SOURAV ROY BARMAN: Before we go into the specifics of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, can you give us a little overview of the kind of questions that you ask when you interact with children during the survey? On what basis do we map this rise and fall of learning abilities?
Since 2005, we have stuck to a very clear form because if you keep changing your surveys, that’s not comparable. For example, in the reading test, you start by saying, ‘Can you read a simple paragraph of four sentences?’ If the children can read that, then you go to the next higher level, which is a story. If you can read that, then you are a story reader. If you’re reading the paragraph, you are a standard-one paragraph reader.
If you can’t read that, or you may read but with a lot of mistakes, then you are asked to read simple words. If you can read the words, four out of five or whatever that number is, then you are a word reader, not a paragraph reader. If you can’t read words, you’re taken down to simple alphabets. So there is a clear gradation and one result is comparable to the next. (It’s the) same thing with arithmetic. It’s a pattern, that is how we categorise children. But we are very keenly aware that that is not all that learning is. We’re doing this as a dipstick, an indication. If a child cannot read, it doesn’t mean the child doesn’t have knowledge. Children have a lot of knowledge. Unfortunately, that is not the school knowledge that is expected.
Madhav Chavan, co-founder, Pratham Education Foundation
SOURAV ROY BARMAN: Before starting the survey, were you expecting results which are worse than what actually came out?
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Luckily, we had done a survey in 2021. It was a phone survey because we could not go into the field and we already knew that there was a dip in the reading ability. But if your question is directed at whether we had a bias going in, I think every surveyor went in without a bias. But the two fears that were expressed during the pandemic — that children are going to drop out of schools, girls’ education will suffer — that was based on our experience that whenever there is distress, girls’ education suffers, children going to school suffers. So, everybody also expected since schools are closed, children will not learn. I’m jumping the gun, I suppose, but when I saw the results, I was elated. Children who went to first grade, or were supposed to go to first standard, should not have learned a thing in two years, if all the learning is happening because of schools. Then if you say where 30 per cent children were reading, now there are 24 per cent children reading, only 6-7 per cent drop is good, the rest can be covered.
We think that the catching-up process, if applied seriously in most of our government schools, or any school, should be very easy. According to Pratham’s established evidence of learning to read — TARL (teaching at the right level) — within 50 days, a large number of conversion happens. From nothing to beginners to reading levels to story level readers.
SOURAV ROY BARMAN: Could this type of hybrid homeschooling with technology systems represent the model for the schools of tomorrow?
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We send children to school and we insist that the teachers have to be trained teachers. Centrality of a person who helps children learn, I’m willing to accept. But I’m not sure the centrality of a teacher is really valid, because the children are learning from different sources. We saw that in the pandemic. For two years, there was no school and the children have learned at home. In all middle-class homes, mothers, not necessarily fathers, are teaching children all the time. So already there is a hybrid model. We know that the proportion of reading children is related to the proportion of educated parents. The proportion of children going to private tutors is going up uniformly. These are resources of education for a child, for a family. So why not look at it and say, there are educational resources, the teacher can be there, but there is so much more happening. In the ’70s, we discovered a teacher called television. Now, we noted that the proportion of children or families, rural included, that have smartphones and reasonable access to internet, has gone up. Children are handling technology. So, there is so much children are exposed to, how can the teacher cope with any of those things? The speed with which and the extent to which children are exposed to information that is affecting them — good, bad, ugly — the nature of education is changing completely. Education that takes this into account treats everything in the community as resources.
UMA VISHNU: You have been doing this (the ASER survey) since 2005. What is that big takeaway for you?
