Mechanism for Educational Excellence in India: Towards Solution

As discussed in blog-post entitled, Indian Education: Macro-level Systematic Problems, India needs a mechanism that connects national educational objectives with policy formulation, educational field practices and their continuous evaluation for course correction in policies. In this post, I briefly present a mechanism which may help establish such linkages while gradually decentralizing policy making. Note that the mechanism is not a solution in itself, but a means to collectively find solutions for in-numerous educational problems through informed inquiry.

The Mechanism

Education is primarily a state issue. Therefore, each state may like to set up a team of world-class interdisciplinary researchers for examining effects of potential interventions, evaluating current social/educational programs, and producing policy-relevant research. 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 to this prime responsibility of knowledge production, this team has three other duties: 1) regularly briefing state-level administrators and working closely for policy formulations; 2) engaging with the media and communicating educational issues, interventions, study-results, policies to the common citizens; and 3) developing next generation of researchers who get posted in district-level research teams.

Also, the university faculty members may be encouraged to contribute to this knowledge production through tenure-track that encourages empirical research. The present practice of most Indian universities looking only at the seniority of the faculty member for promotion needs to be re-examined.  Furthermore, the present leadership structure in Indian universities is ill-fitted for the pursuit of excellence and knowledge production. In his lecture on the higher education systems around the world, Prof. Heyneman (PennGSEVideoLab, 2013) made an excellent point explaining the difference between the top ranking American universities and the universities in the developing nations. The leadership structure in top ranking American university is very conducive for continuous pursuit of excellence. The board of visitors (mainly, donors and alumni) appoint the president of the university on contract-bases and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars. In order to get this lucrative job, the highly-skilled candidates have to present institutional goals and action plans for the same – how the institution will achieve and maintain excellence, increase research output, generate required resources and take all stake-holders on board. Therefore, from the day one, the president has a mission and s/he is highly accountable. On the other hand, the appointment of Vice-Chancellors in most of the universities in developing nations (including India) is based on job-seniority, personal influences, or even political loyalties. There is hardly any vision or action-plan presented for the institutional growth. In total, neither the institution leaders nor the faculty members face any negative consequences for not contributing to the knowledge production even at premier institutions.

In the subsequent phases, the research capacity can be developed at district-level and cluster-level to address more specific local issues. Also, states may design policies which encourage districts to develop data-systems and capacity for carrying out data-driven reforms. It may take at least a couple of decades to establish this entire mechanism at cluster-level, but we can eventually have a self-correcting mechanism where research informs policy, which is well connected with the field-practices; and these practices are continuously evaluated. Decentralization could help devise policies which are sensitive to the needs of local context. Note that the centre needs to play an important role in establishing national educational priorities, funding and coordinating various intervention programmes and research, and maintaining uniformity across educational curriculums and minimum standards across states.

In conclusion, a lot of research has already been done in the world. What works elsewhere should never be directly implemented in India, but 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 programmes; interventions promoting learning through inquiry in students; counselling services and special-education programmes; technological interventions; and interventions to encourage parent-involvement – 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. A few educational research institutions that the country is relying on at present are simply incapable of lifting this massive load of improving its mass-education system. India needs to put development of an indigenous pool of policy-relevant knowledge on high priority. If it succeeds in establishing the linkages between knowledge production, policy formulation, and field practices as shown in the Figure 1, it will be one of the major transformational phenomena of this century.

DO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS.

The following video talks about the above mentioned self-correcting mechanism in more detail. Presented by Kathan Shukla (Author of Education in India: A Globian Perspective; & Blogger, Globian Perspective)

 

Please feel free to comment/give feedback and to share with others. 

हिंदी के लिए नीचेका विडियो देखे: 

For Hindi, watch the following video presentation:

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.      

“Unscientific” practices of Educational Boards: why tolerate?

