Education in India

Democratising the quality of education for all children in India

Of the four ideas that I talked about in my TED Talk titled Education for All - More of the Same or Something Different? on December 13th, 2010 at TEDx Kumaun, the fourth idea was about democratising the quality of education for all children in India.

Our focus in terms of achieving the goal of providing an Education for All continues to be on the following:

• enrollment - ensuring every single child goes to a school,
• attendance - ensuring the child attends school everyday and
• time spent and completion - ensuring the child spends a certain number of hours per day at school and a certain number of years in school and is deemed to have completed schooling.

We haven't yet paid enough attention to the quality aspect of education. While Enrollment, Attendance and Completion are important, it is paramount that every child gets a high quality education. To determine if that is indeed happening, we need to focus on learning outcomes and constantly keep testing to see if children are learning and taking appropriate steps based on the results of the tests so that every child learns what it ought to have learnt by the time it leaves school.

The quality of education or learning outcomes is integrally linked to the quality of teachers, especially so for the large number of first generation learners who won’t be able to get any support from their own parents at home. Great teachers can make a huge difference to a child. A recent study by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University attempts to quantify the value of a great teacher and also the value lost in the case of poor teachers.

But not every school has great teachers. What can we do to ensure that every single child in India has access to great teachers, thereby democratising the quality of education for all children across the country?

There are many excellent teachers in India today and they have been doing a great job unsung and unnoticed for years. A few of these teachers are identified and recognized with “Best Teacher” awards at the state and national levels every year. For a start, we could pick these award-winning teachers and create video recordings of all these teachers teaching in their own classes in the various Indian languages. These video recordings could then be broadcast on television and also put up on YouTube and other web sites for children and other current and aspiring teachers to watch. We could also study these videos to try and understand the traits, methods and skill sets of good teachers to help create many more good teachers.

How do we identify teachers with great potential? How do we attract good teachers to the teaching profession?

Imagine a reality show for teachers on television to unearth teaching talent from across the country and showcase it to the national audience of children. Existing and aspiring teachers can be invited to come forward to teach on prime time television, in all the Indian languages. Imagine them teaching Algebra, Poetry, the History of the Indus Valley Civilization, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, The Structure of the Atom and more. Along with a panel of eminent teachers as judges in the studio, children and parents sitting at home and watching these teachers on television can also rate and vote for the best teachers. The best teachers could become national stars and celebrities.

Every child in the country will have access to these programmes either on television or on YouTube or other similar sites. Not only will children realize that the best teachers can make every subject interesting and fascinating, they will also begin to expect the same high standards of teaching from their own teachers in their schools. Teachers from all across the country will also be able to watch and learn from the best in their profession. While good teachers ought to be paid as well as other professions if not more, this kind of national recognition for good teachers can play a huge role in making teaching an attracive and fulfilling profession.

I had described the other ideas that I spoke about in my TED Talk in earlier posts.

• Background
• Taking a leaf out of the Government’s own RSBY Project
• Opening up education to for-profit entities
• The need for political innovation to make education a top political priority.

Details about the Azim Premji University

I met my friend KS Viswanathan, the head of new initiatives at the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) a couple of days ago in Bangalore and asked him for some details about the Azim Premji University (APU). This is what I learnt from an informal chat with him.

• The APU will be an institution of excellence in the area of education to develop outstanding education thinkers & leaders, and also serve as a think tank for long-term education change and sustainable development. Akin to the IITs, AIIMS, IIMs and the NLSUI respectively focussed on Science & Technology, Medicine, Management and Law, the APU will in effect be an IIE focussed on Education.
• The APU's vision is to promote, conceptualize and create a paradigm shift through development of outstanding leadership, research, knowledge and ideas for education and allied development sectors.
• The objectives of the APU include
  • Creating Intellectual Capital: through research based theory and outstanding, creative and socially committed leaders and thinkers. Expand the frontiers of knowledge in education and allied disciplines
  • Practice informed by sound theory: Serve as a national education resource center and present an alternative authentic voice for educational and social change
  • Demonstrating models for effective development of teachers and education leaders
• The APU has been set up through a section 25 company and will be autonomous and self-funded with no dependency on funds from the Karnataka Government.
• The Azim Premji University Ordinance 2009, was passed by the Karnataka Government in November 2009.
• The APU is being set up on 50 acres of land in Sarjapur, near Bangalore. The land is being provided by the section 25 company, which is acquiring it directly from the owners.
• It will be a fully residential university.
• The APU will not be aiming to recover all its expenditure from tuition fees. Any budgetary gap between income and expenditure will be bridged by funds provided by Section 25 company being established by Azim Premji.
• The first students will join the university in 2011. The APU will start by offering masters level courses and eventually also run a Ph.D. program.
• Apart from the classroom lectures, the students at the APU will be required to do field work in schools as an integral part of their learning.
• The APU, in addition to developing education professionals and contributing to research will work towards strengthening the educational space by:
  • Increasing the public debate on alternative approaches towards educational excellence
  • Creating possibilities and opportunities to promote innovation and piloting of new ideas/approaches
  • Supporting state and central governments to move towards a quality education revolution
  • Serving as a resource centre for the country in the areas of education and development
  • Emerging as a centre of excellence in education policy and implementation

