Enhancing the Quality of

Primary Education

By: Team Parivartan

2Why is Primary education important?

Around 29.5% of the total population in INDIA are below 15 years. And to compete in global knowledge economy increasingly depends on whether we can meet a fast growing demand for high level skills. A strong education system is always a cornerstone of any country’s growth and prosperity.

Current status of INDIAN Primary education• INDIA was ranked 73rd among 74 countries that participated in PISA 2009(Programme for

international student Assessment)

• Reading levels continue to cause serious concern .The % of children able to read is decreasing considerably year by year.

Source : ASER 2012

• Rapid improvement in enrollment rates

SSA(Sarva Siksha Abhiyan) gets most of its credit.

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Cont..

• Even after many measures taken by the government providing minimum infrastructure still remains a challenge.

• All India Private school enrollment is steadily

rising since 2006 from 18.6% to 28.7%

in 2012. This raises concern over the

quality of education in government schools which today provides education to majority of the children.

• No significant increase in retention rate(of students).It has remained nearly the same since

3 years.

Source: DISE 11-12

Source: DISE 11-12

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• The only way to improve education is to improve instruction.

• We are still following the old conventional teacher-classroom methods which have not yielded any considerable results even after substantial efforts. Now it has become necessary to adopt a new feasible methodwhich can significantly overcome todays problems.

Uninteresting Methods of instruction

• The quality of students can never exceed the quality of its teachers

• Teacher Absence – dismissing teacher for repeated absence occurs rarely in government schools 1-3000(govt. schools) 7-120(pvt. schools).

• Though programs of SSA like mid-day meal scheme have given encouraging results in terms of intake but the retention rate has remained low due to the quality of instruction.

Teacher’s

-absenteeism

-quality of instruction

• Though in year 2000 INDIA invested 4.3% of its GDP in education but in course of time surprisingly its decreasing. In

2009-3.2%, 2010-3.3% of GDP which is quite low when compared at global level.

Educational Facilities

• Nevertheless today in most of the INDIAN states this has improved but poor performing states in education like Bihar , Jharkhand , Uttar Pradesh ,West Bengal still have a pathetic ratio.

Teacher-pupil ratio

Hypothesis for current status

Source : Worldbank.org

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Proposed solution

Implementation of ABL(Activity Based

Learning) Methodology in

every state of INDIA

Enhancing quality of instruction

through encouraging

teaching profession and motivating

teachers

Increasing % of GDP

expenditure on Education

Sector

Promote PPP (Public

Private Partnership)

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What is Activity Based Learning?

Activity Based Learning - learning where student physically and mentally explore subject by simulation of the work environment, manipulation of tools and materials associated with the world of work, or performance of a real work task.

Conventional classroom ABL classroom

It is multi-grade multi-level learning program. Every child has an individualized learning plan. Here the curriculum is converted into a series of learning goals called milestones which are transacted through activities instead of textbooks.

Why is it important?

• All genuine learning comes through experience.• Diminishes physical and psychological distance b/w teacher and student

by changing the role of teacher to a facilitator.

7Cont..

• Tamilnadu(TN) has implemented ABLefficiently in its region. Its Drop Out rate in primary education is far below national average.

National average-6.5%

TN average-0.98%• After receiving encouraging results states

of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala have taken initiatives to adopt ABL methodology.

Source : TN education report

Few statistics of TN after implementation of ABL

Implementation1.Required Resources/Inputs

Finance

Local Govt.

State govt.

Central govt.

IFA’s

VEC’s

Human

Teacher Trainers

Teachers

NGO’s

EAF

VEC’s

Materials

Self-Learning materials

Infrastructure for CR management

Training Materials

• IFA-International funding agencies.

• VEC-Village Education Committee.

• EAF-Educational Administrators and Functionaries.

• CR-classroom.

• Funds in SSA Scheme can be utilized for finance.

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2.Execution of these resources.

• A few institutional mechanisms, like setting up the resource centers at the block and cluster levels, evolved during the DPEP, are now replicated in SSA called BRCs and CRCs which have played a major role.

