Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 2

Note: This piece is in continuation of Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 1

What are the challenges?

            One of the biggest challenges I can see is to take all stakeholders on board, help everyone see what the problem is, and how the proposed solution (policy reform) addresses it. For example, looking at the national level enrollment data by gender, policymakers prescribe schools to “engage with their local community and emphasize on education for girls”. What if the state administrators, teachers, parents or community members in a particular social context do not even see lower enrollment of girls as a problem? How do you ensure buy-in from all stakeholders? If the change agents (people at different administrative levels, teachers and school staff) do not believe in what they are asked to do, the policy intervention fails.

            In addition, this one small piece of information (less girls enrolled on average) could be due to a broader social issue of gender equality, school infrastructure, safe commute to school, or even skewed ratio of boys to girls. While the intent of the policymaker could be correct, the proposed solution is too simplistic, vague (terms like engage, local community, emphasize remain undefined), and loaded with assumption of gender bias. Moreover, the causes for fewer enrollments of girls could vary across social contexts. This brings me to the second challenge: generalization of proposed policy intervention. One-size-fits-all way of policy intervention may not work at macro-level. The intervention needs to be sensitive to the local social context.  

            Continuing with the same example, several studies in India have indicated that access to toilets for girls in schools is significantly related to high dropouts in girls. Accordingly, building separate toilets for girls in schools could be more effective than asking teachers to spread awareness about gender-equality for raising enrollments of girls. This point highlights the importance of systematic empirical research across various social contexts prior to policy formulation. Unfortunately, India’s educational sector is highly understudied empirically. There are too few educational research institutes and very little interaction between researchers and the policymakers.

            Fourth challenge deals with highly centralized decision making structure. Because, the proposed policy interventions often lack grass-root level buy-in (due to reasons mentioned above), the state/centre administrators use their position of higher authority to muscle down implementation. Rather than the system supporting the teachers and school staff in serving children, the entire system has to support the administrators to implement their proposed interventions. In the educational administrative hierarchy, teachers are at the very bottom. Bossism is very explicit and people at higher level of administration display their power unapologetically. Accordingly, instead of catering to the students, teachers’ cater to the principal and the administrators at the level above. In fact, the entire machinery caters to people at the level above and exercises power to shut down voices from below. The IASs often do the same and cater to their political masters and shut off any complaints coming from levels below.

            Finally, the macro-level policy reports talk a lot about all-round development of children, but the focus has been limited to the literacy-rates, enrollment and dropout rates, physical infrastructure of school, and reading and math outcomes (that too very recently). The challenge is to expand this policy focus and to include physical and mental health outcomes of children. Sports, music, performing arts, social cohesion, prevalence of bullying and teasing, relations between teachers and students and among students, psychological support to students, and many vital interventions have remained side-notes in policy drafts and have not found their worthy place in the grass-root level practices. One big reason for their neglect could be that these interventions may not have direct relations with the academic outcomes. However, these interventions are more likely to have positive effects on children’s physical health (e.g., age-level benchmarking of stamina, muscle strength, and flexibility by gender; and medical screening) and/or mental health (e.g., depressive symptoms, anxiety, and screening for more prevalent disorders). If we can integrate clearly defined health outcomes (physical and mental) as an integral part of national educational policy and develop measures for their systematic evaluation, the field practitioners (administrators at various levels, teachers and school staff) would employ interventions which are important for children’s overall wellbeing and not just for their academics. Perhaps, we may provide our children a more fulfilling school experience.   

            Current government’s emphasis on decentralization of policymaking is encouraging. The fourteenth finance commission gives relatively more economic autonomy to the states than before. However, the states do not have any premier research-driven think tanks to guide their policies. There are SCERTs, but one cannot find any link between production of policy relevant empirical research and policy formulation across states. The central government states that the Niti Aayog will assist states with policy formulation. However, India is too big and complex for any single institution. Also, Niti Aayog, at best, could assist with economic policies, because it does not have any human resource of researchers from the fields of education, psychology, psychometrics, or sociology. Perhaps a more apt approach would be for all states to develop their own multi-disciplinary Niti Aayogs (or make sure SCERTs play that role), and Niti Aayog in Delhi could then coordinate policies across state-level Niti Aayogs. I share some ideas regarding the functioning of these state-level research bodies HERE-Mechanism for Educational Excellence in India: Towards Solution. 

I welcome your comments/questions/rebuttals...