Education in India

Why do we have a learning crisis in our schools? What can be done?

Vimala Ramachandran of NUEPA gave an interesting talk* on why we have a learning crisis in our schools and what can be done. She also spoke on a range of topics including how Poland implemented education reform successfully (of which I knew nothing till now and want to find out  more), whether PPPs can help, the need for political support for education reform in India and on the mother tongue as the medium of instruction.

You can listen to the audio recording or download the audio.

 

or watch it on Youtube (courtesy D Murali).

Here is a summary of her talk (paraphrasing her words).

 What is the learning crisis in our schools?

• Children aren’t able to read and comprehend. They have very little understanding of basic math and science concepts too.
• Children memorise and reproduce but do not internalize or understand what they have learnt. They are not able to apply basic concepts to day to day tasks, whether at school or at home.
• The biggest tragedy of all – children do not develop fluency in any language, be it their mother tongue, medium of instruction or English
• Employers complain about skill shortages, poor quality of workers and low productivity due to poor schooling.
• There is something very seriously wrong in education. We have not done things right, not just in government schools, but in private schools too.

Why are children having a problem learning?

• Pupil teacher ratio can be as high as 1:60 when it shouldn't be more than 1:30
• Teaching time is an issue. Teachers may come to school, but not teach. Middle class parents deal with this by teaching their kids themselves at home. But what can parents from poor, semi-literate communities do? Whatever inequality they come with into the school system, the inequality only increases.
• Rote learning is an issue. Teachers are expected to finish the syllabus in a short time and so they force children to resort to rote learning.
• RTE's No Detention policy is being interpreted as No Assessment policy upto class VIII.
• Teachers are overloaded with inane administrative tasks. Even with something like CCE, they spend their time filling forms rather than teaching or evaluating children.
• Testing and Assessments only test the memory of the child. What gets tested is what gets learnt and how it gets tested determines how it is learnt. Teaching to the test is common.
• Assessment systems are becoming corrupt. When assessments are based on internal assessments, teachers inflate the marks for all children.

Importance of teachers.

• Teachers matter the most. A good teacher without a school building is better than buildings without a teacher.
• Teacher quality is not about qualifications, but the ability to connect with children
• States are reducing the percentage score to pass in the RTE mandated Teacher Eligibility Test to enable more teachers to pass. In Bihar, in 1990, Laloo Yadav as Chief Minister decided that 12th class Pass is not required to be a teacher. He reduced it to not just 10th class Pass, but 10th class Fail! So from 1990-1996, a whole bunch of primary school teachers in Bihar who had themselves not finished class 10 were recruited to teach! The political compulsion of a govt job seems to be more important than ensuring that a teacher who is hired is of a good quality.

Lessons from Poland

• Poland had many of the problems we have today, with their Soviet-era inefficient schooling system. But from 1999-2006, they initiated reforms and turned the system around. What did they do?
• They made sure teachers had much more autonomy and freedom in the school. The teachers and schools were told they had to bring children up to a particular level by Class 8. The syllabus was decided by the government in terms of what would be the minimum learning requirement. From Classes 1-8, the basic requirement in Sci/Math/Lang or reading was strictly followed. Children were tested at the end of class 8. Teachers had a lot of freedom and autonomy to do what they wanted and how they wanted to do it. Teachers instead of following orders from above actually had to innovate and figure out how best to teach their children. Each school was actually a practicing laboratory.
• They put in place qualification requirements for teachers and these qualifications were linked to a promotion path and the government provided continuing education opportunities.
• They gave generous retirement packages for many of those teachers who weren't competent enough.
• Poland had a dynamic education minister and a dynamic prime minister at that time. They felt that the single most important wealth that the country had was the people and they had to reform the education system. Only with political will, things get done.

What should be done to change things in India?

• Move from just inputs, infrastructure and paper qualifications to actual functioning of the school system.

• Change the way the education system is monitored. Look at what and how much children are learning, what and how teachers are teaching. Do they have the requisite facilities, knowledge and equipment to teach.

• Reform teacher education. NCTE opened up teacher training institutions in 2004 resulting in a 500% increase in the number of Teacher Training Colleges. Everyone knows that people at NCTE made a lot of money by giving away licences to one-room teacher training colleges. Odisha alone has escaped the curse of mushrooming teacher training colleges because the Chief Minister said he did not want any low quality teacher training colleges. In the name of reform, accreditation, and quality assurance, we have done exactly the opposite. We must shut down all the teacher training colleges of poor quality  and set up good quality teacher training colleges in parallel.

