Education in India

Periscope 7 - 50 new DTH channels for Higher Ed, Open Schooling, New Education Commission, Higher Ed GER, Expenditure on IITs

• "Starting nearly 50 DTH channels for Higher Education in the Country within the XI Plan period has occupied a high place under the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) at present. MHRD’s request to ISRO for providing 2 transponders has been noted by ISRO and sent to the INSAT Coordination Committee. NMEICT has an allocation of Rs. 120 crore for the DTH channels to begin with." Source: Lok Sabha UnStarred Question No. 3397 Answered on 14.12.2011

Since the Minister's reply says it will be done within the XI plan period, the channels should be in place before the end of 2012. Sounds unrealistic. The NMEICT, in its mission document, had listed as one of its 48 ambitious objectives, 

34. Content delivery through EduSAT and narrowcasting of TV signals. Providing 1000 DTH (Direct to Home) channels on 40 transponders [to be availed through the Department. of Space] so that a separate DTH channel is available for every subject for every class in various languages to the extent possible.

• Data on enrollment and expenditure in National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS): Enrollments are much lower than I thought.  NIOS also enrolls students in 15 overseas centres of NIOS in UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Nepal. Source: Lok Sabha Starred Question No. 381 Answered on 21.12.2011

Year	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12 (Upto Oct 31st)
Total Learners Enrolled	4,38,906	4,93,091	3,66,539
Learners from minority communities enrolled	88,983	92,185	62,696
% of minority community enrolled	20%	19%	17%
	Rs. in Crores	Rs. in Crores	Rs. in Crores
Budget: Plan Funds from Govt of India	15.00	11.25	15.00
Budget: Income Generated by NIOS	89.35	99.07	40.83
Expenditure: Plan Funds from Govt of India	11.61	8.19	6.02
Expenditure: Income Generated by NIOS	69.75	71.98	37.15

A recent report on the Development of the State Open Schools in India by T. Rajagopalan, erstwhile Education Correspondent of The Hindu, concludes that it is well nigh impossible to achieve the goal of Education for All through the formal education system alone or even the National Open School system alone. Rajagopalan says although the State Open Schools have an important role to play, the policy establishment pays only lip service to expanding educational opportunities and seems least interested in consolidating and strengthening the open school system in the states.

• New Education Commission: "In pursuance of the announcement made by the Prime Minister on 15th August, 2011, Government has decided to set up an Education Commission to make recommendations for improvement at all levels of education. The Constitution and Terms of Reference of the proposed Commission is being finalized by the Government after wide consultations." Source: Lok Sabha UnStarred Question No. 4492 Answered on 21.12.2011. Other than the news reports based on the PM's August 15th speech, I could find no other mention on any of the Government-related web sites on the setting up of the new education commission, but apparently they're working on it.

• Data on government expenditure on education as % of total government expenditure and also breakdown by segment within education. Note: This is NOT expenditure on education as a percent of GDP Source: Lok Sabha UnStarred Question No. 4500 Answered on 21.12.2011
  

	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
% of total budget allocated to MHRD	5.16%	4.36%	4.50%

Sector	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
Elementary Education	56.32%	48.75%	50.23%
Secondary Education	14.45%	15.57%	13.71%
Adult Education	1.17%	1.02%	2.61%
Higher Education (Including Technical & Other)	28.05%	34.66%	33.45%
Total	100.00%	100.00%	100.00%

• "The average annual expenditure per student in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is Rs. 2.82 lakhs, the tuition fees uniformly payable for under-graduate programmes by each student is Rs. 25,000 per semester.

The Council of the IITs, in its 43rd meeting held on 14th September, 2011, accepted ‘in principle’ the report of Dr. Anil Kakodkar Committee on the road map for enhancing the autonomy of the IIT system which has recommended, inter-alia, that while the students' scholarships, capital and infrastructure expenditure may continue to be met fully by the Government, the IITs may meet, on their own, the operational expenditure. Thus, while the capital costs may be taken care of by the Government, the student of under graduate programme may pay enhanced fee towards the recurring cost of education on getting employed, which is justifiable on the grounds of earning potential of an IIT graduate. An empowered Task Force has been constituted for implementation of the Committee’s recommendations. " Source: Lok Sabha UnStarred Question No. 4520 Answered on 21.12.2011

It is unclear from the statement if the annual expenditure of Rs. 2.82 lakhs includes both capital and operational expense per student or only operational expense per student. If the latter, the gulf between annual expenditure per student (Rs. 2.82 lakhs) and tuition fees paid per year (Rs. 50,000) by each student is substantial. If annual operational costs have to be recovered by the IITs through fees alone, the fees will have to rise by over 500%!

 

• "Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of students enrolled in higher education as a percentage of the population in the age group of 18-23 years in 2009-10(Provisional) is 15.0 (All Categories), 11.1 (Scheduled Caste) and 10.3 (Scheduled Tribe)." Source: Lok Sabha UnStarred Question No. 4593 Answered on 21.12.2011

Statewise 2009-10 Provisional GER data was also provided - Delhi (47.9) is the highest followed by Uttarakhand (36.0), Puducherry (29.1), Goa (28.3), Chandigarh (28.0). The GER for larger states Himchal Pradesh (23.9), Maharashtra (21.4), Chattisgarh (20.0), Tamil Nadu (19.0), Karnataka (18.1), Andhra Pradesh (16.9), Madhya Pradesh (14.9), West Bengal (11.9) and Uttar Pradesh (10.9) is lower. 

Want to look at the PISA test questions and try them out yourself?

Sample questions from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests have been published by the OECD, the organisation that conducts the tests. Check out the questions. 

If your children are about 15 years old or more, you could ask them to try out the sample questions and see how they fare. Teachers may also like to try them out. It would be interesting to find out what teachers think of the level of these questions and the capability of their students to answer them. 

The list has sample questions from the field trials and the actual PISA tests administered in 2000, 2003 and 2006 including questions testing reading literacy, mathematical literacy, and scientific literacy. The detailed answer keys to all the questions are also provided.

For some of the questions used in the actual PISA tests in past years, country-wise data on the percentage of children that got the answer right is also provided.

I think students studying in English medium schools in India would find the questions that test reading literacy quite challenging. In many English medium schools in India I doubt if the students are as fluent in English as they ought to be, despite English being the medium of instruction. I haven't come across the samples of questions adminstered in Tamil or Hindi during the 2009+ cycle of tests in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh. It would be interesting to look at samples of those. But in any case, the average test scores of those children in India who took the PISA 2009+ tests in their own first langauge were a bit lower than those who took the test in a language different from their first language (presumably, English was the language the latter took the test in). Reading literacy may be an issue even for students in schools where the local langauge is the medium of instruction.

If reading and comprehension is a problem, then students are likely to find the questions that test mathematical and scientific literacy challenging too, even if they may be good at math and science. 

