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Stepping Stones:Enhancing Quality of Primary Education – ISB: Laina Emmanuel, Komal Vasudev, Guneet Singh, Manvendra Singh Raghav,Harkabir Singh Jandu

Manthan Topic: Stepping Stones: Enhancing Quality of

Primary Education

NAV PARIVARTAN

Team Details: ISB, Mohali Campus

Laina Emmanuel

Komal Vasudev

Guneet Singh

Manvendra Singh Raghav

Harkabir Singh Jandu


India’s Most Pressing Problem: Crisis of Learning

at the Primary Education Level


Quality of Primary Education at Government schools has been declining at an alarming rate in recent years which can hurt India’s

competitiveness and productivity and damage quality of life in rural and semi-urban India in the long run.

•India’s elementary education budget has increased

more than two fold since 2007-08, from Rs. 68,853

crores to Rs. 147,059 crores in 2012-13.

•Allocations for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the

primary vehicle for delivering the Right to Free and

Compulsory Education Act (RTE), have increased

three-fold.

INCREASE IN RESOURCESDECLINE IN LEARNING OUTCOMES

ASER 2012 and PISA 209show that fewer and fewer

children in successive batches reaching 3rd and 5th

standard are learning basics of reading , math and science

BUT


Substantial Improvements in inputs to Education over the decades

-Improved access to primary schools- Better infrastructure- Better pupil-teacher ratios- Increased student enrolment

However, this is not enough to reverse the crisis in learning

POSSIBLE CAUSES FOR THE CRISIS IN LEARNING – What does the research say?

Weak Pedagogy

Several randomisedevaluations find large positive impacts of supplemental remedial instruction in early grades that are targeted to the child's current level of learning (as opposed to simply following the text book) (references in appendix)

Weak School Governance

Most striking symptom of weak governance is the high rate of teacher absence in government-run schools, which has not reduced substantially since 2003.

Rigorous evaluations of carefully designed systems of teacher performance pay show substantial improvements in student learning in response to even very modest amounts of performance-linked pay for teachers.


The Importance of SMCs in The Solution


School Based Management – Evidence from Across the World

• Since the early 1990’s School Based Management (SBM) has gained increasing popularity as a strategy for

improving responsiveness and accountability in the delivery of education services.

• In several countries, including Brazil, Nepal, Mexico, and Czech Republic, authority is devolved to school based

committees who are given varying levels of financial autonomy for

1) determining school needs

2) preparing budgets and plans

3) procuring items and incurring expenditure for meeting such needs.

• Research has shown us that Nicaragua’s Autonomous School Program and Mexico’s compensatory education

program have contributed to better test scores.

School Management Committees in India

• In India, under the RTE, SMC’s have complete financial power over three annual grants –

Teaching Learning Material (TLM)

School Development Grant (SDG)

School Maintenance Grant (SMG)

• However, the condition of SMC’s across the country is quite pathetic. In a lot of places SMCs have not been

instituted, while they are dysfunctional in a number of places.


• The World Development Report on “Making Services work for the poor” recognizes that for education to truly deliver on its promises, schools need to be accountable to their local communities through bodies like “School Management Committees” (SMC)

• The Indian Government also recognizes the importance of SMC’s by empowering them with legal rights and duties under the Right to Education Act

Empowering School Management Committees

• Volunteers drawn from two distinct pools – local citizens and professionals from varied different professions. Involving the former raises the capacity of local citizens to monitor their schools, thus helping in scaling our ideas at low costs.

• Technology enabled – Through strategic use of Information Technology, such as Massive Online Open courses, adapted to Indian conditions, we can further lower costs and reach a wide audience

Implementation Model –

Volunteer-driven, Technology-enabled

Snapshot of solution proposedWe propose a technology-enabled, volunteer driven approach to empowerment of

School Management Committees (SMC’s) to help them effectively monitor schools and

adapt pedagogy to suit the needs of children in their community


Details of the Solution

`


Volunteer trainers:

•Based out districts

•Involved in training and empowering the SMC’s.

•Start with training 2 people per district (~1400 volunteers across the country).

