Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and urban China (especially
Shanghai) lead the world when it comes to educating their children. Over the
years, students mainly from these countries have remained at the top spots in
mathematics, reading and science. Though there is a great variation in
educational policies in these countries, the broader common theme is that these
countries have developed a highly skilled professional workforce of teachers in
public school system. In general, teachers enjoy relatively higher
socio-economic status; and the policymakers are able to attract top performing
youths to the teaching profession.
Finland’s case is especially interesting
given that it has achieved negligible between school differences. It basically
means that it does not matter if a child goes to X-school or Y-school, because
all public schools add high value in child’s development and no school is “poor
performing” in the entire country. Finland has embraced the concept of “equity”
and gives all of its children quality education. By doing so, Finland has been
able to ban privatization of education, which promotes inequality in Finnish
policymakers’ opinion (for more discussion, see Sahlberg & Hargreaves,2011).
Nonetheless, do not, even for a moment,
assume that I am against private schooling in India. Any government cap on
private schooling will be outright foolish. One can do that only when the
public school system has such low between school difference and all schools are
high performing. Also, as the quality of education in public schools is
perceived to be of extremely low levels, the percentage of students going to
private schools is steadily rising (18.7% in 2006 to 28.3% in 2012 according to
ASER Centre, 2012) in India. Some educational researchers and policy makers interpret
this finding as a “For Choice” trend and the debate then gets generates between
private and public schooling. However, to my mind, this is a redundant
labelling, and the real trend is from perceived poor quality to perceived
better quality education. If the government schools provide high quality
education, this trend will be reversed as evident by Finland and other top
performing countries. In conclusion, the focus of policy making has to be the
improvement of quality of education in public schools, being mindful of equity,
to raise educational outcomes of all children.
Coming back to the question– “what is
the way forward and from where to begin?”
To
address this, once again we look into the mechanism that educationally high
performing countries have for designing their policies.
In the case of Finland, we find a highly
coherent approach linking national objectives → knowledge base → educational
policies → practices → regular evaluations. For example, Finland’s national
board of education published a report (study) in 2012 exploring what the
expected education, training and demand for labour will be by year 2025 in
their country. Based on such studies, the ministry of education sets five year
developmental plans that direct their educational policies. In addition, these
developmental plans guide the educational researchers to develop required pool
of knowledge base, which in turn guides policies. In fact, similar mechanisms
can be observed in most of the developed nations. Deductively, the logic model
for this mechanism can be shown as below:
Figure
1: Mechanism for Developing High Quality Educational System
It is important to note that through
this mechanism all high performing countries have travelled on different paths,
suitable to their social-contexts, to reach at the same destination of high
quality mass education system. Finland has gone on the path of
decentralization, whereas Singapore, Japan and South Korea have relatively
centralized administration. Finland requires its children to spend lesser but
highly efficient time in schools; whereas East Asian countries have longer
school hours, in-general.
What India truly needs is this
interlinkage of its national priorities → knowledge base → educational policies
→ practices (as in Figure 1). India’s planning commission sets the priorities,
but there is no serious attempt for developing the required knowledge-base. The
number of premier institutions studying educational issues (e.g., NCERTs,
NUEPA, CASE, CCS, ASER and so on) is frustratingly small. In fact, it is fair to
say that India has paid some attention to the technical knowledge-base, but has
brazenly neglected the development of indigenous pool of knowledge in
educational sector and in social-sciences at large. So, when you do not do your
work, someone else has to do it. Accordingly, out of whatever little
policy-relevant research is available, the majority of the studies are done by
international agencies (e.g., the World Bank, UN agencies, multinational
corporations and international NGOs).
Adding to this misery, the
educational policymakers in India are mostly the IAS (Indian Administrative
Service) officers, who, in most cases, may have absolutely no exposure to the
educational research, and may not have any formal education in the educational
field. As a result, the external agencies drive India’s educational policy.
