The top-most priority of MHRD should be student and school assessments

While our budget was discussed and debated threadbare, a little known allocation of Rs 30 crore for school assessments almost went unnoticed. Why is it crucial and what makes it important in improving school education?

India's children are going to school but they are certainly not learning. Quoting from the ASER 2013 report for the umpteenth time, here are some statistics:

The proportion of Std 3 children who can read Std 1 text is just about two-fifths. Similarly, the proportion of Std 5 children who can read Std 2 text is less than half;
The proportion of children in Std 5 who could solve a Std 3 division problem was about a quarter;
The worst part is that we aren't showing any overall improvement in either reading or arithmetic.

It's a national shame staring at our face. The need of the hour is a strong focus on learning outcomes. And, the first step is to assess our children to see where they stand. Turning away from the eye of failure, like we pulled out of PISA after appearing second from bottom in its 2009 survey, isn't going to help. Unless we assess, we can't learn where we stand and we will forever be away from reform. Internationally, several countries test their children in annual surveys. For example, the Annual National Assessment in South Africa assesses all its learners from grade 1-6 and grade 9 to improve the quality of performance.

Gujarat is one of the foremost states to incorporate student and school assessments in the RTE [Right to Education] rules and now it has been four years since children of classes 2-8 have been assessed under the Gunotsav programme. The same focus is visible now under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership with the central government allocating Rs 30 crore for school assessments in this year's budget. This programme will assess schools on various parameters such as student learning outcomes, quality of teaching by teachers, student co-scholastic learning outcomes, etc., and publicly grade each school and make the information available to the public. While the amount may appear small, it will be sufficient to test about 6,000 schools assuming cost of assessments per pupil to be Rs 100 for two subjects and an average of 500 students per school. This will be sufficient to cover Kendriya and Navodaya Vidyalayas, which together add up to about 1,454.

However, the same commitment has to be shown by state governments to make the intervention meaningful. The funding necessary to conduct such assessments should be incorporated in the SSA-RTE funding that flows from the central government and subsequently included in the PAB frameworks for each state.

Green shoots are emerging with several state governments warming up to the idea. Madhya Pradesh is testing its students and uploading results of assessments to a central web portal. Karnataka recently graded all its 1,783 schools and not even a single school (including private schools) could get an A+ grade. The minister is using the inputs to improve the quality of education by altering policies. Similar action is happening in other states, albeit slowly. As a start, several states mentioned conducting student learning assessments in their state RTE rules.

Evidence has already shown that spending on inputs isn't correlated with improvement in outputs. We need to carefully channel the current spending of Rs 3.5 trillion on education in right places and students assessments will help us answer where.

To know more and view a comparative analysis of state RTE rules, check out RTE State Rules Matrix.

(About the author: Abhishek Bhattacharya, student of Post Graduate Programme (PGP) at the Indian School of Business - PGP Co2015. He is a former LAMP Fellow and has worked extensively on India's education policy at Centre for Civil Society. He tweets at @tathast_manush)

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