• Introduce centralised assessments. In India the education community is very allergic to centralised assessments. The aim of centralised assessments are not assessment of the children, it is to assess the quality of the school or the average levels of learning of children. Most countries around the world have used a combination of tremendous school autonomy, where teachers can do what they want, how they want and combine it with some kind of centralised testing which becomes a quality benchmark.

  I don’t know what that centralised quality test in India should be. The jury is still out on what we should do and how we should do it. But the fact remains that we have to start moving towards measuring outcomes.

• Decentralise in-service teacher training. 90% of teacher training programmes are extremely poor.

  At a summer training programme at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Education, IASE, in one of the better south Indian states, teachers were supposedly being trained on the National Curriculum Framework. They were taking turns to read out something from a paper. On enquiring, I was told each teacher was given four pages of the National Curriculum Framework to translate and read out. “It is an equitable distribution of honorarium,” the Principal told me!

  Budgets are better spent by giving it to the school so that the school decides what kind of training they want for the teachers and make the principal responsible for that. As long as we don’t value and trust the knowledge that is there at the grassroots level, we will not be able to make much change. We as a country are so suspicious of teachers and the lower bureaucracy that we don’t want to give them any independence.

• The only way to bring about change is by altering the rules and the behavior of the personnel who are in the system. With all due respect to teachers - I have worked with teachers for the past 25 years and deeply respect them - we have to have a system of humane as well as strict monitoring. The two have to go together. We need a mechanism to test what children are learning, how much they are learning and whether the learning is taking place across all children or not.

Vimala Ramachandran also responded to questions from the audience with her views on a range of topics.

On the need for political support for reform

• Without political support it is impossible to bring about complete systemic reform of the education system. Civil servants have power only upto a point. Many civil servants have tried, but ultimately many of these things are larger political decisions.

• The corporate and media communities in India must raise public opinion on the need for reform. My experience, and that of many who used to play an activist role in writing in the media about the problems about education, now find the media door shut. The media is full of sensationalism now. Both the corporate sector and the business community are most affected by the poor quality of people. These communities must do much more to raise awareness.

  We have reached a crisis point. In many parts of the country if you want to set up a factory, it is difficult to find skilled people. You have to import them from other parts of the country. Even when you import them, the quality is poor and they need to be trained.

  Neither the media nor the larger business community seem to doing anything. People like me going and talking to the education minister will really not help. It is only when there is a crescendo which comes from the media and the business community, will they start listening. At the moment the vested interest in not fixing it is very high. Rent seeking is very widespread in the education sector.

On the role of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)

• PPP as a model could be good. But I am yet to come across good PPP models which work over a period of time. PPPs over 1-2 years don’t work. In education, you have to stay for at least 10-15 years to see the results. Both sides have to stay committed. Corporate bodies change their priorities and Governments also renege on their commitments. There have been 2-3 big PPP models in North India where corporate houses have adopted 1000 govt schools and tried to work with them. But none of them want to stay for more than 4-5 years. 

On restoring professionalism to the teaching profession

• In many ways India and the U.S. are alike in many ways. In both countries the teaching profession has been badly demoralized. The professionalism of the teaching profession has to be restored. Govt teachers aren’t paid poorly. They are much higher than private teachers’ salaries. After the 6^th pay commission, a young new teacher in UP or Rajasthan takes home 25000 rupees in the first job. A retiring teacher is taking home close to 80,000 to 100,000 rupees. So it isn’t as if they are being paid poorly.

  We should create small professional circles of teachers so that the teachers’ professional identity is reinforced. We need to celebrate their professional identity. What happens when we give awards? We aren’t giving awards for the professional capability of the teacher. We are giving awards to those who are networked. We need to change the way we are treating our teachers. 

On the good things happening in education in India

• Although a lot of interesting initiatives are happening in different aspects of education in India, but when it comes to school education reform to overhaul the system, I don’t think we have done much in India so far. This is the main reason why there is a learning crisis. This crisis isn’t going to go away by doing small things. That is why I was talking about Poland. 

  Despite the system, there are thousands of teachers who are doing a spectacular job despite low pay, bad management etc.. They don’t look for recognition beyond what they get from their children. They are happiest when their children do well. That is the ultimate recognition for them.

On the perception that private schools are better than government schools

• Rama Baru had done a study. She says the benchmark of quality is always the government. Wherever the govt school quality is very bad, the private school is just one notch above. Govt institutions do set the standards. They can set both low standards and high standards. The average private schools that poor, lower middle class send their children are not significantly better than the govt schools. It is the dysfunctionality of the govt schools that actually drives people out. 