We may be failing to build reading and comprehension skills as well as we ought to, whether in the local langauge or English. We need to figure out why we are not doing well on that front and what we can do differently to build those skills. Lack of reading and comprehension skills may be one of the reasons for the poor show in the PISA 2009+ cycle of tests by students in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

 

Aside 1: You can also try out examples of computer-based questions to test reading of digital texts, mathematical and problem solving skills. These have been tried out in a few countries during the 2009 cycle and will be tried out in the upcoming 2012 PISA cycle too, in some countries.

Aside 2: While only Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh participated in the 2009+ cycle of PISA tests, more states in India will be participating in the 2012 cycle of PISA tests.

India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Results from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

The detailed report on the PISA 2009+ cycle of tests including the results for the pilot in India in the states of Tamil Nadu (TN) and Himachal Pradesh (HP) has been published by the Australian Council for Educational Research, which conducted the PISA 2009+ Cycle of tests. The entire database is also accessible online in an interactive manner for slicing and dicing the data (look for QTN and QHP in the countries list).

For perspective and comparison with HP and TN, I have picked the top three in the PISA results - Shanghai-China, South Korea and Finland and also USA as a large country (in geography and population terms) and a few other countries like Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and Argentina as emerging economies with large populations. Of all these countries, four of them, Finland, Mexico, Turkey and USA are part of the OECD. The OECD average is also provided - it is the arithmetic mean of the estimates for the 34 OECD countries that participated in PISA 2009.

Here're some results based on the report:

Extracts from Table B.2.1: Comparing countries’ performance in reading (p 105)

The last column indicates the % of students having proficiency in reading literacy above the baseline level to participate effectively and productively in life (Table B.2.2, p 109). There are seven proficiency levels in reading (Tables 2.2 to 2.6 p 15-17), ranging from Level 6, the highest level, involving sophisticated reading tasks that are generally only able to be completed by highly competent readers; through to Level 1b, involving elementary tasks that require only very basic reading skills. Level 2 is considered the baseline level of proficiency at which students begin to demonstrate the reading skills that will enable them to participate effectively and productively in life.

	Mean	S.E.	Confidence Interval	5th Percentile	S.E. of 5th Percentile	95th Percentile	S.E. of 95th Percentile	% at or over baseline
Himachal Pradesh	317	4	309 - 325	192	6.9	443	8.5	10.8
Tamil Nadu	337	5.5	326 - 347	211	4.5	472	14.4	17.3
OECD Average	493	0.5	492 - 494	332	1	637	0.7	81.2
Shanghai-China	556	2.4	551 - 561	417	5.2	679	3.3	95.9
South Korea	539	3.5	532 - 546	400	7.6	658	3.8	94.2
Finland	536	2.3	531 - 540	382	3.4	666	2.6	91.9
USA	500	3.7	493 - 507	339	4.2	656	5.8	82.4
Brazil	412	2.7	406 - 417	262	3	572	4.6	50.4
Russian Federation	459	3.3	453 - 466	310	5.8	607	5.6	72.6
Indonesia	402	3.7	394 - 409	291	5.8	510	5.8	46.6
Mexico	425	2	421 - 429	281	3.9	557	2.4	59.9
Turkey	464	3.5	457 - 471	325	5.1	596	5.4	75.5
Argentina	398	4.6	389 - 407	209	11.3	568	6.7	48.4

The OECD mean reading score is 493 with a standard deviation of 93. The mean reading scores of both HP and TN are 1.7 standard deviations below the OECD mean. Even the 95th percentile scores in HP and TN are below the OECD mean.  HP and TN rank significantly lower than the other emerging economies too.

The other metric of  the percentage of students at or above the baseline level of proficiency is abysmally low in HP (11%) and TN (17%), and a serious cause for concern. While the OECD average is 81%, the percentage of students at or above the baseline level in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina is in the 50% range. These countries seem to be far better off than HP and TN.

There may be a reason for this. In response to the question posed to students "What language do you speak at home most of the time?", the options being (1) the language of the test or (2) another language, a substantial majority of students said they spoke the language of the test at home in many countries - Finland (95.63%), Mexico (95.48%), Turkey (95.57%), USA (85.56%), Argentina (95.38%), Brazil (96.72%), Russian Federation (90.12%) and Shanghai-China (98.41%). But the corresponding numbers were much lower for Tamil Nadu (67.53%) and Himachal Pradesh (60.5%). I have only picked a few countries for comparison and have not looked at these numbers for all the other countries. Click here for the data.

One might think the low reading scores for TN and HP may be due to the fact that they were being tested in a language that was not their native language. Apparently the PISA 2009+ tests were administered in English, Hindi and Tamil in India (Source p 6). But surprisingly, the test scores of children in both Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh who said the test language was not their first language were higher than the scores of children who said the test language was their first language!

To a similar question posed to schools "About how many students in <national modal grade for 15-year-olds> in your school have a <first language> that is not <the test language>?", the options being (1) 60% or more, (2) 40% to 60%, (3) 20% to 40%, (4) 10% to 20%, (5) 0% to 10%, only a very small percentage of schools said over 60% of students had a first language that is not the test language in many countries- Finland (0.06%), Mexico (5.22%), USA (5.65%), Argentina (1.48%), Brazil (1.67%), Russian Federation (11.01%). In contrast, the corresponding numbers were far higher for Tamil Nadu (75.46%) and Himachal Pradesh (82.76%). Click here for the data.

Another set of data also need to be examined in this context. The scores of students in those schools that offered significant amount of instruction in the first language to students whose first language was not the test language and the scores of students in those schools that offered some some instruction in school subjects through the first language to students whose first language was not the test language.

I'm unable to understand the relationship between the scores, the first language and the test language - other experts may be able to throw some light. There may be an issue about the medium of instruction and the medium of testing for children in India leading to a comprehension problem. This merits further investigation before the PISA 2012 series of tests are administered.

Extracts from Table B.3.1: Comparing countries’ performance in mathematics (p 121)

The last column indicates the % of students having proficiency in mathematical literacy above the baseline level to participate effectively and productively in life (Table B.3.2, p 124). There are six proficiency levels in mathematical literacy (Table 3.2 p 43) ranging from Level 6 (involving advanced mathematical skills and reasoning) through to Level 1 (involving routine mathematical tasks and procedures). Level 2 is considered the baseline level of proficiency at which students begin to demonstrate the mathematical skills that will enable them to participate effectively and productively in life.

