Enhancing Primary Education in India

Team Name: Bhavishya-IICollege: IIT-Bombay

Primary Education

Primary healthcare

Empowerment of

women

Public Distribution

System

Employability of youth

Agricultural productivity

Timely justice to all

Civic Amenities

Research and

innovation

Electoral reforms in

politics

Social welfare to informal sector

workersThe youth of first learners is expected to become the enlightener of Indian future

Major fraction of India’s problems have taken huge shape because of inability and ignorance shown by people.

The youth of first learners is expected to become the enlightener of Indian future.

Education empowers people with skills of understanding, analysing and decision making.

Possible Concerns of StakeholdersGovernment

Infrastructure

Access to quality education

Awareness about education

High Learning outcomes

Teachers

Adequate Salary

Location of posting

Parents

Safety of children

School Environment

School Proximity

Students

Interesting curriculum

Go

vern

men

t • 10.2% growth in density to 3.55 schools/10 sqkm. in last 5 years

• High Awareness: Enrollment of 96.7% children with 50.2% of girls in 2012 Teac

he

rs • Salary is 3-5 times more than private sector

• Job security is an additional benefit

Pare

nts • High enrollment

suggests that these issues are not stopping parents from sending their wards to school

Stu

de

nts • These problems are

inherent in the system and need a paradigm change in the methodology of imparting education

Legend: Green = Not a major concernRed = Major concern to be tackled first

Measuring the Quality of Education

• Despite spending thousands of crores on education, there is no provision to track the impact of government’s efforts

• According to APRESt survey, infrastructure, decreasing teacher pupil ratio, high teacher salary etc. have no correlation with learning outcomes, traditionally believed otherwise

• Hence, all our efforts have not yielded desired results

WHY?

• Mid-term evaluations to measure the learning growth and provide feedback to the teacher for motivation and improvement scope

• End-term evaluation to assess the skills acquired and learning growth

• Making learning outcomes an explicit goal in Results Framework Document (RFD) of MHRD

• Not disclosing individual assessments in order to curb student stress

WHAT?

• State and National level committees to implement the policy in schools in their jurisdiction

• Committees to prepare a document listing out how to measure skills in the tests

• Extending contracts to private companies to conduct the tests

• Use these results for internal monitoring and assessment of the system

HOW?

Monitoring reading and arithmetic skills primary school students

A mid term evaluation to ensure regular learning and to provide feedback to teachers

An end term evaluation to measure yearly learning growth of students

Evaluation techniques to be decided by education boards

Web portal to make findings accessible to authorities

Government can collaborate with private companies and NGOs to conduct the evaluation process

Collaboration with private sector:

Gov. has collaborated with TCS to provide passport to Indian citizens resulting in improved efficiency

Collaboration with NGOs:

NGOs like ASER, Prathamare actively working in this field

Average cost per student per evaluation: ₹20

Cost per school (average 107 students): ₹2150

Yearly expense per school (2 tests/yr): ₹4300

Other expenses: ₹700

Total yearly expense per school: ₹5000

Total schools: 0.85 million

Total expense: ₹4.25 billion

Auxiliary expenses: ₹50 million

Total expense: ₹4.3 billion

Measuring the Quality of Education

Approximately 0.65% of the annual education budget

Causes Identified

High absence rate of teachers

Irresponsible Attitude of teachers

Ineffective teaching

Lack of incentives

High Job security

Proposed Solutions

Attendance of teachers and students on start and end of daily instruction

Incentives to teachers based on performance of students, attendance and several other factors

Biometric Attendance

Monetary Incentives

Substandard Education in India

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10

Students scoring above 60% marks in grade 4th & 5th

Boys Girls

Dat

a n

ot

avai

lab

le

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

40.00%

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Arithmetic skills of students of grade 5th

Substraction Division

Cost Estimationtotal number of government schools – 8,00,000 approx.One time installation cost – ₹ 400-500 crore.Annual maintenance cost – ₹ 50-100 crore.

*(rough estimation of costs)

ScalabilityCan be started as a pilot project in some selected districtsExpanded on the lines of cash infusion system

Biometric machines should be battery driven keeping in mind the unavailability of regular power in many regions.

• Average teacher absence rate of 25% observed in a study conducted by APRESt

Requirement

• Will help monitor attendance and hence in decrease in absence rate

• Will help identify fraudulent enrolments

Advantages• Attendance of teachers

and students 2 times a day

• All the data to be collected and analysed to generate reports at district/state/national level and make them accessible through web portal.

Implementation

• Private tender can/should be given for installation and maintenance of machines as well as for studying data, summarizing and reporting.

Private Tender

Biometric Attendance

PROPOSED MODEL TO CALCULATE INCENTIVES

10% of annual salary as incentive can be given to teachers for extra-ordinary efforts towards education

• 30% incentive if meet the predecidedminimum requirement

• Additional 20% incentive on extra effort towards quality

50% weightage to end term evaluation performance

• 20% incentive if meet predecidedminimum requirement

20% weightage to mid term evaluation performance

• Incentive proportional to (actual attendance – minimum requirement

30% weightage to teacher’s attendance

According to APRESt survey incentive based method is 10-15 times more cost effective than decreasing pupil- teacher ratio

Individual incentives given to a teacher is more effective than incentives given to group

Awards for the teaching excellence can be distributed to teachers for their extra-ordinary efforts

Improved teacher attendance

Teachers teach enthusiastically

Better Performance of Students

Student learning improved

Incentives to teachers

Monetary Incentives

• Conduction of bi-yearly evaluation process by Private firms

• Biometric attendance machine maintenance to avoid discrepancy in data

• Good performance begets bonus but there is no penalty for underperforming

• Model will not motivate teachers content with their basic pay

• Incorporation of penalty in the model would see opposition of Teacher Associations

• Measuring reading skills involve a subjective component, therefore to ensure common careful evaluation criterion

• Evaluators taking the tests should be as objective as possible

Challenges to proposed models

Transparent Execution

No penalty Clause

Simple evaluation

test

• Karthik Muralidharan, Venkatesh Sundararaman.2011. “Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India”

• Karthik Muralidharan.2012. “Long-Term Effects of Teacher Performance Pay : Experimental Evidence from India”

• Karthik Muralidharan .2013. “Priorities for Primary Education Policy in India’s 12th Five-year Plan”

• Michael Kremer, Nazmul Chaudhury, F. Halsey Rogers, Karthik Muralidharan, Jeffrey Hammer. “TEACHER ABSENCE IN

INDIA: A SNAPSHOT”

• “District information System for Education” http://dise.in/AR.htm

• “RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

• “Inequalities 2013: Karthik Muralidharan on Measuring Learning Trajectories with Longitudinal Data”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkLMZKh4WBE

• “ASER”. http://www.asercentre.org/education/data/india/statistics

Bibliography