• I don’t think cream of the society is going to private schools. People who have money are going to private schools. People who don’t have money are going to govt schools. Amongst those going to govt schools, there will be lots of cream. The only thing is we aren’t teaching them well. We aren’t investing in them. If we can teach children sincerely and give them opportunities, I am quite sure a lot of cream will come out of the govt schools too. 

On the mother tongue being the medium of instruction

• Education in the mother tongue is the way to go. That is very important. But the reason why parents are pulling their children out of govt schools is due to the non-availability of English medium education in government schools. 

  You know what Jammu & Kashmir has done? By an Act of govt they have converted all govt schools to English medium schools and the teachers don’t have the capacity to teach in English. We do these kinds of silly things. "Ok, people, you want English medium? From tomorrow all schools will be English medium."

 

Aside: N. Murali (Co-Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited, owners of The Hindu) is part of the committee that organised this talk. Apparently he was one of the students of Kuruvila Jacob, the erstwhile headmaster of Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School in Chennai, in whose memory this talk was organised. While delivering the vote of thanks at the end of the talk, Murali thanked the media for being present and exhorted them to report the enlightening and provocative talk and raise the level of consciousness to drive home the crisis that's staring us in the face. 

Here're the reports by The Hindu, The New Indian Express, and The Times of India on this talk. You can decide for yourself if Murali's exhortation had any effect!

 

* This talk by Vimala Ramachandran was the fifth Kuruvila Jacob Memorial Oration organised under the auspices of the Kuruvila Jacob Initiative for Promoting Excellence in Science Education, Chennai.

Education in India Podcast with Parth Shah on School Choice in India

I discuss the idea of school choice and the prospects for it in India with Parth Shah, President of the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) in this episode of the Education in India podcast.

• Listen to the audio podcast (~ 1 hour), or
• Download the podcast (~14MB; MP3) and listen to it at your convenience. To download the podcast, right-click on the download link and select "Save Link/Target As".

You can read the full transcript of the interview.

In the podcast, we talk about a wide range of issues relating to school choice as outlined below. The time location of each broad topic within the audio podcast is mentioned below, for those who may want to jump to a specific point in the podcast.

• 00.03.00 - Explaining school choice to the layman. 

• 00:06:50 - What would a parent need to do to benefit from school choice?

• 00:09:55 - What are the policy changes that would be required to implement school choice?

• 00:12:30 - On the scarcity of schools and difficulty in finding land for new schools especially in urban areas.

• 00:14:43 On the incentives for setting up new schools

• 00:17.39 On the freedom for schools to pick or choose the students they want to admit, social stratification in schools and fostering social mixing

• 00:27:04 On how to help parents make informed choices when selecting schools for their children

• 00:33:39 On dealing with switching costs for changing schools and the long time it takes to get feedback on the value added by a school.

• 00:36:42 Different school choice models

• 00:42:15 - The Charter School Model and its Indian variant

• 00:43:50 How has School Choice worked in other countries?

• 00:47:56 The prospects of implementing school choice in India and the receptivity for the idea of school choice.

• 00:54:52 On the role of grassroots political demand for improving education in India
  

 

3 things India should do to improve learning outcomes in schools by 2025

Shekhar Shah, the moderator of the panel 'Action Plan 2025: Rethinking Policy' at the recently held 2013 School Choice National Conference in Delhi asked the three panelists what they thought were the three most important things India should do to improve learning outcomes by 2025. Here's what each of them had to say.

Amit Kaushik (Ab Initio Consulting)

1. Define the national vision for education for the next 20 years. That is something that is seriously lacking at this point of time. The last National Policy in Education was introduced by the Govt in 1986 and subsequently amended in 1992. It's over 21 years now since then. For a nation that talks about its under-25 population and leveraging the demographic dividend, not having in place a vision for what the education system should be in the next 5, 10, 20 years is a serious gap.

2. Set up an Educational Regulatory Authority which regulates how both public and private schools function and has responsibility for policy and implementation.

   It would have to be at the state level, but you will need to have a national body as well. Just like you have the NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) and the SCPCRs in the states, you will need to have a similar model. The biggest concerns with encouraging private investment in schools is that it would become exploitative and parents and teachers would be exploited. A regulatory commision in place would take care of some of these aspects.

3. Encourage private investments for profit in the education space. There is no getting away from this. Sooner or later we will have to bite the bullet and the sooner we bite it the better for all of us.

 

Ramya Venkataraman (Leader of Education Practice at McKinsey & Company)

1. Launch a standard national student learning outcome assessment which is run by a third party, with low stakes for students, and meant for feedback for the students.