	Mean	S.E.	Confidence Interval	5th Percentile	S.E. of 5th Percentile	95th Percentile	S.E. of 95th Percentile	% at or over baseline
Himachal Pradesh	338	4.2	330 - 347	223	6.8	458	8.8	11.9
Tamil Nadu	351	5.1	341 - 361	241	6.6	468	13.8	15.2
OECD Average	496	0.5	495 - 497	343	0.9	643	0.8	78
Brazil	386	2.4	381 - 390	261	3	531	5.9	30.9
Shanghai-China	600	2.8	595 - 606	421	7.1	757	4.6	95.2
South Korea	546	4	538 - 554	397	8.4	689	6.5	91.9
Finland	541	2.2	536 - 545	399	4.4	669	3.6	92.2
USA	487	3.6	480 - 494	337	4.3	637	5.9	76.6
Russian Federation	468	3.3	461 - 474	329	5.1	609	7.2	71.5
Indonesia	371	3.7	364 - 379	260	4.9	493	8.6	23.4
Mexico	419	1.8	415 - 422	289	3.2	547	3.3	49.2
Turkey	445	4.4	437 - 454	304	5.2	613	12.2	57.8
Argentina	388	4.1	380 - 396	231	7.9	543	7	36.4

The OECD mean mathematics score is 496 with a standard deviation of 92. The mean mathematics scores of both HP and TN are 1.6 standard deviations below the OECD mean. Even the 95th percentile scores in HP and TN are below the OECD mean.  Compared to the other emerging economies, HP and TN rank significantly lower.

The other metric of percentage of students at or above the baseline level of proficiency is abysmally low in HP (12%) and TN (15%), and a serious cause for concern. While the OECD average is 78%, the percentage of students at or above the baseline level in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina is in the 23%-30% range. These countries seem to be just a bit better off than HP and TN in mathematical literacy.

Extracts from Table B.3.3: Comparing countries’ performance in science (p 126)

The last column indicates the % of students having proficiency in scientific literacy above the baseline level to participate effectively and productively in life (Table B.3.4, p 129). There are six proficiency levels in scientific literacy (Table 3.4 p 54) ranging from Level 6 (involving the application of scientific knowledge and knowledge about science to complex life situations) through to Level 1 (where the tasks require only limited scientific knowledge to be applied to familiar situations). Level 2 is considered the baseline level of proficiency at which students begin to demonstrate the science competencies  that will enable them to participate actively in life situations related to science and technology.

	Mean	S.E.	Confidence Interval	5th Percentile	S.E. of 5th Percentile	95th Percentile	S.E. of 95th Percentile	% at or over baseline (Table B.3.4)
Himachal Pradesh	325	4.2	317 - 333	209	6.8	450	11.1	11.2
Tamil Nadu	348	4.2	340 - 357	252	4.3	461	12.1	15.5
OECD Average	501	0.5	500 - 502	341	1	649	0.7	82
Brazil	405	2.4	401 - 410	275	3.5	554	4.8	45.8
Shanghai-China	575	2.3	570 - 579	430	4.9	700	3.3	96.8
South Korea	538	3.4	531 - 545	399	6.5	665	4.8	93.7
Finland	554	2.3	550 - 559	400	4.2	694	3.6	94
USA	502	3.6	495 - 509	341	4.8	662	6.7	81.9
Russian Federation	478	3.3	472 - 485	331	5.8	628	5.2	78
Indonesia	383	3.8	375 - 390	272	5.4	499	5.4	34.4
Mexico	416	1.8	412 - 419	291	2.8	544	2.8	52.7
Turkey	454	3.6	447 - 461	322	5	587	6.4	47.6
Argentina	401	4.6	392 - 410	228	10.6	564	7.9	70.1

The OECD mean science score is 501 with a standard deviation of 94. The mean science scores of both HP and TN are 1.6 standard deviations below the OECD mean. Even the 95th percentile scores in HP and TN are below the OECD mean.  Compared to the other developing economies, HP and TN rank significantly lower.

The other metric of percentage of students at or above the baseline level or proficiency is abysmally low in HP (11%) and TN (16%), and a serious cause for concern. While the OECD average is 82%, the percentage of students at or above the baseline level in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina is in the 34%-70% range. These countries, especially Argentina (70%) seem to be far better off than HP and TN in scientific literacy.  

Visible, but unseen so far - what do we make of the PISA 2009+ results in HP and TN?

Despite the caveats about the quality issues in adminstering the PISA tests in India, the results need to be taken seriously. There is no doubt that our children are being tuned towards rote-memorization and are unable to comprehend or understand well enough and reason out. The ASER reports published annually by Pratham and the periodic reports put out by Educational Initiatives have been telling us as much for years.

The PISA 2009+ results provide us an opportunity to crystallise reform. Although we knew things aren't good, we have shied away from figuring out how bad they are. We can't do that anymore. Knowing that we are at the bottom of the list of 74 countries leaves us no room for denying the reality on the grounds that there is no data that says things are bad. The PISA 2012 cycle is only likely to show us how much worse it is when the data from all the other states are also available.

I hope we won't shoot the messenger and question the motives of the OECD which organises the PISA tests or worse, go into a shell and refuse to participate in the 2012 PISA cycle. It would be interesting to see what the MHRD has to say about the PISA results. I am waiting for an MP to ask a question about this in Parliament. The question will need to be phrased cleverly, or else the Minister will get away by saying nothing meaningful.

To improve, we will need to embark on serious and sustained assessment and exam reform to change the way we evaluate what students have learnt. If we begin testing for comprehension, understanding and the ability to think and reason out, there will be an incentive for schools, teachers and students to work towards honing those skills rather than the ability to reproduce the precise expected answer. Exam reform will also require changing the way things students are taught in a classroom and as a result teacher education as well. It will take many years to turn the system around, given the huge inbuilt inertia. But there is no alternative to the long hard way.

 

Dependence of students' scores on student and school characteristics

The detailed report also describes the variation of student scores as a function of various parameters to try and identify the factors that may be responsible for some students doing better on the tests. I've looked at the data on a couple of such parameters below.

Public Schools vs Private Schools

An index of school type is constructed by combining a classification of the school as public or private and the proportion of core funding received from government agencies. A public school is defined in PISA as one that is managed directly or indirectly by a public education authority, government agency, or governing board appointed by government or elected by public franchise. A government-independent private school is classified as one that is not managed by a government agency and receives less than 50% of its core funding from government agencies.

				Reading	Reading	Mathematics	Mathematics	Science	Science
Country	Category	%	%SE	Mean	SE	Mean	SE	Mean	SE
Himachal Pradesh	Public	85.07	3.08	310	5.41	331	5.45	317	5.84
Himachal Pradesh	Private	14.93	3.08	356	14.57	379	12.01	372	14.86
Himachal Pradesh	m	a	a	a	a	a	a	a	a
Tamil Nadu	Public	60.1	3.32	325	6.72	334	6.09	339	5
Tamil Nadu	Private	39.9	3.32	356	9.84	378	8.33	365	7.62
Tamil Nadu	m	a	a	a	a	a	a	a	a
OECD Average	Public	81.9	0.3	488	0.63	491	0.64	496	0.67
OECD Average	Private	17.85	0.3	518	2.02	519	2.04	525	1.93
OECD Average	m	1.17	0.36	444	5.18	452	8.47	458	6.11

m - Missing or invalid response category (this category is excluded from computations of group percentages in the international report)

a - The category does not apply in the country concerned. Data therefore missing

The mean scores of students in public schools can be compared to those in private schools through the response to a question posed to schools  "Is your school a public or a private school?". In almost all countries in the set that I looked at, students in private schools seem to have done better than students in public schools, except for Indonesia where students in public schools did better.

