The Public School Reinvention

Project

Stepping stones: Enhancing the quality of primary education

TIME SPRINTERS:Siddharth Naidu, Dhruv Kumar, Parth Joshi, Roop Narayan Singh, Vivek Kumar

Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad

What is wrong?

Only 43% of the enrolled children complete elementary education and quality of education remains retarded as indicated by official DISE data.

Issues at hand Remedial

measures takenby government

The effectiveness of government policies has proved to be minimal

given the huge additional fiscal burden that these have added.

The Indian Scenario

Education at every level-primary, secondary and tertiary, are inextricably affected by each other. Most importantly, the education received by an individual at primary level forms the foundation of one’s life. It has a deep impact on the choices that will be effectively available to him at secondary and tertiary levels and in the case of our country, whether he will have any choice available at all.

73% of the India’s student population studies in government schools.

• Minimal allocation and poor management of the available resources are the primary reasons for backwardness of government schools.

Based on the government’s own report 17 states in India are in need of immediate attention.

• Education, being a state subject depends heavily on the state administration which is not efficient enough to centrally monitor such a large and diverse school network.

From giving away free midday meals to simplification of course curriculum and toughening of the school norms, the government has tried many measures but their effectiveness is clearly questionable.

• The reason being that these measures followed a centralized and uniform method of enforcement which completely ignored the local needs and the resources available (especially human resources) in different regions.

The Government School obstacle

Project REINVENT

Project REINVENT is a model which aims at improving the pedagogy in government schools (which contain 73% of the student population) that will have direct implications on the conditions and quality of education offered in government schools.

Aim

Constant evaluation of academic performance of students through tests designed by an expert team will be done in order to identify the schools most in need of attention after which local teachers will together engage in community building and solve the issues.

Method

Structure

of the

test

Frequency of the test: Monthly

Objective, multiple-choice questions.

Assessment of student may be done on the following parameters:

• Academic performance• Moral understanding• Divergent thinking• Creative ability• Reasoning

Teachers Parents

Dual Targets

The general trends shown by the academic performance of the students in a class in a particular subject will directly indicate whether or not the students are receiving adequate training in that particular subject which will enable teachers to adjust their teaching methods most optimally.

. The reports will be an opportunity for parents to know their children’s inclinations and talents better so that the parents can render the much-necessary support to their children in their academic and creative pursuits.

The Process

Expert Team

• Members of the team will be from different academic backgrounds who will make the test.

• The team would be constituted at state level.

• The reports of consistently extraordinary performers may also be sent to experts for better analysis.

School

• The tests are sent out to the government schools each month where the students take the test.

• Every student will take the test without any external assistance under the invigilation of the school teachers and local volunteers.

Evaluation Centre

• The tests are then sent to evaluation centreswhere the tests are analyzed and evaluated using a software program

• The reports of the students will be generated based on the guidelines given by the expert team.

Two copies of the final reports are sent back to school, one each for the parents and teachers

All schools will be divided into cohorts on the bais of their

proximity with each other.Thesecohorts will convene regular

meetings in which solutions will be devised for issues that will come to

light through the general trends observed in the reports of different

classes in different schools.

• Evaluation centres will make the reports on basis of the analysis done through a software built exclusively for this purpose.

• In this software, the answers to all questions will be inputted and based on the information provided by the expert team, a marking scheme would be followed.

• Finally, output would be generated along with pre-stored comments by the expert team corresponding to the score acquired.

Post-test Action

If the issues faced are indeed due to quality of teaching and the situation remains so even after 3 months without

any tangible improvement, then they could undergo short-term professional training which would be

organized at state-level.

If the issues being faced are primarily due to infrastructural handicaps or social conditions in the region, then the grievances will be advocated at the

state-level

Cohort-level meetings to devise solutions based on the trends observed in the reports and

organizing teaching workshops sensitive to local challenges by pooling in human resources

The test reports will help teachers to know their students better and provide them with individual attention and support in accordance with every

child’s behavior and inclination.

Cohort: Cohorts will be constituted consisting of four or five schools in close proximity with each other.

Grievance redressal: A network of NGOs operating within the state will be responsible along with the school authorities to put pressure on the state government to allocate adequate resources in places where required.

State-level programmes: Short-term training, interactive sessions and other constructive programmes by professionals will be organized every month in which any government school teacher from anywhere in the state will be free to participate..

• The Evaluation Team in a region would be responsible

for evaluating the tests electronically i.e. scanning the OMR sheets obtained from all the government schools in the

region and make reports through the special software

that would be made available to them.

• Skilled, with basic computer knowledge but work can be

done on weekends and hence, volunteers like college students

and working individuals and existing NGOs may come forward to take this task

• The Logistics Team in every cohort would be responsible for getting the test papers printed and delivered on the day of the test, ensuring the safe delivery of all the test papers to the nearest evaluation centre and delivery of the reports back to the corresponding schools.

• Semi-skilled who would have to work on weekdays and hence, would have to be given a fixed wage. Logistics Evaluation

TrainingGovernment Intervention

• For advocacy of improvements in social and infrastructural conditions in a region through government intervention as discussed in the previous slide, a network of NGOs operating in a state would have to be brought together which would then act as a massive pressure group advocating for necessary action on part of the government.

• The Training Team would be responsible for organizing the state-level programmes every

month calling upon professionals to have

sessions with the government school teachers

and address the challenges that they face

• Skilled team responsible for organizing the workshop or

any other state-level programme as felt needed

whenever possible..