2. Launch a large number of different kinds of Public Private Partnerships including using govt infrastructure, including subsidising affordable private schools and making them viable, including supporting aided schools, including private expertise for the govt systems. Potentially at the Centre, have a couple of templates for these which allows states to get jump started on this. For e.g. the Mumbai Schools Public Private Partnership took 10 years to come to fruition. It could happen in a year if there is a template that people are comfortable with.

   To a question from the moderator on who should be doing this,

   Ramya responded saying, Firstly, it's not so much about a lot of experimentation. There are 3-4 models that are more or less now emerging. It is about going deeper on these models and probably some experimentation within that, in terms of with fees vs without fees, teacher salaries at par with Govt and not at par etc..

   Ramya said she would answer the how more than the who. The standard national assessment would be an important way to measure many of these experiements to see which direction these are headed in. Who should do it - my sense to be very practical is that it will end up being the education department of every state more than a central entity. The central entity can do the collection of the research, but the education departments of the states will implement it.

3. Encourage ongoing inservice teacher development through certain initiatives like need for ongoing professional certification with a range of alternative options around that.

 

Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (University of California at San Diego)

1. You can't ignore the govt system. That is still 60-70% of particularly primary enrollment. As Lant Pritchett famously said, most of these things are not stuck at the policy level. It is all about implementation. To me, in the public system it is Governance, Governance, Governance. It is not rocket science.

   There was a nationally representative panel study of teacher absence in 2003 and 2010. The only thing that matters in reducing teacher absence is not fancy buildings or increase in salaries etc.., but just good old monitoring. For e.g., did a superior officer visit your school in the past three months? The average DEO tenure in India is less than one year. 20% of DEO positions are vacant. When you have that kind of governance vacuum it doesn't matter what you are doing.

   As Lant Pritchett famously said, our neighbour may be a failing state, but we are a flailing state, where there is no connection between the head and the roots. The head can make the most beautifully crafted policy sitting in the Planning Commission. There's no connection between that and what's actually happening. So in the public system, its Governance, Governance, Governance.

2. On the private side, you will really need a larger framework for leveraging non-state actors for improving a whole range of things. Lant Pritchett in his paper using first principles of fiscal federalism, clearly delineates what types of functions should sit at what levels of government and which are the things and functions that might best be done by private entities.

3. We desperately need more research. The rhetoric to substance ratio is unbelievable. People say we need to make decisions now and can't wait for research. This is what we have done for 60 years and that has not solved our mess. So I would rather kind of hold off before making big decisions till we understand things. RTE is a classic example of something which is extremely well intentioned, but based on research, you realise most of these things are not where the action is in terms of outcomes. So whether it is private schooling or technology, we need research.

   Everybody is throwing technology at the problems. What it takes is an enormous amount of clarity of thought on how you are going to deploy the technology in the classroom and what is the binding constraint to status quo.

   For instance, are you going to be using technology to
   • circumvent gaps in teachers' knowledge?
   • have more individualised curriculum?
   • shorten the feedback loop for the student?
   • encourage student effort by providing instant motivation?

   All this requires careful thinking and this is not something administrators have the bandwidth for. These are research functions and we have to invest over the long term in understanding these things. Otherwise you are just flailing around with a bunch of small scale pilots without systematcially pulling together learning in a way that can inform what we can do in terms of policy.

Education in India Podcast with Subir Shukla of IGNUS-ERG

In the first episode of the Education in India podcast, Subir Shukla, Principal Co-ordinator at IGNUS-ERG, talks about a wide range of topics relating to education in India. Subir has worked for over 25 years in school education in India in the areas of quality improvement, curriculum and textbook development and teacher training, amongst many other things. 

• Listen to the audio podcast (~77 minutes), or
• Download the podcast (~18MB; MP3) and listen to it at your convenience.

To download the podcast, right-click on the download link and select "Save Link/Target As".

I will also try to transcribe the audio and link to the text when it is available. You can read the full transcript of the interview.

This chat with Subir covers some of the important projects and programmes in education in India over the past 20-30 years. The topics covered in this podcast are outlined below. The time location of each broad topic within the audio podcast is mentioned below, for those who may want to jump to a specific point in the podcast.

• 00:00:40 - Subir tells us a bit about his background and the work he has done in education. 

• 00:01:30 - Why and how he chose to work in the area of education?
  • His days at Eklavya, an outfit set up by Kishore Bharti and the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme.
  • His time at the National Book Trust, setting up the National Centre for Children's Literature.