Students in private schools did better in Tamil Nadu (40% of schools tested were private schools) and Himachal Pradesh (15% of schools tested were private schools) too. Click here for the data.

Reading Habits of Students

The 15-year-old student populations in Tamil Nadu-India and Himachal Pradesh-India were estimated to have among the lowest reading literacy levels of the PISA 2009 and PISA 2009+ participants with more than 80% of students below the baseline of proficiency. Around one-fifth of students in these economies are very poor readers.

Students were assigned a reader profile based on their self-report to questions on two dimensions: effective learning strategies; and frequency of reading a range of materials.

Students with high levels of effective learning strategies were classified as ‘deep’ readers, while those with low levels of learning strategies were classified as ‘surface’ readers. Additionally, students who indicated they read a range of materials regularly were classified as ‘wide’ readers, those who indicated they only read magazines or newspapers regularly were classified as ‘narrow’ readers, and those who indicated they did not read any materials regularly were classified as ‘highly restricted’ readers.

Table 4.9 (p 93)

	Deep and Wide Readers		Deep and Narrow Readers		Deep and highly restricted readers		Surface and wide readers		Surface and deep readers		Surface and highly restricted readers
Country or economy	%	Score	%	Score	%	Score	%	Score	%	Score	%	Score
Himachal Pradesh	32	321	16	327	18	317	18	311	7	319	9	296
Tamil Nadu	13	360	10	366	14	321	22	336	17	342	23	313
OECD Average	19	546	25	506	29	504	5	462	10	440	13	427

Socioeconomic and Cultural Status

In PISA 2009 an index of social, economic and cultural status was constructed (ESCS). The data used to construct the index came from responses to a variety of items within the student questionnaire. These items included parental levels of education, parental occupation, the number of books in the home and a variety of items measuring family wealth, the presence of cultural possessions in the home, and the presence of educational resources in the home. This index is used in models presented subsequently in this chapter to unpack the amount of variance in performance that is, firstly, due to social, economic and cultural factors; and secondly, due to school level factors.

The socioeconomic profiles of Tamil Nadu-India and Himachal Pradesh-India are very similar (Figure 4.9 p 78). Both populations have low socioeconomic status relative to the OECD average. Socioeconomic status is not a strong predictor of reading performance, as measured by PISA, in these populations

Other indices that summarise responses from students, their parents or school representatives (typically principals) to a series of questions

Student scores can also be compared across a variety of other factors including:

student age, occupational status or parents, educational level of parents, language background, family structure, family wealth (whether students had the following at home: a room of their own, a link to the Internet, a dishwasher (treated as a country-specific item), a DVD player, and three other country-specific items (some items in ST20); and their responses on the number of cellular phones, televisions, computers, cars and the rooms with a bath or shower), home educational resources (whether students had the following resources at home: a desk and a quiet place to study, a computer that students can use for schoolwork, educational software, books to help with students’ school work, technical reference books and a dictionary) and cultural possessions (whether students had the following at home: classic literature, books of poetry and works of art),

relative grade of the students, learning time in school in the test language,  students' reading habits and activities, students' approaches to learning, students' attitudes towards school, students' perception of teachers, students' perception of the disciplinary climate in school, students' reports on teacher stimulation of reading, students' reports of how their language of instruction was taught by the teachers, students' use of libraries, students' reports on how they understood and memorised the text,

school and class size, student teacher ratio, proportion of girls enrolled, availability of computers in school, number of teachers, basis for admission to the school, whether resource allocation and curriculum and assessment policies were decided at the school level or at a higher level, teacher shortage, extracurricular activities in the school, student behaviour and teacher behaviour.

There is a wealth of data on all these indices made available in the detailed report on the PISA 2009+ cycle of test as well as the entire database that is accessible online. I have only been able to parse a small segment of the data as described above. There is much more to be gleaned from the data, if you are interested and motivated enough to dig through.

In other posts, I had looked at

• Programme for International Student Assessment: What? Why? How?
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: The Process
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Terminology & Caveats

 

 

India's participation in PISA 2009+ Cycle: Terminology and Caveats

There are many terms and concepts used in the PISA 2009+ report, which also lays out some caveats in interpreting the results, for Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in particular. This post looks at the terminology and the caveats described in the detailed report on the PISA 2009+ cycle of tests on the results for the pilot in India in the states of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

Terminology (quoting from the report)

• Proficiency levels. To help interpret what students’ scores mean in substantive terms, the scale is divided into bands or levels (based on a set of statistical principles) and then descriptions are generated (based on the tasks that are located within each level) to describe the kinds of skills and knowledge needed to successfully complete those tasks.
  For PISA 2009, the range of difficulty of tasks allows for the description of seven levels of reading proficiency: the range of difficulty of tasks allows for the description of seven levels of reading proficiency: Level 1b requires the lowest proficiency, then Level 1a, Level 2, Level 3 and so on up to Level 6. Students with a proficiency estimated to be within the range of Level 1b are likely to be able to successfully complete Level 1b tasks, but are unlikely to be able to complete tasks at higher levels. Level 6 reflects tasks that present the greatest challenge in terms of skills and knowledge. Students with scores in this range in reading are likely to be able to complete reading tasks located at that level successfully, as well as all the other reading tasks in PISA. The mathematics and science scales are divided into six proficiency levels, from Level 1 (least proficient) to Level 6 (most proficient). (p 5)
• Baseline level of proficiency: Level 2 is considered a baseline level of proficiency at which students begin to demonstrate the skills that will enable them to participate effectively and productively in life. The percent of students at or above the baseline level of proficiency is the percentage of students at or above Level 2.
• Confidence levels: The statistics in this report represent estimates of national performance based on samples of students, rather than values that could be calculated if every student in every country had answered every question. Consequently, it is important to measure the degree of uncertainty of the estimates. The use of confidence intervals provides a way to make inferences about the population means and proportions in a manner that reflects the uncertainty introduced through the sampling of students, and for the tests, the use of a small set of items. From an observed sample statistic it can be inferred that the corresponding population result would lie within the confidence interval in 95 out of 100 replications of the measurement on different samples drawn from the same population. (p 100)
• Standard error: Each estimate has an associated degree of uncertainty, which is expressed through a standard error. The standard errors for most of the statistics used in this report are provided in the data tables within Appendix B (abbreviated as S.E.). Standard errors are used to construct the confidence interval. A 95% confidence interval around a statistic is calculated as the statistics value +/- 1.96 × the standard error. (p 100)
• Statistical Significance: In the tables, figures and text of this report, differences are labelled or described as statistically significant when a difference of that size or greater would be observed less than 5% of the time in a similar sample drawn from the same population, if there were actually no difference in the corresponding population. Where observed differences do not meet this criterion, they are described as being not statistically significantly different, or as ‘statistically the same’. (p 4)
• PISA student populations:
  Total population of 15-year-olds is an estimate of the number of 15-year-olds in the country/economy, including those who are not attending educational institutions.
  Total population 15-year-olds enrolled in grade 7 or above is the estimate of the PISA eligible population.
  Total in national desired population refers to the number of students from the PISA eligible population who are potentially included as part of the PISA sample.
• Equity of outcomes within countries: the degree to which there is equality of outcomes among student subpopulations including analyis of
  - the differences in educational outcomes between boys and girls;
  - the relationship between socioeconomic background and educational outcomes; and
  - the relationships between school policies and practice and educational outcomes.
• OECD average is the arithmetic mean of the estimates for the 34 OECD countries that participated in PISA 2009. Each country contributes equally to the calculation of the OECD average, regardless of the number of 15-year-olds in its population.

