Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 1

This article discusses: 1) a brief overview of national policies in primary education, and 2) the challenges (obstacles) associated with such centralized national policies. For convenience, the article is divided into two blog posts.  

At the time of independence, India’s literacy-rate was close to 18%. Amid great external and internal socio-political conflicts, extremely limited resources and responsibility of a large population, the entire focus of national/provincial policymakers landed on raising literacy-rates. Governments across states built schools and one of the greatest mass-education systems started expanding. However, policymakers soon realized that mere building schools do not necessarily result into increase in enrollment-rates, and it is not easy to retain students into schools. Moreover, malnutrition in children was severe and widely prevalent. To address these multiple challenges, Kamraj’s government in Tamil Nadu implemented a midday meal scheme (1962-63) in which children were served meal at their schools for free. Enrollment rates increased while dropout-rates and malnutrition started decreasing. Gujarat and Kerala followed soon; and by early 90s twelve states had emulated this successful scheme. Later in 1995, Narsimhma Rao’s central government made it India-wide. After 1990, the economic liberalization helped generate more liquidity for school building. Rao’s government also launched District Primary Education Programme (DEPE) which had a prime objective of universalizing primary education. DEPE rolled out in several phases and was implemented in about one third of Indian districts. Later in 2001, Vajpayee’s government launched Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) which was basically a more comprehensive form of DEPE and was implemented throughout India. Access to within-village school with free meals resulted in increased enrollment from mere 22.3 million students in 1990 (Govinda, & Josephine, 2004) to more than 193 million in 2010-11 (Mehta, 2012). The basic education system, which consisted of around 200,000 schools in 1950, expanded to more than 1.1 million in 2010. As of 2011, India’s literacy rate was around 73% (which was 18% in 1947).

School buildings in neighborhood and free meals were great, but what about learning? Policymakers realized that pupil to teacher ratio (PTR) was skyrocketing (national average of 50.2 in 2000) because teacher recruitment lagged far behind the rapid infrastructural undertaking. Building a school was primarily perceived as onetime expense, and works great politically. Politicians could tell the voters – “we gave you this school!” However, teacher-recruitment was often perceived as a permanent burden on the state budget, and all state (and centre) governments were struggling with high fiscal deficits. To solve this, states started implementing the para-teacher policy (contract-teacher), where teachers are hired on contract bases and on meager salaries. At present, almost all state governments have adopted this policy; and direct teacher-recruitment has been abandoned. There are passionate (and valid) criticisms of this policy especially from educators and teacher unions, but this policy helped bring PTR down (national average of 30.15 in 2010) fairly cheaply.

Now there were school-buildings, teachers, and meals, but policymakers learnt that economic inequality gets translated into educational inequality. Those who can afford, send their kids to private schools. Because the quality of education in public schools is perceived to be of 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). Low performing government schools are likely to have students from lower socio-economic status and high performing elite schools often have all students from higher socio-economic background. In response, Manmohan Singh’s government introduced Right to Education Act in 2009 that guaranteed free public education to all children between ages 6 to 14 and mandated that even the private schools must have 25% of students from low socio-economic background.   

Moreover, there has been a wide-spread concern about the quality of education in the past couple of decades. Many large-scale studies have indicated poor learning outcomes of students across states. To address this concern, Modi-government recently introduced a sub-scheme of SSA called Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat which is aimed at improving reading and mathematics outcomes. Sample based yearly educational assessment by SCERTs in their respective states and by NCERT on nationally representative sample as prescribed by this scheme seems doable. Standardized academic outcomes should help evaluate existing educational programmes and decide future course of policy-action. This may help compare average learning outcomes across years and across schools/blocks/districts. Scientific identification of top performing schools/blocks/districts could help unpack specific components of best practices which can be emulated in other similar social contexts. This scheme also underscores the role of block and cluster administrators and involves them in monitoring and implementation. However, it goes into micro issues and prescribes specific classroom processes that the teacher and school staff need to follow – that seems over ambitious and difficult to gauge. Nonetheless, it is too early to comment on the effectiveness of this scheme. 

  

Based on the above discussion, we can say:

·         Policymakers need well defined outcomes for evaluation of the existing policies. Measurable clear outcomes also provide future policy directions. As we saw in the discussion above how various policies were basically proposed solutions for prevalent critical problems for respective times.

·         We can also conclude that some of the school-education outcomes that are of interest to the policymakers are: 1) number of schools, 2) enrollment-rates, 3) dropout-rates, 4) malnutrition in children, 5) PTR, and 6) math and reading outcomes. In addition, there are numerous sub-indicators like student enrollment and dropout by their background (various socio-economic categories/ gender/ region/ standard), teachers’ educational level and background characteristics, school infrastructural indicators and so on – which the policymakers often use.

Note: The second part of this post is: Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 2

I welcome your comments/questions/rebuttals...

Para-Teacher Policy: Neither Child nor Learning, but Money Centred

Suppose you buy a dog for the security of your home. However, when you wake up the next morning, you find your house to be broken into and the dog sleeping. The dog has not done what it was supposed to do, i.e., to guard your house. So, what would you do next? You may consider getting a better trained guard-dog or establishing a security system. You would do something that makes your home secure, which is the main purpose. But, if you were Indian educational policymaker, you would buy a cat. Two "compelling" arguments: 1) this would be much cheaper, and 2) a cat’s performance will not be worse than your dog’s performance which was a failure.