• 00:08:10 - His time as the Chief Consultant to the Govt of India on Quality Improvement and Teacher Training under the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP).
  • The thinking behind starting the DPEP in 1994 and the goals of the DPEP.
  • The survey of learning levels in India by the NCERT in 1994.
  • How the survey showed that learning levels were very low in Kerala in 1994, even lower than Bihar and how this led Kerala to drastically change their philosophy, systems and processes of teaching and learning, which is one of the reasons why the learning levels in Kerala are high today. 
  • The achievement of the DPEP.

• 00:22:15 - The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).
  • The thinking behind launching SSA, after the DPEP.

• 00:24:28 - Teacher Training
  • What is good teaching?
  • His role in developing ADEPTS - Advancement of Educational Performance through Teacher Support - Teacher performance standards for the MHRD in 2006-07.
  • The role of the Centre and the States in teacher training.

• 00:28:12 - How the philosophy of teaching and learning has changed in India over the years
  • Three broad stages: content-driven, objectives-driven, and process-driven teaching and learning.
  • How and when the shift from content-driven, to objectives-driven, and then to process-driven teaching and learning occured in India.
  • Minimum Levels of Learning (MLL).
  • Continuos and Comprehensive Evaluation - CCE.
  • The thinking behind removing detention of students under the RTE Act.

• 00:47:06 - The National Curricular Framework 2005 (NCF)
  • The thinking behind creating the National Curricular Framework in 2005.
  • The use of NCF by the States as a framework.
  • Why the States don't want to use NCERT's textbooks.

• 00:54:31 - Age-appropriate curricula vs overambitious curricula
  • Why children are often being compelled to learn things they can't really understand at their age.

• 00:57:26 - National level surveys of learning levels in India
  • NCERT's surveys of learning and achievement levels.

• 00:58:35 - The value of Pratham's Annual Survey of Education Reports (ASER)
  • Why the ASER reports have limited value.
  • Two negative effects of the ASER reports.

•  01:04:20 - Teacher Accountability
  • Teachers themselves should be enabled to monitor the learning levels in their classes.
  • Why are only teachers being held accountable, but no one else higher up in the education system?
  • The need for top-down accountability rather than bottom-up accountability.

• 01:08:35 - The relevance of PISA tests in India
  • Why PISA tests may not be relevant for India at this time.
  • The lack of a national vision in India for what kind of quality we want in our secondary school students, and what they ought to know by the time they leave school.
  • The need to develop a vision for secondary school students and put it out in the public domain for debate - IGNUS-ERG is working on this.

Primary school teachers in Tamil Nadu promote education in government schools

"People pay taxes of many kinds to the Tamil Nadu Government and should therefore enthusiastically admit their children in government schools and benefit from the free education provided in the government schools," says the Tamil Nadu Primary Teachers Association (TNPTA).

In a press release, Abdul Majeed, an office bearer of the Association said, "Parents must come forward to admit their children in government schools offering free education. All these schools have excellent teachers. In addition to providing free education to all students, the Tamil Nadu State Government also provides 4 pairs of free uniforms every year, a nutritious meal with an egg and a banana every day, free text books and notebooks, a free cycle and also a free laptop computer. Parents must make full use of all these benefits available to them."

To drive this message home to parents, 100,000 leaflets emphasising the necessity and the benefits of admitting children in government schools are being distributed to the public by the Tamil Nadu Primary Teachers Association.

This is the gist of a report that appeared in the Tamil daily newspaper Dinamalar (Nov 23, 2012). None of the English media seem to have carried this news.

The way the statements have been phrased by the TNPTA suggests that the government school teachers know something that the rest of the public are unaware of. But the actions of the government school teachers speak much louder than their words and the people are only too well aware of the implications.

Over 73% of these very same government school teachers in Tamil Nadu have chosen to send their own children to private schools and not the 'excellent' government schools that they themselves teach in. This data has been painstakingly collected by Mr. T.K. Chandrasekaran by filing RTI applications with the District Education Officers in each of the districts in Tamil Nadu.

The initiative by the teachers to promote education in government schools is probably arising out of a fear of losing their jobs if the exodus to private schools continues unabated*. The teachers need to ask themselves why parents are shunning the free education in government schools despite the attendant benefits of free uniforms, free books, notebooks, a free cycle, a free laptop etc.. When people perceive that the quality of education is poor, all the other freebies are irrelevant.

But the teachers know this only too well. By choosing to pay out of their pocket and educate their own children in private schools, the teachers are clearly acting in their self-interest. Nothing wrong with that - in fact, they are doing the right thing by their children. There is no way they can prevent the rest of the people from acting in their own self-interest - the teachers are fighting a losing battle.