Caveats (quoting from the report)

There seem to have been many issues in the population data provided and the student sampling in Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Tamil Nadu (TN) during the PISA 2009+ cycle. The report lays out the caveats in interpreting the data from these two states in India:

Executive Summary (page xii)
Ten additional partner participants who were unable to participate within the PISA 2009 project timeframe participated in the PISA 2009 study on a reduced and delayed timeline. This is known as the PISA 2009+ project. The ten PISA 2009+ participants administered the same assessments as their PISA 2009 counterparts, the only difference being that the assessments were administered in 2010. The PISA 2009+ countries or economies were adjudicated against the same technical and quality standards as their PISA 2009 counterparts*.

* Himachal Pradesh-India, Miranda-Venezuela and Tamil Nadu-India did not meet all PISA standards (for student sampling) and their results should be interpreted with caution. See ‘Sampling outcomes’ in Appendix A for details.

Data on student populations and exclusions were not supplied or were of insufficient quality to report the following for  Himachal Pradesh-India and Tamil Nadu-India [Appendix A - page 101, Table A.2 - Population Coverage Indices - page 102]:
- the number of 15-year-olds in the country/economy, including those who are not attending educational institutions,
- population of 15-year-olds enrolled in grade 7 or above which is the estimate of the PISA eligible population
- number of students from the PISA eligible population who are potentially included as part of the PISA sample

Himachal Pradesh-India and Tamil Nadu-India did not meet PISA standards for student sampling. Due to irregularities in the student sample numbers, it was established after the testing that these economies sampled from student lists that were often incomplete: not all 15-year-olds within the school were listed. It was not possible to determine whether any bias existed in the obtained sample. Caution should be exercised when using the data from Himachal Pradesh-India or Tamil Nadu-India and when interpreting the reported analyses. [Appendix A - Table A. 4 - Student Response Rates & Sample Size - page 104]

In other posts, I had looked at

• Programme for International Student Assessment: What? Why? How?
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: The Process
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Results from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

 

 

India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: The Process

The Indian Government seems to have been reluctant initially to participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. In reply to a question in Parliament on March 10th, 2008 by Rajya Sabha MP, Rahul Bajaj on the reasons for India not participating in the PISA tests, Arjun Singh, the then Minister for HRD, didn't answer the question, but instead responded saying,

The Government of India conducts its own pupil learning achievement surveys under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) through National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) aimed to track changes in learning achievement levels of students and to give a national picture of the status of students learning levels. NCERT conducted such sample surveys for Class V in 2002-03, for Class III and Class VII/VIII in 2003-04 and for Class-V in 2006-07. The NCERT surveys cover a representative sample of students across districts.

Subsequently, the government seems to have changed its mind and decided to participate in the PISA tests on a pilot basis. In NCERT's Annual Report for 2008-09 (p117), there is a mention of Prof. Avtar Singh of NCERT  attending the National Project Managers Meeting of PISA 2009 cycle at Frankfurt in February 2009. To my knowledge, there is no other mention of PISA on any of the government web sites or documents.

By the time India and eight other countries decided to participate in the PISA tests in the 2009 cycle, 65 countries had already completed the testing in the 2009 cycle. So these nine countries participating for the first time conducted the PISA tests in a separate round termed the PISA 2009+ cycle.

A February 2011 report by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) office in India on the preparation for conducting the PISA tests in the two states in India as part of the 2009+ round provides some context and background.

In 2009 PISA cycle, 65 countries (32 member and 33 non member) participated. In India after continuous deliberation among the leading educational policy making institutes like MHRD, NCERT, NUEPA, CBSE and development partners like World Bank, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between OECD and MHRD regarding India’s participation in PISA in 2009 plus cycle. As it was late for any country to participate in PISA, a new timeline was developed to accommodate India and eight other countries (Georgia, Costa Rica, Mauritius, Malaysia, Moldova, Venezuela (Miranda), Malta, UAE (except Dubai). Initially it was suggested, India was to participate in PISA with four states but on further deliberations it was decided that only two Indian states (Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) will participate in this prestigious activity.

World Bank contracted Australian Council for Educational Research (India) to support NCERT in conducting PISA 2009 plus in India in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu for training of personnel involve in field administration (school coordinator & test administrator), quality monitoring of field administration, training of coders and supervision of coding activities.

In India, PISA is administered in three languages i.e., English, Hindi and Tamil.

There are more details in the ACER India report on how personnel were trained to administer the PISA tests in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, how quality was monitored and the challenges faced in adminstering the PISA tests in India for the first time. Around 16,000 students from 400 schools in these two states were tested as part of the PISA 2009+ cycle of tests.

In an earlier post, I had looked at PISA: What? Why? How? and in the next post, I will look at the results of the PISA 2009+tests in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

In other posts, I had looked at

• Programme for International Student Assessment: What? Why? How?
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Terminology & Caveats
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Results from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

 

 

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): What? Why? How?

Two states in India, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, have participated for the first time in a pilot in the 2009 PISA round of testing. Here's some background information on PISA, documented for later reference.

For a quick and handy description of PISA, its worth spending the 12 minutes to watch this video. The PISA FAQ has more details.

What is PISA?

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is an international study which began in the year 2000. It aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in participating countries/economies. Since the year 2000 over 70 countries and economies have participated in PISA.

Objective of PISA:

The objective of the study is to provide countries with international comparative data as well as with national trend data on reading, mathematical and scientific literacy and problem solving skills of 15 year old students.

The PISA website describes these skills as follows:

Mathematical Literacy: An individual’s capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world to make well-founded judgments and to use and engage with mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that individual’s life as a constructive, concerned and reflective citizen. More details on PISA's approach to testing mathematical literacy are available here. 

Reading literacy: An individual’s capacity to understand, use and reflect on written texts, in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential and to participate in society. More details on PISA's approach to testing reading literacy are available here. 

Scientific literacy: The capacity to use scientific knowledge, to identify questions and to draw evidence based conclusions in order to understand and help make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity. More details on PISA's approach to testing scientific literacy are available here.

Problem Solving: In the PISA 2003 cycle, an additional domain of problem solving was introduced to continue the examination of cross-curriculum competencies. More details on PISA's approach to testing problem solving ability are available here.

