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When children don’t learn in school

Three years ago, Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham, the leading NGO devoted to having every child in school and learning well, told the New York Times, "Now in India, you don''t need to explain to everyone that kids need to go to school.

When children don’t learn in school


Subir Roy

Senior journalist

Three years ago, Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham, the leading NGO devoted to having every child in school and learning well, told the New York Times, "Now in India, you don't need to explain to everyone that kids need to go to school." But driving home the message that a lot remains to be done, she added, "Children need to learn and understand — that has another 10 years to go."

With another report by Pratham's autonomous research unit ASER (Annual Survey of Education Report, 2017) out, a fresh benchmark is available which can aid our understanding of how far India has come in offering "meaningful" education which is different from the achievement recorded in aggregate statistics that the system holds up as its report card. 

The report, subtitled "Beyond Basics", is ideally suited in capturing the dynamic as it covers rural children in the 14-18 age group, whereas earlier reports focused on the 5-16 group. Importantly, it tells you how far the need for education has sunk in by measuring educational achievements after age 14, up to which education is guaranteed by the right to education. 

The good news is that growing youngsters are continuing with education — 86 per cent of rural kids in the 14-18 age group are still in formal education. Also, skills with their own language keep improving. The not-so-good news is that over half are struggling with elementary math, like a simple class-II level division, not to speak of any kind of felicity with English. 

Fleshing out the image of growing youngsters in today's rural India, the report finds that even while remaining within the schooling mainstream, 42 per cent are working, 79 per cent of them in agriculture, mostly in family farms. But that is not where they want to be or what they want to do. Boys want to take up conventional jobs in the police or the army. Girls want to become teachers and nurses.   

Yes, they want to get ahead in life and are highly aspirational, but they lack counselling. They mirror what the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has discovered. The poor illiterate woman took a small loan and made good doing her own thing. Her son, who has a college degree, wants someone to give him a job. He does not have a vision of starting his oven venture which will create jobs for himself and others. 

Further, the system has equipped growing children with knowledge but not the life skills that ready them for jobs. Earlier ASER reports found that children needed help to read and do basic arithmetic. The latest report finds that learning deficits seen in elementary schools seem to get carried forward as children grow. Even after eight years of schooling, a significant portion lacks foundational skills, like reading and arithmetic. This deficit colours aspirations. Sixty per cent want to study beyond class XII but the number gets halved among those who cannot read properly. 

Obviously, children are not taught the right way. This is foremost because of the quality of teachers in government schools. A consultant working with a government programme to help states improve their governance of schools finds a similar picture obtaining in two "Bimaru" states. The system of teachers' education is grossly inadequate. Those applying for jobs have BEd degrees, but little by way of skills. 

Plus, there is a nationwide shortage of teachers. So, states hire contractual teachers who have read maybe up to class XII and are simply picked out of villages. There is a major difference in the pay of the two groups of teachers. Regular teachers earn Rs 40,000-60,000 per month, contractual teachers Rs 10,000-15,000. Governments lack resources, so they can't fill vacancies. Teachers are often on strike, but they are the backbone of the election system and so political parties do not want to displease them or their unions. 

Pedagogy is utterly inadequate as teachers who have learnt by rote can only teach by rote. The aim must be to shift to child-centric education based on continuous and comprehensive evaluation. A key hurdle to cross is children of the same age but different abilities getting clubbed together in the same classroom with a common curriculum. In such a situation, many children learn little and lose interest in school. 

Madhav Chavan, co-founder and president of Pratham, says the key issue is how well we are preparing children to build a better future for themselves and the country. Jobs are becoming scarce everywhere and those available require better and better skills. The problem is highlighted by the percentage of students opting for general degrees (BA, BSc, BCom) remaining the same even as enrollment increases. There are no more useful alternatives! The ultimate failure is that even as the government lays great store by skill development, vocational training has not taken off. It can be useful only when built upon strong basics (foundational skills). 

Chavan's solution is to replace general bachelor's degrees with foundational courses which also impart some vocational skills. The way to get over the issue of youngsters with degrees but inadequate skills is to have independent examinations like the US's TOEFL and GRE to test the students' abilities. They need to comprehend what they read and solve basic problems instead of pouring out what they have learnt by rote. 

So, the report focuses on children's ability to perform simple tasks like counting money, adding weights (by converting between grams and kilos) and telling the time. You need basic arithmetic skills to perform these tasks and also make sense of instructions on labels. What causes anxiety is that even after eight years' schooling, many do not have these skills.

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