There is a saying among those implementing laws, policies and guidelines that successful implementation is based on the number of adjectives in it. They feel the fewer the adjectives the easier it is to implement. Article 21A of the Constitution was introduced in 2002 through the 86th amendment with two adjectives. It reads — ‘The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of 6-14 years in such manner as the state may, by law, determine’. With two adjectives ‘free’ and ‘compulsory’, those involved in drafting the law seemed to have started on the right note. However, the law we have today is clearly inadequate for today’s knowledge economy, and would still need to address the twin problems of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘quality’ — the missing adjectives that would make it a law more resonant with our times. While ‘effectiveness’ can be addressed by empowering our teachers, ‘quality’ can primarily be addressed by looking at the role of the state.
A teachers’ contribution to a student’s learning has a greater impact than any other parameter that school systems can control. It is this area that policymakers in India have overlooked. Teacher effectiveness is possible only by concentrating on recruitment, evaluation, development, placement and retention of highly effective teachers. Instead of evaluating teachers’ performance and treating them differently on that basis, they are treated uniformly and rewarded for tenure and degrees. In fact, the Right to Education Bill that was passed focuses more on ‘no-brainer’ aspects, such as the prohibiting teachers from being seconded to non-educational duties.
There is no formal methodology to evaluate teacher effectiveness apart from seniority, headmaster inputs and degrees the person holds. It is imperative that we move to an approach where effectiveness is measured, for instance, on inputs from students and parents. This could account for 10 per cent, their attitude and values 10 per cent, performance of the student in end-of-the-course evaluations 40 per cent, and other observational data based on pedagogical knowledge, degrees earned and inputs from headmasters and principals, 40 per cent.
Such a dramatic shift requires infrastructure, and the requisite data systems to link student performance with the effectiveness of individual teachers over time. In addition, teachers often perceive evaluations as punitive rather than a tool to help them improve. It is important to link these performance evaluations to tenure, recognitions and promotions, compensations and incentives.
Student outcomes are the most reliable way to measure the quality of education provided we have the framework to measure such data. According to the United Nations Education for All report of 2010, among the feasible proxy indicators available for a large number of countries, the survival rate to grade five seems to be the best for the quality of education component.
There is a clear positive link between such survival rates and learning achievement, with the coefficient of correlation between survival rates and learning outcomes being close to 37 per cent. Education systems capable of retaining a larger proportion of their pupils to class five tend to perform better. The other possible proxy indicator for quality often mentioned is the pupil- teacher ratio. The association between this indicator and learning outcomes is also strong, but is much lower than for the survival rate to class five, with a coefficient of only 19 per cent. India ranks a dismal 114th among the 128 countries surveyed on the parameter of quality. Some thought thus needs to go into bringing more quality into the education system and we need to encourage more private players.
The National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) developed the District Information System for Education (DISE) to measure the standards. The NUEPA developed the Education Development Index (EDI), which tries to quantify the standards across states for comparisons in an objective manner. The EDI is based on a set of 21 indicators grouped into the four components of access, infrastructure, teachers and outcome indicators. There seems to be a positive correlation between the EDI of states and the percentage of private schools in states. Kerala, which has the best EDI rank amongst big states and Tamil Nadu have a larger number of private schools, with a government school to total schools percentage of 40.94 and 65.76 respectively. At the bottom of the table, Bihar, with a government school to total schools percentage of 99.85, has an EDI of 0.463.
Most constitutional experts feel the state’s role in education is not a constitutional function but a duty. The state need not set up and run schools, but concentrate on education policy. The fear policy-makers have of private education is the issue of profit. Reasonable profit is required for any institution to sustain itself and if guidelines can be laid down on fees, curriculum and other aspects of education, the government should, as an experiment, hand over the management of some of its badly performing schools to private managements with a distinguished record.
(The writer is the managing director at Yudofud Public Strategies)