---------------------------------------------------------

* The 2011 ASER Report provides data on the trend of increasing enrollment in private schools in rural Tamil Nadu.The corresponding figures for urban Tamil Nadu are likely to be much higher.

What is the Government's official stand on India's participation in the PISA 2012 tests?

After India's poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 cycle of tests, there is no clarity about India's participation in the PISA 2012 cycle of tests. There have been news reports indicating and suggesting that the Government has decided against participating in the 2012 cycle, but the Government does not seem to have made any statement yet. Here is a summary of what I have been able to glean from the news reports and questions raised in Parliament.

Indian Express (September 3, 2012)

Just why did Indians perform so badly at the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as to stand at the bottom of the ladder? The government thinks it is not a reflection on the country’s schooling. Advised by the NCERT, the HRD Ministry has concluded that India trailed in the international rankings because of the questions posed.

Terming these out of context, the government will take up the issue with organisers of PISA before deciding on full-scale participation in the test for 2012, with students from 10 of its states.

...

The ministry has concluded that there was a socio-cultural disconnect between the questions and Indian students. The ministry will write to the OECD and drive home the need to factor in India’s “socio-cultural milieu”. India’s participation in the next PISA cycle will hinge on this.

Considering that over 70 nations participate in PISA, it is uncertain whether an exception would be made for India. Incidentally, the Ministry of External Affairs is not enthused about a pan-India participation in PISA as it is expected to throw up discouraging results. India is already close to missing the 2012 cycle and may have to wait for 2015.

The NCERT in its report concluded that “non-exposure of students (especially in rural areas) towards the items tested in PISA” was a critical factor in the poor performance by Indian students. They cited questions relating to ATMs and use of air bags in cars.

Times of India (September, 9, 2012)

"India is already late for the 2012 test as preparations began a year in advance. If the questions conform to our sensibilities , we will take part. We will enter into a correspondence with OECD before taking a final call," says the official. But it may already be too late. The question is: why participate at all if one is not ready for it?

...

Sydney Rebeiro, former dean, University of Delhi, says such standardized tests factor in various levels of education. But the HRD official says these tests would be difficult for children in rural areas. "If the child hasn't heard of airbags, hot air balloons and ATMs, he won't even attempt those questions. Also, such detailed questions would be confusing; straight questions would work better." But surely international tests can't be tailor-made for each country? Besides, other countries are also taking these tests.

Indian Express (July 18, 2012) carried a report, which does not seem to have been corroborated or confirmed by anyone else. Presumably, MEA refers to the Ministry of External Affairs here.

... [The HRD Ministry] is putting up a brave face and wants the PISA assessment done in as many as nine states now. But, strangely, it is the MEA that seems to have developed cold feet. The HRD Ministry has to take an approval from the MEA to get this assessment done and the MEA is learnt to be sitting on the proposal for many days now.

Some MPs have raised questions in Parliament on the India's performance in the 2009 cycle of PISA tests and what the Govt plans to do going ahead and the then HRD Minister's answers relating to PISA tests in India are excerpted below. This is as official as it gets.

• Manish Tewari, Devji Patel - Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 1226 answered on 21.03.2012

  The purpose of this PISA (2009) pilot study was to build our capacity for international participation and to understand the methodology and other aspects of the international survey. 

• Motilal Vora -  Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 4745 answered on 18.05.2012
• S. Thangavelu - Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 861 answered on 17.08.2012

  The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2009 covered only two States, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh in India and indicates unsatisfactory performance of students in these two States. 

• Ashok Tanwar - Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 3945 answered on 05.09.2012 specifically asked "whether there is any proposal to implement International Student Assessment (ISA) Programme in all States so as to build capacity for international participation and to understand the methodology and other aspects of the international survey; " (sic)

  The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a project of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was piloted in two Indian states, namely, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. However, no decision has been taken to implement the Programme in all states of the country. (emphasis mine)  

The official view (as of September 09, 2012) is that the Government has not taken any decision. Since time is running out for participation in the 2012 cycle of PISA tests, the Minister of HRD ought to make a statement on the following:

• Has the Government written to the OECD (organisers of PISA 2012) about its concerns of a socio-cultural disconnect between the questions and Indian students? If so, when did the Government write to OECD? If not, when does the Government plan to write to the OECD?
• If the Government has already written to the OECD, has the Government received a reply from the OECD in response to its letter? If so, when did it receive the reply and what did the OECD say?
• Has the Government taken a decision to participate in PISA 2012 or not? If so, what has it decided? If not, by when does the Government expect to take a decision?