• The TNSSA recruited a considerable number of BRTEs to provide training and monitor the progress of all the SSA initiatives including ABL. The role of BRTEs in Blocks is also providing on-site support to the teachers in schools.

• Resource Books have been provided to all BRCs which remain permanent resource materials to be used by BRTEs and Teachers.

• One CRC established for 10 to 15 schools provides opportunities to teachers working within

the cluster to share their experiences and innovative practices through monthly meetings.

• BRC-Block Resource Centre.• CRC-Cluster Resource Centre.• DPEP-District Primary Education Program• BRTE-Block Resource Teacher Educators• SSA-Sarva Siksha AbhiyanAn Overview of TN model

• The activity based instruction method requires long term planning with minute detailsof the whole process because before engaging the learners, the teacher has to make sure that all students have sufficient knowledge and skills regarding the task they are going to perform.

• It becomes a difficult task for teacher to pay attention to each and every student . This can be addressed buy decreasing Teacher-pupil ratio.

• Requires great effort with a proper research to design a effective curriculum. A feeble curriculum will do more harm than good.

• ABL requires the production of a variety of teaching learning materials on a large scale .

Challenges and remedial measures

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Promote Public Private Partnership in Education

Why?• PPP ensures inclusiveness and raises quality as a result of greater competition in education

market.

• Risk sharing between govt. and pvt. Sector, in turn increasing efficiency in delivery of resources and channeling of new resources.

• Private delivery of public services which majority of the times have given good results.

• Ultimate responsibility remains with public sector(define scope , set priorities, targets, outputs).

• PPP can be developed to build primary school infrastructure in rural areas where private players are reluctant to go because of low return. (See Ex:1)

Government do not have sufficient funds

to build infrastructure

Govt. provides Tax benefits, Commercial FSI to private Players

Private player builds the infrastructure

What can be done? Example:1

• In India % of Pvt. Aided Schools -3.48% where as govt. schools -

87.53%. And in primary education sector Pvt. Aided or Unaided schools have shown better results than govt.. Therefore, initiatives must be taken to increase number of Pvt. Aided schools. Source: 8th Aises

• *FSI: Floor Space Index.

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Increase % of GDP Expenditure on Education

Source : worldbank.org

• Though five decades ago, the Kothari Commissionhad given deep insights into the need to spend more

on education at all levels i.e atleast upto 6% of

GDP still no time more than 4.3% of GDP was spent on education sector.

• The global average by OECD* stands at 5.1% of GDP.

• By observing (graph1) it is evident that India’s % GDP on education sector is way below other countries that perform well in education sector.

Graph 1

*OECD: Organization for economic co-operation and development

• Providing minimum infrastructure has been a major concern of the govt. since a longtime And there is necessity for the govt. to speed up in this regard. This reality can be achieved solely by maximizing % GDP on Education sector.

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Enhancing Quality of instruction

• To achieve global standards in education one requires globally competitive teachers. Today it is need of the hour to set-up an institute with holistic training components, value-education and skill-orientation which will train students exclusively for teaching. IITE* is one such good initiative taken by Gujarat govt. in this direction.

• Incentive should be taken to promote attendance of teachers.- Bonuses should be provided to teachers whose attendance is above a certain

standard. These standards should be set individually for each state.- As per a survey where unannounced visits were made to 3700 Schools in 20

states shows that Salaries do not have any co-relation with absence rather schools with frequent inspection have less absence rates.

Source: DISE website

• The responsibility of cooking and providing Mid-Day Meals should not be burdened on the teachers. Rather the Gram panchayat should be given its responsibility.

*IITE : Indian Institute of Teacher Education

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• TN education report 2011-12.

• Annual status of Education report-2012(ASER).

• 8th all India school education survey(AISES) by NCERT.

• Flash statistics 2011-12 DISE(District information system for education).

• DISE analytical tables 2011-12.

• ASER 2012-national findings.

• NCERT Program evaluation report ABL.

• http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS

• http://dise.in/Downloads/Use%20of%20Dise%20Data/Ajay%20Deshpande,Sayan%20Mitra.pdf

• http://www.iite.ac.in/

• http://www.censusindia.gov.in/vital_statistics/SRS_Report/9Chap%202%20-%202011.pdf

References

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