Image Courtesy: Vishal Bhatt: www.facebook.com/wizard.vishal

Most of the educational boards in India conduct examinations at the end of 10^th and 12^th grades. The 10^th grade result plays a big role in narrowing down student’s choice of academic discipline for further studies (e.g., liberal-arts, commerce, or science-stream); whereas the 12^th grade result serves as a criterion (at times, a sole criterion) for the choice of career as well as admission to the higher education institution. Over the years, the board examination system has changed at administrative level with things happening in a more efficient way. However, things were poor, are poor, and are on a path towards poorness when it comes to scientific assessment. Here’s why:

The state boards have never published any of the psychometric properties (e.g., reliability, validity, item discrimination, & difficulty value) of their tests. Perhaps nobody has ever cared for asking for it. Today, through this article, I would like to raise this vital issue and draw your attention to a mass-deception exercise in the form of the “Board Exams” that decides careers of our youth.  

Ten big points for improving the Board Examination:

1.                  Improving Reliability and Validity of Test Items

All tests have these two basic characteristics:

·         Validity: Measure the concepts that we want to measure (i.e., A weighting-machine should measure weight, not any other property).  

·         Reliability: Scores should be consistent for the same competency level of student (i.e., A weighting-machine should show same weight every time we step on it, as long as our weight is constant).

The State Board Examination papers often have test items that are likely to have significantly poor reliability and validity. Moreover, some test items simply measure the memorization of the opinion (and not scientific facts) of text-book authors that has nothing to do with the subject content. Let’s have a look at the following test items, which are taken from Question Bank-2008 of Gujarat Secondary Education Board (Source- http://203.77.200.35/gseb/question-paper.htm).

Towards what Indians have developed the feeling of equality? (Std. 10- Social Science)

   A)     Huge living beings

   B)     Nature

   C)    All living beings

   D)    Animals

Which one is the most valuable asset to human being? (Std. 12- Psychology)

   A)     Money

   B)     Strength

   C)    Mind

   D)    Language

What could be the rationale for above test items? Perhaps, “how well do you remember personal (unscientific) opinions of our authors?” The test maker should check validity and reliability for tests and provide rationale for each test item.

2.      Diminishing Excessive Focus on Lower Cognitive Level

In this era of globalization, where our youth will compete with the best of the world, we got to encourage critical and creative thinking and problem solving skills. Research shows that the teaching methodology of teachers and the learning methods of students greatly depend on the type of final examination (type and quality of questions). Thus, if the majority of our students are choosing rote memorization and superficial learning strategies to crack the State Board examination, something must be wrong with the type of questions being asked. The board exams focus excessively on knowledge and understanding levels of cognition (as per Bloom’s Taxonomy). The students rarely get opportunities to exhibit their in-depth learning driven by mastery oriented goals. Our test items should measure higher levels of cognition as well (i.e., application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation).

Let’s look at the following question taken from March-2010 10^th grade social science test-item.

What is Environmental Degradation? Mention the measures to control Environmental Degradation. (5 marks)

This question is at knowledge-level and requires only good memorization skills to get a full score. How about questioning in the following manner-

Based on your knowledge of social science text book, prepare a detailed plan of action to cope up with the Environmental Degradation in your home town/village/city. (5 marks) 

The above question will demand insightful learning of environmental degradation; and will measure higher levels of cognition. Of course, this will also demand better teaching from teachers. Such test items have potential to break the cycle of poor teaching→ poor learning → poor testing; and encourage students to study for mastering the subject, rather than remembering the content. They will also encourage teachers to facilitate learning, and to critically analyze, evaluate, and discuss issues in the classroom. 

3.      Preparing Tests that Distinguish Students

In the present scenario, the test items are not designed so that they distinguish between a mediocre student, a poor student, and a brilliant student (i.e., discrimination parameter in technical terms). This requires creation of large item pool and thorough item analyses of each item.

4.      Making Difficulty Level Uniform

Many times test paper of one subject is more difficult than that of other subjects. It is a mystery if the difficulty level of a test is analyzed by the test-developers. If the difficulty level of tests of optional subjects is different, it will be unscientific to compare the total scores across exams of these subjects. For example- student “A” has scored 80 in Sanskrit-test, which has lower difficulty level, whereas student “B” has scored 80 in Hindi-test, which has high difficulty level. In such case, the score of 80 in Hindi has higher value than that of in Sanskrit. In current practice, these technicalities are completely ignored.