Raison d'etre of a college - providing instruction or producing learning?

A paradigm shift is taking hold in American higher education. In its briefest form, the paradigm that has governed our colleges is this: A college is an institution that exists to provide instruction. Subtly but profoundly we are shifting to a new paradigm: A college is an institution that exists to produce learning. This shift changes everything. It is both needed and wanted.

said Robert Barr and John Tagg, in a landmark article titled "From Teaching to Learning" published in the Nov/Dec 1995 issue of Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. According to the editor of Change, this article by Barr and Tagg is "arguably the most widely cited piece that Change ever published."

Barr & Tagg provided a nice comparison and contrast between what they call the Instruction Paradigm and the Learning Paradigm.

Instruction Paradigm	Learning Paradigm
Mission and Purposes	Mission and Purposes
Provide/deliver instruction	Produce learning
Transfer knowledge from faculty to students	Elicit students discovery and construction of knowledge
Offer courses and programs	Create powerful learning environments
Improve the quality of instruction	Improve the quality of learning
Achieve access for diverse students	Achieve success for diverse students
Criteria for Success	Criteria for Success
Learning varies	Learning varies
Inputs, resources	Learning & student-success outcomes
Quality of entering students	Quality of exiting students
Curriculum development,expansion	Learning technologies development,
Quantity and quality of resources	Quantity and quality of outcomes
Enrollment, revenue growth	Aggregate learning growth, efficiency
Quality of faculty, instruction	Quality of students, learning
Teaching/Learning Structures	Teaching/Learning Structures
Atomistic; parts prior to whole	Holistic; whole prior to parts
Time held constant,learning varies	Learning held constant, time varies
50-minute lecture,3-unit course	Learning environments
Classes start/end at same time	Environment ready when student is
One teacher, one classroom	Whatever learning experience works
Independent disciplines, departments	Cross discipline/department
Covering material	Specified learning results
End-of-course assessment	Pre/during/post assessments
Grading within classes by instructors	External evaluations of learning
Private assessment	Public assessment
Degree equals accumulated credit hours	Degree equals demonstrated knowledge and skills
Learning Theory	Learning Theory
Knowledge exists "out there"	Knowledge exists in each person's mind and is shaped by individual experience
Knowledge comes in chunks and bits; delivered by instructors and gotten by students	Knowledge is constructed, created,
Learning is cumulative and linear	Learning is a nesting and interacting of frameworks
Fits the storehouse of knowledge metaphor	Fits learning how to ride a bicycle metaphor
Learning is teacher centered and controlled	Learning is student centered & controlled
Live teacher, "live" students required	Active learner required, but not "live" students required
The classroom and learning are competitive and individualistic	Learning environments and learning are cooperative, collaborative, & supportive
Talent and ability are rare	Talent and ability are abundant
Productivity/Funding	Productivity/Funding
Definition of productivity: cost per hour of instruction per student	Definition of productivity: cost per unit of learning per student
Funding for hours of instruction	Funding for learning outcomes
Nature of Roles	Nature of Roles
Faculty are primarily lecturers	Faculty are primarily designers of learning methods and environments
Faculty and students act independently and in isolation	Faculty and students work in teams with each other and other staff
Teachers classify and sort students	Teachers develop every student's competencies and talents
Staff serve/support faculty and the process of instruction	All staff are educators who produce student learning and success
Any expert can teach	Empowering learning is challenging and complex
Line governance; independent actors	Shared governance; teamwork independent actors

Building on the powerful argument of Barr and Tagg for a shift to the Learning Paradigm, what can we do in the Indian context? I've some thoughts which is fodder for another post.