The crisis in the Indian Education sytem

The crisis in learning: why increased spending is not improving outc Posted by: "Sheetal - Karmayog" info@karmayog.org Thu Jan 19, 2012 12:22 am (PST) The crisis in learning.....Rukmini Banerji Why isn't increased spending on education translating into better outcomes for children? The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2011 was released on January 16. Data collected from 558 rural districts, over 16,000 villages, 3.3 lakh households and 6.3 lakh children point to two clear national trends. Both of these need to be better understood, as they have important implications for growth and equity in India. First, nearly 50 per cent of rural children (age 6-14) pay for their education either in a private school or to a private tutor and benefit from this personal investment. As far are private inputs into elementary education are concerned, Indian states and regions can be neatly categorised into slabs. On the one hand, states in the northern belt - Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh - have private enrollment levels that are above 30 per cent, and rising. In the Northeast, more than 40 per cent of all rural children in Nagaland, Manipur and Meghalaya are enrolled in private schools. South of the Vindhyas, between 30 to 40 per cent of rural children in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh go to private schools. And then there is Kerala, where children attending government schools are now in a minority (at 40 per cent). On the other hand, there are states like Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal, where private school provision is low and most children attend government schools. Here the additional supplement for learning comes in the form of "tuition" classes . On average, across Std 1-5 close to 50 per cent of all children take paid classes outside of school. Adding together the proportion of children who go to tuition classes along with those who go to private schools we find that half of all children access some form of private education services. The HRD ministry's calculations for 2008-10 suggest that the current average per child expenditure by government is close to Rs 6,314 per year. The budget for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Government of India's flagship scheme for elementary education, has gone from Rs 7166 crore in 2005-2006 to about Rs 21,000 crore last year. Despite the rising expenditures on elementary education, parents seem to be increasingly "voting with their feet" and choosing private options. In the last five years since ASER started its annual measurement, private school enrollment across rural India has gone from 18.7 per cent to 25.6 per cent and some states getting close to the 50-50 mark. If this trend continues, then it is not impossible that in five years, children going to government schools will become a minority in India. The second headline from ASER 2011 has to do with the low level of basic learning outcomes of children, especially in reading and arithmetic. This estimate is half of all children in Std 5 cannot read Std 2-level text. Forty per cent of Std 5 students cannot correctly solve a 2-digit subtraction problem with borrowing. But this is not news anymore. For the last six years, ASER has been reporting similar findings. What is new is the hint that the already low levels may be witnessing a further decline. This year's ASER findings indicate that learning levels are lower as compared to last year, especially in government schools in the Hindi-speaking states. Domestic efforts at measurement of learning outcomes such as the annual ASER surveys, periodic studies by Educational Initiatives and NCERT are increasing. There is also an accumulating body of research by internationally known academics such as Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Karthik Muralidharan and Lant Pritchett. Taken together, these point to a serious and deep crisis in learning in primary schools. The recent, much publicised PISA 2009+ result is the latest addition to the list. Many of these studies go beyond pointing to the problem, they also outline what "works". The growing body of empirical evidence shows that the increased expenditures in education are not translating into better outcomes. Yet, the Central government remains steadfastly focused on inputs and outputs and does not seem able or willing to bring issues of children's learning to the centre of the stage either in policy or in practice. There is no shift towards tackling the problem of low learning in a direct manner. Nor is there any effort to understand how expenditures can be made more effective in terms of learning outcomes. In a way, the provisions and norms of the RTE are used to justify the continued thrust on inputs. Much of the substance of the results framework of the annual planning documents in elementary education continue to be concerned with infrastructure, teacher recruitment and training. There is only a fleeting mention of reporting of learning outcomes towards the fag end of the list. In the SSA planning documents, there are only two line items where states and districts can directly plan and implement learning improvement programmes if they should wish to do so. These are (a) the innovation grant of Rs 1 crore per district, and (b) the learning enhancement programme. Together these account for less than 1 per cent of the total education budget (and 3 per cent of SSA budget in 2010-11). Expenditure tracking efforts by Accountability Initiative indicate that these expenditures are slow and tend to happen towards the end of the financial year (which is also the end of the school year). Expenditure on teacher training is about 2 per cent of the total SSA budget in 2010-11. Given the current guidelines by Government of India, it is not clear how a massive push for improvement of learning outcomes will be fuelled, if at all the government at any level should want to do so. The writing on the wall is clear and it is getting bigger and bolder each year. Ordinary people are able to read it. People are voting with their feet and trying to effectively use the resources they have to get the "best" education their money can buy. But policy makers and planners and those who control the expenditure of public funds on education are either unable or unwilling to read this writing on the wall. Without basic education, the future of children is grim. If 100 million children today do not get even the basic skills of reading and arithmetic, it is unlikely that India will grow into a mature economy or a mature democracy. The right to education promises many things. In addition to teachers in every class, drinking water, boundary walls and so on, it speaks of quality education at the appropriate age-grade for all children. By just providing inputs we are not bringing in equity. Unless the entire expenditure and the effort behind the provision of schooling is translated effectively into learning outcomes, the real battle for equal opportunity will be lost and our large and growing public expenditure in education wasted. The writer works with Pratham and ASER Centre URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-crisis-in-learning/901183/0