Volunteer resource people:

•Diverse set of non-state actors who bring in requisite skill-sets, funding and ideas.

•They help empowered SMC’s achieve their goals.

Recruitment Of Volunteers in the 2 – Channel Volunteer

Model

Cascading model of training volunteers: Each set of 2 volunteers in a district train 80000 volunteers over the course of a year, thus reaching out to ~1.12 million across all districts in India

• Refresher training: To be provided through online courses, facilitated by volunteer trainers.

Training Of Volunteers

Skills imparted: Skills imparted across three domains

Domain Knowledge

• Public finances, with special reference to the district

• Financial literacy

Procedural Knowledge

• Procurement in a local government environment

• Assessment of learning outcomes through the use of survey-toolkits

Soft-skills

• Group dynamics with special relation to social dynamics in the district

• Decision-making in a group

• Team-building

Technology enablement

• Basic computer literacy and knowledge of internet

•Interaction in forums meant specifically for governance

Empowering SMCs

Initial training of SMC’s held in partnership with Block Development Officers and District Officers, to achieve scale.

• Refresher trainings held by volunteer trainers, as government capacity not enough to conduct regular trainings

• These technology enabled SMC’s would be networked onto the main GYAN platform, and can ask for specific ideas, funding and skill-sets they require for achieving their ideas.


Inform and Engage

Volunteer Resource Persons and Empowered SMCs

Collectively Generate New Ideas & Training Materials to

solve school-specific problems

Select new ideas and artifacts and

implement the best solutions

Communicate Help people submitAccept and group training material

Help people search and rate best solutions

Mentors, Sponsors support the portal

Community + Marketplace for ideas – Key Features

Moderation by experts to prevent lower-quality

inputs

Evolving portal to match to user expectations

Resource people review ideas and materials

Group by topics

Add user ratings

Add insights

Online chat with education experts

More search keywords for knowledge documents

Discussion Forums (District specific)

Architecture of the Online Portal


Key implementation challenges and mitigation

Risk Cause Mitigation

Disinterested SMC’s SMC’s usually have low expectations from government schools, translating into disinterest in tracking the learning outcomes of their children

Controlled experiments in Medak district in Andhra Pradesh by Accountability Initiative has shown that using local methods of dissemination can help ignite interest

Khemani et al have found that Information and advocacy campaigns can lead to better participation in SMCs

Lack of buy-in from district officials Building a good SMC culture requires buy-in from the local government, both for purposes of infrastructure for training and rules

We have seen that sharing success stories as well as data on learning outcomes across districts can incentivize district collectors to focus on education

Infrastructural issues Online networking on the GYAN network requires access to good infrastructure

Partnering with infrastructure providers such as TARAhaat can mitigate this risk


Expected Budget

•Management Team ( Rs. 6000 per district per annum)

•Volunteer Team (Rs. 1.8 lac per district)

•Regional

Organization Cost

•Transportation Cost (Rs. 10000 per district per annum)

•Establishment Cost Logistics Cost

• IT Software +Hardware Cost ( Rs. 2 lac per district per annum)

•Communication Expense – mobile& internet ( Rs. 35000 per district per annum)

Technology Cost

Rs 1.86

lac/district/an

num

Rs

10000/district/

annum

Rs

2.35lac/distri

ct/annum

Estimated Cost / Child = Rs 1.30 per annum


Appendix

Lant Pritchett, The first PISA results for India: The end of the beginning http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.in/2012/01/first-pisa-

results-for-india-end-of.html

PAISA Report 2012

ASER Report 2012

World Development Report 2004, Making services work for the poor http://www.gse.pku.edu.cn/lib/gse_lib/edu-

search/e_publication/e_pub/268950PAPER0WDR02004.pdf

Using evidence for better policy: The case for primary education in India, Karthik Muralidharan

http://www.ideasforindia.in/article.aspx?article_id=119

http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.in/2012/01/first-pisa-results-for-india-end-of.html













http://www.gse.pku.edu.cn/lib/gse_lib/edu-search/e_publication/e_pub/268950PAPER0WDR02004.pdf



http://www.ideasforindia.in/article.aspx?article_id=119

Date post:	21-May-2015
Category:	Education
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