The lack of any official statements makes one wonder - is the Government planning to take no decision till it is too late to participate in the 2012 cycle and then tout that as the excuse for not participating?

Govt backtracks on home schooling; says not permitted under the RTE Act

In a volte face, the Govt has reversed its view (filed earlier in an affidavit in the Delhi High Court) that home schooling is permissible under the Right to Education Act.

Deccan Herald reports

The Union government took a U-turn before a division bench of the Delhi HIgh Court, saying its earlier stand that the Right to Education Act does not come in the way of home-schooling was "incorrect and contrary" to Section 10 of the Act.

The Centre had sought time to file a fresh affidavit clarifying its stand.

...

Advocate Ashok Agarwal, in the capacity of an intervener appointed by the High Court in this case, had objected to the government's and the petitioner's stand in their affidavits.

"The demand on the part of the petitioner for home-schooling or alternative forms of schooling and the stand taken by the Union Government in support of such demand through counter affidavit dated July 16, 2012 is based on completely casual and erroneous interpretation of the letter, spirit and intent of the RTE Act," he had submitted in his response.

The Delhi High Court directed the Union of India to file its counter affidavit by December 19th, 2012.

Case Details:

Delhi High Court Case no. W.P.(C) 8870/2011

SHREYA SAHAI AND ORS  Vs. UOI AND ORS
Advocate: Somnath Bharti

(APPELLATE JURISDICTION) , COURT NO. 1 ,  (DIVISION BENCH-1) 
HON'BLE THE ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE , HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RAJIV SAHAI ENDLAW

Additional Respondents:

Ashok Aggarwal
Central Board of Secondary Education 
National Institute of Open Schooling
Association of Unaided Private Schools

Jandhyala B G Tilak, has argued in the Economic & Political Weekly that the affidavit submitted in July 2012 by the Government to the Delhi High Court permitting home schooling under the Right to Education Act contradicts the letter and spirit of the Right to Education Act.

Home schooling is now permissible under the RTE Act. Govt. Clarifies the word "Compulsion"

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

On Oct 17, 2012, the Government reversed its earlier stand (referred to in the original post below) and now says home schooling is NOT permissible under the RTE Act. For more details, see new post on this. The Government will be filing a fresh affidavit on this in Delhi High Court on December 19, 2012.

--------------------- Text of my original post continues below ---------------------

The Government has clarified in the Delhi High Court that parents interested in home schooling their children or adopting alternate forms of education are now perfectly at liberty to do so. According to a report in the Indian Express (July 20, 2012),

In response to a public interest litigation, the Ministry of Human Resources Development filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court, which stated that

"Parents who voluntarily opt for alternate forms of schooling may continue to do so. The RTE Act does not come in the way of such alternate schooling methodologies or declare such form of education as illegal."

The Ministry’s response came after the High Court directed it to respond to a petition filed by a 14-year-old girl, Shreya Sahai, who opted for home schooling but contended that Section 18 of RTE Act does not recognise any other mode of imparting education except the one through formal schooling.

“The benefits of all children aged 6-14 years and their parents who feel threatened because their right to choose a mode of education for primary education stands violated as the Act restricts the same only to a formal school,” she said.

All other modes of imparting education, except a formal school, like home schooling, alternate schools of education and the schools not subscribing to the norms and curriculum mandated in the Act stand declared illegal under sections 18 and 19 of the Act, said the petition. 

The Hindustan Times (July 20, 2012) adds,

The affidavit clarifies that the Act concerns itself with the rights of children, and is not a compulsion. “The compulsion is on the appropriate government and the local authority to provide free education to all children up to 14 years,” the affidavit said.

This statement in the affidavit provides complete clarity on the connotation of the world "compulsion" in the RTE Act. The compulsion is on the state to provide free education and not on the citizens to be educated in a conventional school.

Case Details:

Delhi High Court Case no. W.P.(C) 8870/2011

SHREYA SAHAI AND ORS  Vs. UOI AND ORS
Advocate: Somnath Bharti

(APPELLATE JURISDICTION) , COURT NO. 1 ,  (DIVISION BENCH-1)
HON'BLE THE ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE , HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RAJIV SAHAI ENDLAW

Additional Respondents:

Ashok Aggarwal
Central Board of Secondary Education
National Institute of Open Schooling
Association of Unaided Private Schools

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.

National Education Finance Corporation - Why has the MHRD abandoned it?

This seemed like a very good idea. The HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, proposed the idea for a National Education Finance Corporation in early 2010, and expanded on it in the Rajya Sabha by making a persuasive case for it.