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When I jumped into National Literacy Mission, its goal was to make India a literate country in a decade. This was in 1988. So, at the turn of the century, India should be a literate country, that was the aim. But it took much longer. Now, we are approaching 85 per cent literacy by the old standards. Similarly, when we did ASER, in 2005, we found that approximately 53 per cent children can read. The question was, how long will it take for all children to learn to read. The answer should be 50 days. But we are still stuck at 53 per cent. So, why is it taking so long? The acceptance that this was a problem was what was taking long. But by 2013-14, it was clear that this was not an Indian problem (alone). In a lot of the developing world, a large percentage of children could not read. Finally, in 2018, The World Bank Development Report declared that there was a learning crisis. By 2020, the government of India, which under a different party was resistant to accepting this idea that learning levels are low, accepted that and you saw the National Education Policy come in, talking about the centrality of the foundational learning levels. So, we have taken a big turn. Now, we’ll wait and watch if children learn to read. If you push, it should be possible.
Madhav Chavan, co-founder, Pratham Education Foundation
UMA VISHNU: I’m curious, like you said, it takes only 50 days for a child to read. Why is it taking this long for all children to read?
It has to be done right. You set aside, say, the first three months of the school year. So, total 90-91 days. Let’s assign 50 days out of those 90 as learning days and focus only on reading, writing, arithmetic and the very basics for the entire country. No textbooks. It should be possible.
That all the children should be able to read, if you focus on that, then it can be done. If you get the village together, tell the parents also, these are simple things to be done. Don’t worry about the knowledge in the textbook. If it’s done in this way, it can be done.
NEETI NIGAM: What we have seen is the rise of the hybrid model of teaching. Do you think that’s the best way forward now?
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The problem ultimately lies in assessment. This is a filtration system — who’ll move to the top and who’ll stay at the bottom. That’s all that is happening. We call it the overambitious curriculum. The curriculum is getting tougher and tougher, and that is not because you want children to learn more. It is because you want to filter out children who can’t negotiate that curriculum.
SAKSHI SAROHA: The government has been promoting regional languages in schools and for teaching also. Do you think that language is a barrier and if students are taught in regional languages, it will improve the learning gaps?
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Language can’t be a barrier. In Maharashtra, there are many government schools called semi-English schools. When I was in high school, we couldn’t understand what the teachers were saying because of their bad English or our poor understanding. But they explained everything in Marathi, with English scientific terms. That’s called semi English, what is Hinglish now. Why can’t that be a language of teaching or instruction? It’s the child’s understanding that is more important. So, if the language is a barrier, then it’s a barrier. We have to be solution-oriented.
In this ASER survey, you will see there is a table which asks, ‘Are you going to a school where the medium of instruction is your mother tongue?’. The funny part is, in most states, including UP, Bihar, 30-40 per cent children are going to schools that are their mother-tongue schools. What does that tell you? So, language has an interesting import, but we have never really dealt with it. In tribal areas, they move from the tribal language to a state language. That’s a big transition. Many tribal areas are on borders. To understand if my language is Telugu or Marathi, half my school life will be over. So, we have to deal with the language issue differently.
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UNNI RAJEN SHANKER: You talked about assessment as a problem. Children come from varied backgrounds even in a rural school — rich, not so rich, poor, very poor, illiterate parents, first-generation learner parents, etc. How significant is the size of a classroom? If you reduce the number of children in a classroom, isn’t it better? I know it takes a lot of investment, but is that a problem that we need to address?
It depends upon how you see the problem. Intuitively, if one educator deals with a smaller number of group, then the interaction is greater, and learning should be better. The question is, again, affordability.
What we have been doing is we are asking children to make their groups and relying on peer learning. Usually, a group leader emerges, an older person who helps the others and his or her learning also improves. Then the community coaches deal with these group leaders, help them understand, so that they can explain to their group. So, you can solve the problem by using peer learning methods.
Madhav Chavan, co-founder and president of Pratham Educational Foundation, in conversation with Sourav Roy Barman, senior correspondent, The Indian Express.