5.      Rationalizing Time Limits

Many times, some exam-papers are lengthy and some are not. And at times, for two students of same competency level, the difference in their result is determined by their writing speed. Now, should the measurement of writing speed be an objective of the state board examination? We ought to devise the length of exam rationally and uniformly. Do we want to give our students time to critically think, to evaluate, to judge, to analyze, and to apply their knowledge? Or we simply want them to vomit out all rote-learning of the previous night? Have the test developers considered the speeededness factor in analyses?

6.      Establishing Uniform Test Administration

Though tests are administered simultaneously in the entire state, the testing conditions are not uniform. The supervisors are not trained and do not have standardized code of conduct. Thus, it is likely that the students in different exam-halls interact differently with the supervisor. Some supervisor may be proactive and helpful, while others may be sluggish and arrogant. This can severely affect the morale of the test taker. The conditions in which students take examination ought to be standardized. Also, environmental factors (like- temperature, wind/rain), physical distance between students, quality of writing desks, noise level, and supervisor behavior should be controlled uniformly across the state. Thus, someone who takes exam in a private school in Ahmedabad has the same exam-experience as someone writing exam in a remote village of Dang.  In addition, we need to control systematic cheating that takes place in many exam-centers. No student should get “center-advantage” or “center-disadvantage”.

7.      Eliminating Subjective Evaluation and Improving Transparency

Many teachers/ parents/ students/ educationalists keep questioning the credibility of the board examination. Subjective evaluation is one of the major factors hurting the credibility of the test. This is related with the inter-rater reliability of test. The test score should be consistent even if different examiner evaluates the test. We got to study the inter rater reliability of these exams. At the very least, inter-rater reliability coefficient has to be greater than 0.7, given that the stakes are high for students.  We cannot allow mood/ personality/or personal views of examiners to determine the careers of our future citizens.

In addition, the examination system has to be more transparent. The students should have an opportunity to know why their score is cut, and what information is missing. They should also get an opportunity to see the answer-key. Of course, there may not be one right response for an essay type question but a model response should be shared with the students so that they can work on their deficiencies. This will also help teachers to have deeper understanding of what objectives they should consider while teaching.

8.      Accommodating Students with Special needs

Most of the educational boards do not provide information on how they accommodate children with special needs except for blind, or speech/hearing impaired. There is a wide range of children that require support. For example- learning-disabled, emotionally disturbed, autistic, schizophrenic, & intellectually challenged etc. When will we acknowledge that formally in educational system?

9.      Improving Predictive Value

If the result of an examination is to be considered for admission or employment purpose, then such examination should have proven predictive value. Though its results are used for admissions and employment, the board exam is aimed only to measure the present competency of student. It does not predict the future success of student in respective subjects. In simple terms, score of 100 in Physics does not predict that the student will succeed in Physics courses at the University level. Now, if we want the result of this examination to be considered for university admissions/ employment, we may include subject-wise aptitude test like SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) in the US. With help of experts, the board can generate tests of high predictive value. The result of such tests may provide important additional information to the universities/colleges/employers about the natural proclivity of the student towards the subject.

10.  Gradually move on to Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT)

In this era of IT revolution (something that India is proud of), we can no longer carry on laborious  expensive and exhaustive ways of large scale assessment. The boards should devise concrete action plans to move on to CAT. Of course, this will take time (to self-educate, to educate educational administrators/teachers/students/parents and masses and to generate resources). But, there are great advantages of CAT as mentioned below:

·         Facilitating convenience of Students/ Parents

·         Standardize test-administration, higher credibility and scientific testing

·         Better control on systematic cheating

·         Greatly encourage computer literacy into masses

·         Development of testing industry in India

In technical terms, the present practices represent a crude and a bit distorted version of classical testing theory. Research in the field of educational measurement suggests that item response theory (IRT) is superior indeed. Many developed nations have moved on to more scientifically rigorous ways of assessing educational outcomes through IRT. It is a high time for Indian states to begin reforms in this direction as well; else they will be out-educated by developed nations with a great margin. There are endless reasons why India has continued these practices. I am simply not going to dig that up as that will be nothing more than a blame game. But, it is clear; I cannot tolerate the current status quo on this front, can you?