Method of Assessment:

All students take pencil-and-paper tests, with assessments lasting a total of two hours for each student. For the PISA 2009 assessment, some participating countries/economies have also opted for an assessment of the reading of electronic texts. Test items are a mixture of multiple-choice items and questions requiring students to construct their own responses. The items are organised in groups based on a passage setting out a real-life situation. You can take an interactive version of the tests here.

A total of about seven hours of test items is covered, with different students taking different combinations of test items. Students answer a background questionnaire, which takes 20-30 minutes to complete, providing information about themselves and their homes. School principals are also given a 20-minute questionnaire about their schools.

Periodicity

PISA surveys take place every three years, commencing in 2000. The results of previous surveys have been published by the OECD and are available. The next survey will take place in 2012.

For each survey, one of the three areas (Mathematics, Science and Reading) is chosen as the major assessment domain and it is given greater emphasis.  The remaining two areas, the minor domains, are assessed less thoroughly.  In 2000 the major domain was reading, in 2003 it was mathematics, in 2006 science and 2009 reading.  In 2012 Mathematics will again be the major domain, and a computer-delivered assessment of problem solving will be an innovation.

The design and implementation of PISA for the 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012 data collections has been the responsibility of an international Consortium led by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with Ray Adams as international project director.

The PISA survey also collects information from students on various aspects of their home, family and school background; and information from schools about various aspects of organisation and educational provision in schools. This information is collected to facilitate a detailed study of factors within and between countries that are associated with varying levels of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy among the 15-year-old students of each country.

Results, Data and  Reports:

The results of the survey are presented in the form of rankings of student performance by country. All the survey data is available for download for any interested researcher. Various reports based on the data look at

• how successful education systems moderate the impact of social background and immigrant status on student and school performance
• 15-year-olds’ motivation, their engagement with reading and their use of effective learning strategies
• how human, financial and material resources, and education policies and practices shape learning outcomes
• the progress countries have made in raising student performance and improving equity in the distribution of learning opportunities
• explores students’ use of information technologies to learn

and many more in-depth reports look at a variety of specific issues like student learning, equity, the high cost of low educational performance, and country-specific in-depth reports.

In the next post, I will look at India's decision to participate in PISA on a pilot basis in the 2009 round and the results from that pilot study.

In other posts, I had looked at

• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: The Process
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Terminlogy & Caveats
• India's participation in PISA 2009+ cycle: Results from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

Comparison of school education policy, structures, curriculum, assessment and teacher training across multiple countries

The International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks Internet Archive (INCA) has constructed very useful, detailed tables (pdf - 1 MB) comparing the following parameters relating to school education (K-12) across multiple countries:

1. General characteristics (population, unemployment, % of GDP spent on education through both public and private sources)
2. Levels of control and administrative organisation (at the National level, Second level, Third level, Institutional level)
3. National education aims (comparison of 22 different aims across all countries)
4. Timeline of recent education reforms  - listing the years when reforms were implemented in each of these countries relating to
   • Length of compulsory education
   • Promotion of pre-school education
   • Primary curriculum
   • Secondary curriculum
   • Standardised national assessment and examinations
5. Compulsory education (Starting age, Minimum school leaving age and Duration in years)
6. Educational phases (age-groups for Pre-school, Primary/basic, Lower secondary, Upper secondary education)
7. School structures - indicates whether
   • there is a uniform system of schools catering for all students, or
   • if there are distinct school types for students of different educational aptitudes, or
   • if there are both types of schools
8. Access (whether access to educational phases, including higher education, is automatic or subject to performance in school leaving certificates or other evidence of performance)
9. Internal grouping (whether classes are generally defined by age or by ability in different subjects or a combination of both)
10. Progression with phases (whether students automatically move to the next class or whether this is subject to their achieving certain minimum standards)
11. Primary curriculum (range of subjects covered without reflecting the content, status {compulsory or elective} or length of time for which a subject is studied)
12. Lower secondary curriculum (range of subjects covered up to the age of 15/16 without reflecting the content, the compulsory or elective status of a subject or the length of time for which the subject is studied)
13. National standardised assessment system (ages at which standardised national assessment takes place)
14. National examination or certification framework to mark the end of an educational phase (ages at which national certification/public examinations take place and whether examinations/certification are compulsory or essential for admission to the next phase)
15. Control and supply of school  textbooks
    • who produces textbooks (state or commercial bodies)
    • whether the State (or devolved authority) prescribes content etc. of textbooks
    • whether the State (or devolved authority) draws up a list of authorised textbooks
    • who selects textbooks for use in class
    • whether textbooks are provided free by the State (or devolved authority), or whether parents are required to buy them.
16. Steps to becoming a primary school teacher
    • The consecutive model: a programme of professional education training is undertaken once an undergraduate degree has been obtained.
    • The concurrent model: teacher training is combined with a degree which results in the award of a Bachelor of Education degree or similar.
    • The combined model: a joint degree in education and a specific subject.
    • Length of training (for the consecutive route includes the time taken to obtain a first degree and covers the period of on-the-job)
    • Duration of the probationary period
    • Registration (whether necessary or not)
17. Steps to becoming a lower secondary school teacher
    • The consecutive model: a programme of professional education training is undertaken once an undergraduate degree has been obtained.
    • The concurrent model: teacher training is combined with a degree which results in the award of a Bachelor of Education degree or similar.
    • The combined model: a joint degree in education and a specific
    • Length of training (for the consecutive route includes the time taken to obtain a first degree and covers the period of on-the-job)
18. Special educational needs teacher training - whether
    • Specialist initial teacher training, or
    • Post qualification specialisation, or
    • Special needs education part of initial teacher training
19. Recruitment incentives to encourage individuals to train as teachers (like payment of course tuition fees by the Government for primary or secondary education, or all subjects or certain shortage subjects)
20. Organising bodies responsible for initial teacher training
    • National Ministry: The Ministry of Education in each country which determines and funds broad policies dealing with the ‘national interest’.
    • Federal Ministry: State Ministry of Education, responsible for education in the specific state/province.
    • Statutory body: Body independent from government which was established by legislation.
    • Non-departmental public body: Body set up, sometimes under statute, to carry out specific functions on behalf of government. However, although non-departmental public bodies are government funded, they are not government departments or part of government departments.
    • Local authority: Regional education headquarters; the local arm of the Ministry of Education.
21. Organisation of school year (includes when the school year starts, the number of terms and length of main holiday, length of the school year in days, and the body responsible for organising the school year)
22. Organisation of the school week and day (teaching time per week, duration of teaching periods, start and end times of the school day, weekly holidays, and the body responsible for organising the school day and week).

This compilation provides an excellent overview of how school education is structured and managed in various countries. It would be worthwhile to compile all this information in one place for India as well. Without data, it is difficult to formulate and debate education policy in a meaningful manner. Compiling this data for the Indian context will be useful while debating education policy issues in India.

The International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks Internet Archive (INCA) is a U.K-based outfit that

provides descriptions of government policy on education in Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA and Wales. It focuses on curriculum, assessment and initial teacher training frameworks for pre-school, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education in schools (3-19 age range).