Believe it or not, but this is what is going on with the “para” teacher (or contract teacher) policy in India. Let me explain:     

          Though India has done well in building primary education schools and observed a rapid rise in enrolment-rates, its educational expansion has generated a great demand for more teachers and has put pressure on most of the state governments for securing funds given that teacher salaries occupy a big portion of education budgets. The Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTR), already high in most states, rose further in the 1990s. The aver­age national PTR for primary and upper primary classes rose from 35.6 in 1950 to 50.2 in year 2000 (Kingdon and Sipahimalani-Rao 2010). In order to deal with teacher shortage in a frugal manner (and to deal with high deficits), state governments across India started recruiting “para” teachers. There is no standard definition of para-teachers, as different states have different recruitment criteria for these teachers. However, it can be loosely defined as teachers appointed on contract and/or on terms and conditions which are different from the regular teachers in primary and upper primary schools (Kingdon and Sipahimalani-Rao 2010). In general, para-teachers are paid much less than regular teachers, and are appointed on temporary basis. However, the proponents of the para-teacher policy focus on the fact that after this policy the average PTR has reduced significantly from 50.2 in 2000 to 30.15 in 2011 (Mehta 2012) fairly cheaply. However, hiring cheaper teachers to reduce PTR is exactly opposite of what educationally high performing countries do. In relative terms, Luxembourg has invested more in smaller class-size through hiring cheaper teachers; whereas South Korea has focused on paying well and hiring highly qualified teachers even at the cost of larger class-size (Schleicher, 2012). It is worth noting that South Korea has been consistently one of the top performing countries in international comparative assessments, while Luxemburg remains an average achiever (based on OECD reports). Therefore, given a choice between hiring high quality teacher and having a smaller class-size, it is preferable to opt for the first option.   

          Nonetheless, some World Bank funded studies suggest that students taught by para-teachers have non-significant achievement difference from those taught by regular teachers. For example, a study conducted by Sankar (2008) used data from 360 schools, 920 teachers and 4,800 students of grade four across three Indian states (i.e., Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh). Controlling for pupils’ home background and school factors, this study found that children taught by para-teachers have slightly lower learning levels than those taught by regular teachers. But, when home background factors were controlled for, the researchers did not find significant difference between the learning achievement levels of students taught by para and regular teachers. Policymakers use such results to argue that the para-teacher policy produces more or less similar learning outcomes in cost-effective manner. However, there is hardly any consideration of deprofessionalization of the teaching profession, deteriorating socio-economic status of teachers, and stagnation in student learning outcomes. Moreover, not a single study explores longitudinal trends to decipher the long-term effects of deprofessionalization of teachers on student learning, and how cost-effective (or costly) that can be for the society as a whole.

It is important to note that para-teachers in India have more or less same duties and responsibilities as regular teachers. Different salary for the same job has been an issue of contention between the teacher unions and policymakers. In addition, most state governments have stopped hiring regular teachers, because the high unemployment-rate in educated youth provides fairly large pool of para-teacher recruits (Kingdon and Sipahimalani-Rao 2010). Apparently, there is a clear case of exploitation of para teachers and of teaching profession, in-general. Recent events of strikes in the state of Jharkhand can be considered as a culmination of frustration in para-teachers. The policy of para-teachers is best criticized in the following statements by Pandey (2006):

“The government itself on pragmatic economic and bureaucratic grounds is justifying the para-teacher scheme. Large scale recruitment of para-teachers within the formal school system and an attitude of resignation towards pre-service programmes have become an integral part of state provisioning for elementary education, which can create serious problems of quality and equity in education, besides creating differential kinds of inequalities among teachers themselves. There is also a general sense of dissatisfaction among various stakeholders that second class options are being passed on to the poorer sections of the society, thereby widening the gap between the rich and well educated and the poor and poorly educated children. By accepting the scheme of para-teachers the government is encouraging the states to evade their responsibilities of building a strong cadre of qualified teachers. The trend has diluted the identity of the teacher as a professional. The para-teacher scheme may serve the purpose of UEE [universal elementary education] in far flung, remote rural and hilly areas as a viable option, but adopting this scheme to replace the regular teachers is detrimental for the quality of education and effectiveness of schools and needs to be avoided” (p.333).

With the introduction of para-teacher policy across India, the policymakers seem to be focused on increasing enrolment-rates, reducing PTR, while controlling for teacher salary budgets. But, improvement of the quality of basic education seems to be out of their focus.   Across 18 Indian states, Education Initiatives (2010) conducted a large scale study (N=160000), in which students of class four, six and eight were sampled from 2399 government schools and were tested in language and mathematics through common-test papers in 13 language versions. In their executive summary, researchers reported –“learning levels are extremely low”. Many other large studies on nationally representative sample have suggested similar conclusions (for e.g., ASER 2005-11). NCERT (2008) collected data from 88,271 students, 10,796 teachers, 4787 schools from 105 districts spread over 27 states and 3 union territories to study learning achievement of students at the end of class five. Results suggested that student achievement was especially poor in mathematics, with 8 states having averaged scores less than 40% (i.e., pass-rate). How will para-teachers perform worse than regular teachers, given that the students’ achievement is already at bottom-levels? Unfortunately, instead of concentrating on achieving the prime objective of quality mass-education, Indian policymakers have focused on finding cheaper ways by replacing regular teachers with para-teachers as both have been ineffective. This is especially troubling given that the Indian Education Commission and the National Policy on Education states that teacher is the single most important factor influencing the quality of education (as suggested in Pandey 2006). India urgently needs a focus-shift on better quality of education. Do whatever it takes, but let’s secure the home.

Reference (not available online): Sankar, Deepa (2008): “Does teacher’s instructional time matter in school effectiveness in improving children’s learning outcomes? A study in three Indian States Using Hierarchical Linear Modelling”, World Bank, New Delhi.