Human Resource required

• Setting up of evaluation centres with at least one computer and an OMR reader.

• At full potential when every government school in India would be covered under the model and where an evaluation centre will be set up for every 1500 students or approximately every 10 schools, there would be close to 85,000 evaluation centres all over India.

• In that case scenario, a one-time capital investment of Rs 170 crore will go down in setting up these 85, 000 centes.

• But this can be significantly reduced if used computers are bought instead of new ones and can be further reduced if computers are not bought and only rented wherever possible.

• Since computers are only required for evaluation purposes which could be done on weekends, if organizations are willing to let out their computers for one weekend every month for our purpose, then also costs will reduce significantly.

• Implementing such cutbacks could reduce the cost to upto 1/3rd of the estimated value.

• Most importantly, the model will spread only gradually and therefore, the entire cost would not have to be bore at once.

• At full potential, around 13 crore test papers would have to be printed every month.

• If each test paper consists of an average of 10 pages and one OMR sheet, then printing cost cannot exceed Rs, 6 or 7 per test paper.

Transportation cost would be minimal since test papers would not be centrally printed and would be printed in every region separately and transported to the evaluation centre within the region by the Logistics Team.

• State-level programmes that would be carried out every month in every state for all government school teachers of the state have to include academicians and dignitaries from all over India and have to be organized in a way that teachers actually feel that they belong to a respected and intellectual class of the society and their actions are determinant in moulding India’s future.

• An allocation of Rs. 2 lakh per month for every state would be the maximum limit.

• Wages would have to be given to people whenever volunteers are not available.

• The Logistics Team and the Evaluation Team will consist mostly of on-wage skilled and semi-skilled workers.

• But since work is minimal i.e. only 2 or 3 days a month, wage expenditures will not be too large.

IT Infrastructure costs Printing costs

Transportation osts

State-level programmes

Human Resource Costs

Rs. 150-170 crore

Rs. 60-80 crore per

month

Rs. 1-2 lakhs per

month

Rs. 25-30 lakhs per

month

Rs. 7-8 lakhs per

month

Full potential maximum

expenditure

Large expenditure is involved at full potential.

The biggest question is whether there is any use in conducting a test to assess academic performance of students when this already being done through school examinations

Since the State-level programmes would be held at a specific location every month, only the teachers living in proximity may attend the proramme, therefore limiting it’s reach and effectiveness.

This project depends heavily on volunteering and without active volunteering at each level, it’s effectiveness will be reduced especially when it comes to pursuading government school teachers to take this extra burden.

• The quickest way of fully implementing this project at a pan-India level is through government support, both financial and legal.

• But even without any considerable government support, this model could still be implemented by establishing a very wide-network of NGOs which would pool in financial resources from local sources and start at a small-scale and gradually scale up as awareness about the project and it’s impact grows and more sources of funds arise.

Departure from existing system

• Firstly, it takes into account a broader view of learning and intelligence as it accommodates parameters like creative ability, moral understanding, etc. as well.

• The thrust of this model lies in the chain reaction that is set off once the results of the tests are distributed. It allows teachers and parents from different schools to come together to interact and work as a community to devise solutions to their problems.

• The excessive centralization of norms and policies ignores the social and infrastructural condition in any region. This makes teachers merely instruction takers from State administration and essentially excludes them and even retards them from effectively being a part of the education system which is the biggest reason for a general dearth seen among government school teachers. Our model strikes at the heart of this problem.

State-level programmes

• The State-level programmes should not be held only at a specific location and should be shifted every month and in states with high population, should be held more than once a month at different locations.

Government support

Challenges & Solutions

CHALLENGES

SOLUTIONS

ImpactMeasurement of impact

• Through the tests taken under this project, we could easily see whether or not conditions in any government school are improving.

Sustainability of the model

• As pointed out earlier, the biggest concern of this project is the financial burden.

• If the project succeeds on a small-scale, then the government could lend financial support which would make the project a reality at a pan-India level.

• The government intervention would not cause any operational constraint as the model is a decentralized one based upon the principle of community building.

• Any leakages in the proceedings can be easily detected. For example, inefficient logistics will be detected by the Evaluation team. Delays in evaluation of tests can be detected by the school. The failure of schools to act upon the problems will be reflected by the general trends observed in future test results.

Scalability of the model

• The model being a decentralized one, can be easily scaled to the highest level given the finances are in place.

• If awareness about the project is spread, then volunteers will come ahead and the project could be implemented all over India.

Monitoring mechanism

• As pointed out in the previous slide, this project depends heavily on active volunteering which makes proper monitoring absolutely necessary.

• As mentioned above, leakages at one level of the process will be detected the next level. But still, this would not suffice and hence, a special team has to be constituted in every state which would constantly monitor if the low-performing schools in the states show any signs of improvement or not.

• If not, then the teachers in those schools would be persuaded to attend the State-level programmesand if the reasons for low performance is due to lack of resources, then NGOs in and around the region will be activated to put pressure on the government to intervene (Slide 6).

• In order to ensure complete transparency and increase efficiency, general trends of each school will also be put up online on the website so that anybody can view the general performance of the students in any government school in any state within our network. This will put more pressure on the low-performing government schools to improve.

• Possibly, this could even make active citizens and NGOs to get involved in putting pressure on these schools and the government to improve the conditions in these schools.

References• Children in India 2012 – A Statistical Appraisal, Ministry of

statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India

• Elementary Education in India: Progress towards UEE, Flash Statistics DISE 2011-12, {published by – National University of Education Planning and Administration