The
Para-teacher policy is one such case of absolute
ignorance. India has not done a single large-scale RCT (Randomized Control
Trial) experiment, and almost all states have adopted this policy. Without
studying short-term or long-term causal effects, how can a country of over a
billion people implement any policy? The World Bank which supports this policy
and conducts large-scale studies may have different interests and objectives
than that of India. For examples, in the World Bank funded study by Sankar (2008),
there is no consideration of long-term deprofessionalization of teaching
profession or of teachers’ deteriorating socio-economic status and how that can
affect student outcomes. On examination, if these possible negative
consequences are found to be present, can such policies be really considered
“cost-effective” for India?
It
is important to note that OECD’s (2011) report states – “In many
high-performing education systems teachers do not only have a central role to
play in improving educational outcomes, they are also at the centre of the improvement
efforts themselves. In these systems it is not that top-down reforms are
ordering teachers to change, but that teachers embrace and lead reform, taking
responsibility as professionals. Also, in almost every country surveyed by OECD’s
Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), the large majority of
teachers report that they are satisfied with their jobs and consider that they
make a real difference in education. T hey also make significant investments in
their professional development, both in terms of their time and often also in
terms of money, an investment that goes hand-in-hand with teachers’ reporting
that they use a wider repertoire of pedagogic strategies in the classroom.”
(p.g. 5)
It
will be interesting to ask the World Bank why its recommendations for the
developing countries are exactly opposite of the OECD’s recommendations for the
developed ones.
Nonetheless, it is futile to blame the
World Bank. It is after all a “bank” and may rightly be concerned about the timely
repayment of loans that it gives out to the Indian states. If Indian
researchers had conducted large-scale experimental studies examining relative effects
of hiring high quality teachers and smaller PTR (pupil-teacher ratio) on
student achievement, there would have been possibly some concrete evidence for arguing
against the para-teacher policy. In addition, if the policy makers were
competent enough to compare the effect-sizes in student achievement due to high
quality teachers and smaller PTR, they would have been in a better position in designing
effective policy. Research in various parts of the world suggests that teacher
quality has a much higher effect on student learning than class-size. However,
these issues are not well studied in the Indian context.
Clearly, India needs to produce large
pool of methodologically robust indigenous literature on its educational issues
from divergent perspectives rather than sole reliance on the external agencies.
In order to do so, India needs a central institution like the Institute ofEducation Sciences (IES) in the United States which basically prioritizes the
areas of scientific inquiry in the field of education, provides funding for it,
maintains database, and creates a pool of policy-relevant knowledgebase.
Furthermore, all states have to develop world-class
educational research institutes that house the finest researchers studying
local educational issues. In social science, there is no clear demarcation
between various fields of inquiry. Therefore, it is imperative that these
institutes hire psychologists, sociologists, economists, statisticians in
addition to educationists to have deeper understanding of social phenomenon of
interest. A trans-disciplinary approach in solving educational issues may help
devise interventions and policies which in turn may drive holistic social transformation
of communities. In addition, the state policymakers are integral part of these
institutions and are briefed at regular intervals. These researchers are also
encouraged to participate in media at various levels and communicate
educational issues/interventions/study-results/policies to the masses. Also,
the university faculty members may also be encouraged to contribute to this
knowledge production through designing their tenure-track that encourages research
[Note: at present, most Indian universities only look at the seniority of the
faculty member for promotion].
In the next phase, the research capacity
can be developed at district level and gradually at cluster-level. This will
lessen the burden on the state and help focus on more specific local issues.
Also, states may design policies which encourage districts to develop data-systems
and capacity for carrying out data-driven reforms.
A lot of research has already been
done in the world. What works elsewhere should never be directly implemented in
India, but should definitely be considered as a hypothesis for experimental/quasi-experimental
studies. Many major interventions like –
voucher programme; performance-based teacher pay; designing effective
tenure-track for teachers, principals, district administrators; professional
development programs; interventions promoting learning through inquiry in
students; counselling services; interventions for special-education programmes;
technological interventions; interventions to encourage parent-involvement and
so on – all need to be studied in various social contexts across India. The
country is so diverse that what may work in one context may produce absolutely disastrous
results in another. And a few institutions that the country is relying on at
present are simply incapable of lifting this massive load of improving its
mass-education system. India has to be intellectually independent and develop an
indigenous pool of knowledge of its educational and social issues. If India is able to
establish the link as shown in the Figure 1, it will be one of the major transformational
phenomena of this century.
