How can India improve its Education System?

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.