Choosing the right school board and school for your child

Citizen Matters lists the criteria to consider in selecting a school in Bangalore. Their list includes the following:

• Commute distance and time
• Academic standards
• School fees
• Students-to-teacher ratio
• Good teachers
• School management
• Corporal punishment
• Parent participation
• When to admit

In another article, Citizen Matters addresses the issue of selecting the right school board for your child if you are in Bangalore and provides a comparison table of the alphabet soup of ICSE, CBSE, IGCSE, IB, SSLC/PUC and the NIOS.

There is also a wiki on schools in Bangalore put together by some folks, listing crowd-sourced information on various schools

Summary of the full text of the Yashpal Committee Report

The Full text of the 94 page report of the The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education is up on the education ministry's site. The 24 member committee chaired by Prof. Yashpal included amongst others the Chairpersons of UGC, AICTE, and NAAC, Vice Chancellors (current and former) of publicly funded universities, Directors of IIT (Madras), IIM (Bangalore) and NCERT, economists and bureacrats from the Planning Commission, the Finance, Education and other ministries. Dr. Ramdas Pai, Chancellor of Manipal University, was the sole member on the committee from a private university. A few others from outside the education sector include Kiran Karnik (former President of NASSCOM) and legal expert N.R. Madhava Menon who is a member on the commission of Centre-State Relations.

Apparently, Prof Kaushik Basu, an Economics Professor at Cornell University, and a member of the Yashpal Committee, has penned a dissent note to the report. There is no mention of the dissent note by Kaushik Basu in the copy of the 94 page report put up online at the education ministry's web site.

Addendum: Prof. Basu has provided the full text of his dissent note.

Here is a summary of the main points from the full text of the Yashpal Committee Report (extracted and paraphrased by me as I have understood it, with references provided to the page numbers on the report).