Second, if children are at different levels, they naturally are going to learn at different paces. The first step is to learn to read and comprehend. So, if you give them learning-to-read lessons, then you want them to be all at the same level. You call it teaching at the right level. Even if it’s a small classroom of 20 children, if it is divided into four different categories of fluent readers to non readers, then you can’t handle this class. Instead, you divide into groups of similar levels, and then teach them. Now, there is Standard III, IV, V, and in each standard, there are children of these different categories. Now what do you do? You club all the good readers from Standards III to V and give them something to do. You take all the children who are non-readers from Standards III to V and work on them to become readers. Over a three-month period, all these children come to a point where they are good readers. So, making a classroom small doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. You have to approach the problem based on what they know. Once they are all at a similar level of reading expertise, or even numeracy, they can handle different questions. It is very important to have peer learning and parent support. You can’t ignore those.
UNNI RAJEN SHANKER: The second question is on your views about (British Prime Minister) Rishi Sunak’s idea of making mathematics mandatory till 18.
I think that’s a ridiculous idea. What is possible is that you can say that everybody should know at least so much mathematics. That I can understand. But why should you learn for so many years? What’s the point? Someone may tell you learning trigonometry is not my cup of tea. If I know my bank’s interest rate and I know how to calculate my interest that’s good enough for me. Why force?
DISHA ROY CHOUDHURY: This year’s report has talked about how there has been an increase in students going to private tuitions. With the introduction of CUET in 2022, there has been a fear that the number of students going to private coaching centres will increase. Do you think there can be a correlation between the two?
The correlation is between what you fear and what you think is good education. In the rural areas, one tuition instructor teaches five children, they charge Rs 200 each. They are not very well-organised. People can’t help them at home, so these are private tutors who help the students, supervise them. They are not explaining everything you want to know and need to know. So it is coming out of fear. People think it yields some results. But that is also part of self selection. If children want to learn, they will learn. If children don’t want to learn, there’s nothing you can do to make them learn what you want them to learn…And yet we insist.
NISHANT SHEKHAR: Bihar has once again recorded the worst attendance. Where do you think the problem lies?
Tradition. If you see Bihar, there is a very low number of private schools, but very high number of private tutors. So, you don’t have to go to school, you can go to a tutor. This has become a tradition. It has to be a social habit to send children to school. UP is also the same way. But if you see the division, southern states, right up to Maharashtra, all have very high attendance. But go to the eastern corridor, where there’s more tuition, the attendance starts dropping. So there’s a correlation between tuitions and attendance.
NISHANT SHEKHAR: What is your assessment of the National Education Policy (NEP)? This ASER is the first physical survey after the NEP. Has it addressed the concerns of foundational literacy?
The policy has addressed the question. There is an operational arm of the policy, which is the foundational literacy numeracy mission, Nipun Bharat. Things have been put in place. The question is how effective they will be. Because between the policy and the Union government’s plans, once you go down to the states and from there to the districts and the villages, there is a long distance, a huge gap. All this has to be worked out.
SHUBHAJIT ROY: In terms of the pandemic and online learning, have you anecdotally and through your surveys seen if there is a lowering of concentration among children when it comes to learning? And what are the lessons learned through this pandemic in terms of online learning?
There’s very little online learning with computers and smartphones and there was no online learning as such. You will find in the data, smartphones are not always available for children to learn. So online learning is a very small percentage. Did it affect concentration in learning? I don’t know. Anecdotally, I have a sample of one granddaughter who was completely bored of online learning. But what is interesting is that children have learned a lot about technology, which we didn’t expect…
Tablets and all these are not just one way communicators of knowledge. They’re connectors and they are the technology that children should handle. If we want them to write, they won’t, but if we tell them to make a video, they’ll make and send. You have to understand that that is a skill of modern society, that it is a part of learning.
UMA VISHNU: Is there a way to measure what kids have learned during the pandemic?
There should be but what we don’t have is a baseline. So new baselines are required, new learning levels. In Pratham, one of my criticisms is that we looked at learning loss, we didn’t look at learning gains. The children have gone through a lot of suffering — they have seen deaths, loss of jobs, drop in income levels. Where is that registered? It must have affected in many ways, positive and negative. We know that domestic violence had gone up. How do you think that affected children? We haven’t studied that. Sociological institutions should do something, ASER can’t do everything.
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