Under the present policy framework if you want to set up an institution there is no Government agency that can finance you.  So, there is no access to finance to setting up a new educational institution.  So, he will have to go to the bank to actually get financing from the bank at the lending commercial rate.  Now, human resource development is not considered as an infrastructure development and the Supreme Court has said that this is charity, this is for public service.  So, an activity which is for public service has to borrow if he wants to set up an educational institution at commercial rates.  But, an activity which is in the infrastructure sector, namely physical infrastructure, you can borrow at softer rates because that is priority sector.  So, what the policy framework within which we are working is, that anybody who wants to set up an educational institution should have access to finance. That is the first purpose.  This has nothing to do with UGC.  Secondly, if you set up an educational institution, under the present guidelines you will get grants from the UGC or from the Government or under schemes of the Government only when you have achieved certain milestones.  Now, in the meantime if you want to enhance your infrastructure -- and nowadays, with research and development expanding exponentially -- you need new capital investment.  There is no way that you can get finance.  You have to cross many milestones.  So, when you want to set up an educational finance corporation, our objective is that anybody who wants to set up an educational institution should have free access to finance as a priority lending sector.  What happens is, when you call it charity, State Government control fees.  Once it is charity, State Government control fees and they cannot increase fees in their institutions.  Many of them do the kind of practices that they are doing and that is the root cause of the problem.  When they will have free access to finance and every child has free access to loan why will he need to sell the family silver to enter into an educational institution?  So, I think it is the need of the hour and I would require you to give me suggestions as to how we must move forward because unless we build that infrastructure and capital we will not be able to move forward.

Kapil Sibal's proposal was welcomed by a few other MPs during the discussion in the Rajya Sabha.

But the Planning Commission apparently raised some objections and the MHRD seems to have given up on the idea.

"Proposal for setting up of National Educational Finance Corporation (NEFC) was prepared and sent to Planning Commission for concurrence. Planning Commission has raised certain objections to the proposal. Therefore the proposal was not taken forward." Source: Lok Sabha UnStarred Question No. 4410 Answered on 21.12.2011

I wish the MP, Rajaogpal Lagadapati, who asked the question had raised a supplementary question about what the Planning Commission objected to and whether the MHRD is pursuing any alternatives, or has given up the idea for good.

A report in The Hindu (May 10, 2010) throws some light on the Planning Commission's thinking on the NEFC as well as the idea of providing loan guarantees:

The Planning Commission has suggested that the Human Resource Development Ministry examine the option of setting up a loan guarantee authority as a separate division within the purview of the proposed National Education Finance Corporation (NEFC).

The proposed NEFC aims at refinancing student education loans and institutional loans at concessional rates with longer repayment, which will help expansion and new investments in the higher education sector, particularly universities.

While putting the NEFC on a “fast track”, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia reportedly told the Ministry to also look into the possibility of creating an authority that would stand guarantee for education loans to students or institutions who borrow money for investment in the higher education sector, instead of only refinancing.

 Mr. Ahluwalia is said to have suggested to the Ministry that both the options of refinancing and standing guarantee could be brought under the purview of the NEFC. The proposed NEFC would have two divisions, one as a loan guarantee authority and the other to deal with infrastructure loans.

....

If the NEFC stands as a guarantor, it will have to pay only for defaulters, who would be few. The Ministry, open to the new suggestion, is working out mechanisms to cut down on defaulters before approving the loans.

The refinancing of loans for investment is also expected to curb capitation fees, since, at present, investment for infrastructure has to be borrowed at commercial rates where the interest is high and the repayment period short. To avoid this, institutions often borrow money from the market, and in order to repay it quickly, charge capitation fees from students. Once the loan is repaid, the capitation fee turns into profit. With the availability of soft loans, this is expected to come to an end.

The NEFC will refinance to the bank at a lower rate the sanctioned loan that it releases to the student or an institution. The bank makes its margin from the difference in interest rates, while the NEFC will use the educational cess released by the government, which is free of cost and also borrows from the market, so that the average cost of funds advanced as loans is lower than the rate at which it lends to banks. This differential rate will be the NEFC's margin or profit.

The Planning Commission doesn't seem to have objected to the idea of the NEFC per se - it has only provided constructive suggestions on how the NEFC could also look at providing student loan guarantees.  The report in The Hindu had indicated that the MHRD was open to the Planning Commission's idea and was working on incorporating it into the scope of the NEFC.

Why then is the MHRD claiming now that the Planning Commission objected to the idea of the NEFC and citing that as the reason for abandoning the idea of the NEFC altogether? An eminently sensible idea seems to have been buried quietly. The MHRD needs to explain its thinking instead of providing bland statements.