1. All universities must be teaching cum research universities. All research bodies must connect with universities in their vicinity and create teaching opportunities for their researchers. (p14)
2. We must prevent isolation of study of engineering or management. We should look forward to the day when IITs and IIMs also produce scholars in areas like literature, linguistics and politics. Institutions must be given the freedom to expand and diversify as they see fit rather than thrusting an uniform diktat on all institutions. (p15)
3. All syllabi should require teachers and students to apply what they have learnt in their courses, on studying a local situation, issue or problem. There should be sufficient room for the use of local data and resources to make the knowledge covered in the syllabus come alive as experience. (p18)
4. Minimum set of occupational exposure to be made compulsory for all students, irrespective of discipline, in the form of summer jobs or internships, with evaluation of the students on this front. (p19)
5. Need to expose students at the undergraduate level to various disciplines like humanities, social sciences, aesthetics, irrespective of the discipline they would like to specialise in subsequently. (p21)
6. Teacher training for all levels of school education (from primary to higher secondary) must be carried out by institutions of higher educations. The absence of university-level interest in teacher training has resulted in poor academic quality. (p21-22)
7. We need to build strong bridges between different fields of professional education and the disciplines of science, social sciences and humanities, All professional institutions must be part of a comprehensive university in a complete administrative and academic sense. We must abolish intermediary bodies that have been set up solely to issue licenses to professional colleges alone and inspect them. This will also help new interdisciplinary courses and research to evolve in the comprehensive universities. (p23)
8. All vocational institutions must also be part of universities. (p24)
9. It should be mandatory for all universities to have undergraduate programes. All teachers in universities must teach at the undergraduate level. (p26)
10. Universities must take steps to reduce gender, class and caste asymmetries. (p27)
11. Universities must study areas that are relevant in their immediate social and natural milieu and create knowledge bases in those areas. (p28)
12. Universities must be motivated to identify and prioritise areas for reform and initiate and implement the reform themselves from within rather than having the reform thrust on them top-down by a national or state-level body. This will be true autonomy. (p28)
13. There should be no discrimination between Central and State funded universities. All benefits extended to Central Universities must also be extended by State Governments to the state universities and the Centre must incentivise the States to do so. (p30)
14. There is an optimum size for a University in terms of the number of affiliated colleges, which must be maintained. (p31-32)
15. The inability of the state to drastically increase capacity in higher education has led to growth of the private sector in higher education. To double higher education capacity, we need all three kinds of universities: state-funded and run universities, private universities and those funded and run by public-private partnerships. All of them should work efficiently overseen by a transparent regulatory mechanism. (p32-34)
16. All private universities must submit to a national accreditation system. Private degree-granting universities must not be confined to select areas like technology, medicine, management, finance etc.. They must be required to be comprehensive universities covering the arts and social and natural sciences too. (p35)
17. There must be tight regulation of private universities in terms of auditing of accounts, payment of minimum salaries to teachers, certain percentage of seats reserved for meritorious students who are to be provided scholarships etc.. (p35)
18. Granting of Deemed University status to be put on hold. All existing Deemed Universities to be given three years to shape up (to have strong research programmes, and become a comprehensive university as defined in this report) failing which their Deemed University status is to be withdrawn. (p37)
19. Education must be made affordable for all through scholarships or loans provided by the State. Every student who gains admission must get an assured loan or a scholarship (for the needy) from the State. (p39)
20. Do we need foreign universities? Can the best learning experiences not be provided to our students by opening our doors to foreign scholars? p(40)
21. If the best of foreign universities (amongst the top 200 in the world) want to come to India, they should be welcomed. Such institutions should award an Indian degree and be subject to all the rules and regulations that would apply to any Indian university. (p40)
22. State funding, though increasing, will not be enough to expand supply and progress towards excellence. Complementary sources of funding will have to be found even for state funded universities. Philanthropy from society and alumni as a source of funding needs to be encouraged, with appropriate changes in regulation. Universities must be able to hire professional fundraisers and professional investors to attract funding from non-government sources. (p41)
23. Universities must be freed from the constraints imposed by funding agencies to obtain approvals for every single post. Funding agencies must provide block grants against a plan and universities must be allowed to spend them according to their priorities, subject to the plan. (p42)
24. There are a large number of students who can afford to pay for their education. Absence of differential fees has led to subsidising students who can actually afford to pay. Those who can afford to pay must pay higher fees for which they will be offered guarateed student loans. Free education will be provided only to those who cannot afford it. (p42)
25. National tests like the GRE must be organised round the year. Students from all over India must be allowed to take the tests as many times as they like and their best score can be sent to the universities for admission. Currently the CBSE and the State Board exams are a means of normalising school level competencies - this can be done by the National tests. We must seriously think of reviving our faith in each school and its teachers to credibly evaluate their own students. (p42-43)
26. India can provide affordable higher education to foreign students, if we remove systemic impediments. It will also enrich the ethos of our universities. (p43)
27. Urgent measures are needed to attract good people who enjoy teaching and research back to the university and offer them a positive and motivating environment. Resources in terms of libraries, laboratories and research assistance as well as competitive remuneration will need to be provided to retain good people. (p43-44)
28. Student assessment of teachers needs to be instituted. Students can provide an experiential assessment of the quality of teaching. Parameters of student feedback can be drawn up to avoid distorted assessments by students. Teachers whose feedback record remains poor in successive years should be required to face formal precedures which might allow a university or college to shed them.
29. We need to improve governance of universities by developing expertise in educational management, and avoid burdening good academics with administrative chores. We must have a separation between academic administration and overall management (including fund raising). State governments must abandon the trend of appointing civil servants as university administrators. (p45)
30. Teachers and students must have autonomy. In academic matters, the teacher should have the autonomy to frame his/her course and the way he/she would like to assess his/her students. Students should be allowed to take courses of their choice from different universities and then be awarded a degree on the basis of credits earned. (p46)
31. We should not blame private initiative, political interference, and other forces for the loss of autonomy of universities. There was no rigorous resistance, indeed there was willing abdication, from the academic community to the subversion in matters of policy implementation, appointments and day-to-day functioning of the universities. Education was made subservient to ideological compulsions, which led to its loss of respect. (p49)
32. We need a De Novo regulatory body - the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) under which the various functions of the existing regulatory agencies would be subsumed. The new body would also take over the powers vested in the existing regulatory bodies in terms of creation of new institutions as well as their content/sylallbi. (p52)
33. The 13 existing professional councils created under various acts of Parliament may after divesting their existing regulatory functions to NCHER look at conducting tests for practicisng professionals affiliated to the councils, prescribing syllabi for such tests and leave it to the universities to design their curriculum based on such syllabi. (p55).
34. The NCHER would not interfere with academic freedom and institutional autonomy. It would not follow the current inspection-based approval method, it but would use move to a verification and authentication system. Universities will put out mandatory self-declarations in the public domain.(corrected)
35. 1. Given the federal nature of our country and the role of states in education, there must be Higher Education Councils (HECs) in the states which will co-ordinate with the NCHER, to allow different institutions created and funded by the Centre and States to grow on equal footing. These HECs would also insulate the State universities from outside interference. (p57).
36. There should be a fast-track statutory mechanism in place for the adjudication of disputes between teachers, employees and management of institutions and universities in respect of matters concerning service conditions, as well as in matters of disputes relating to fee, admissions etc. A suitable law should be enacted to establish a National Education Tribunal along with State Education Tribunals or appropriate number of Benches of the Apex Tribunal in place for such adjudication. This would be in line with the observations of the Supreme Court of India in the TMA Pai matter, where such Tribunals were recommended. (p 60)
37. Any agency whose intention is to protect students from sub-par education is better off by providing information on the programmes and univerisites to the student rather than walk the slippery path of establishing minimum standards of quality (for education is about academic over-reach rather than reaching the minimum). (p63)
38. Curricular reform to be the topmost priority of the newly created NCHER which would create a curricular framework based on the principles of mobility within a full range of curricular areas and integration of skills with academic depth. (p64)
39. The NCHER should galvanize research in the university system through the creation of a National Research Foundation. (p64)
40. The NCHER should identify the best 1,500 colleges across India to upgrade them as universities, and create clusters of other potentially good colleges to evolve as universities. (p66)
41. The NCHER too should be subject to external review once in five years. (p66)
42. The NCHER should prepare and present a Report on the State of Higher Education in India annually to Parliament. (p68)
43. 1. The NCHER shall establish transparent norms and process for entry and exit of institutions. The need is to make the process easy for good and serious proposals for setting up new institutions. (p68)
44. The NCHER would be an autonomous body created by making a suitable amendment to the Constitution, accountable only to the Indian parliament and drawing its budgetary resources from the Ministry of Finance. It would have a seven-member board with a full-time Chairperson. Of the seven members, one would be an eminent professional from the world of industry and one with the background of a long and consistent social engagement. All other five members would be academic people of eminence, representing broad areas of knowledge. The status of the Chairperson of the commission should be analogous to that of the Chief Election Commissioner and that of the members should be comparable to the Election Commissioners. The Commission will be independent of all ministries of the Government of India. It will have the autonomy to hire talent at various levels within and outside the government. It will also have the autonomy to define the compensation of its employees.
45. The NCHER may initially consist of five divisions: (p70)
    • Future Directions: Developing global benchmarks on student performance; university performance; salaries, potential programmers; new research directions; and articulation of needs of the government in terms of manpower etc.
    • Accreditation Management: Creating norms for accreditation and certifyingmultiple accreditation agencies which would be independent of the government .Institutions and universities may like to get accreditation from one or more than one agencies depending on their reputation. They would be also providing annual feedback to universities, and organizing workshops etc.
    • Funding & Development: Developing funding needs of universities, developing mechanisms for funding institutions, helping universities with development of corpus and good endowment management, managing the guaranteed student loan/scholarship programme, and funding the requirements of universities etc.
    • New Institutions & Incubation: Including training workshops for first-time VCs as well as on themes like accounting, investing the corpus, communication within & outside the university, negotiations & managing vendors, good office practices, human resource management etc.
    • Information & Governance: This division will focus on managing the data needs of the commission, display of information on universities, develop performance parameters on the governance of universities, support other divisions with information as well as provide students with information on each university. This division w ill also inform the Accreditation and Funding & Development divisions of the performance or lack thereof, for each university, each year.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the report! Enough fodder for a separate post to follow looking at the prognosis, suggestions and recommendations.

Spice.org aims to attract foreign students for study in India

An institution called the Society for the Promotion of Indian Culture and Education (SPICE) has been set up in 2004 as a non-profit organisation by Indian-Americans in California to promote trade in education, by recruiting international students for study in India.

Educational Consultants India, Limited (Ed.CIL), a Government of India body under the control of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, has also been working on attracting foreign students (primarily from Asia and Africa) to come and study in institutions in India.

Here's how SPICE describe themselves.

As a society, committed to promoting Indian Culture and Education, SPICE.ORG has been recruiting international students to study in India. SPICE.ORG has access to the expertise of the Indian American community in USA, which has valuable experience in International Marketing. SPICE.ORG participates in various international fairs and forums. It organizes exhibitions and seminars all over the world to promote Indian Culture and Education.

We look at ourselves as a conduit between the local educational institutions and the international education market. Our aim is to make it very practical and easy for international students wishing to come to India to pursue higher studies. We would provide a neutral information dissemination platform, acting as a neutral entity, providing information to such prospective students. Facilitating foreign direct investment into higher education is one of our main goals.

Realizing the potential for the education industry in India, and bringing in years of experience in the Information Technology field, SPICE.ORG was set up in the year 2004. Over the past one year, we have tied up with over 250 partners in India. These partners include many of the established and renowned educational providers. We also have a network of over 100 SPICE.ORG Certified Consultants worldwide, who promote Indian Education internationally. These Consultants play a vital roll in influencing the prospective student’s decisions.

It would be interesting to find out more about the people behind SPICE. According to their web site, they currently have offices in India, USA, South Korea and Canada.