AeA's intervention to enhance quality of education among primary 
school children.

Basic Facts

While India has made substantial progress in education in terms of enrolment of children into schools, concerns on the poor quality of education is gaining importance. Attaining minimum competencies by children - though many point out inadequacies of such measurement - itself becomes a major challenge with lot of inadequacies in the system there by questioning the quality of teaching learning processes. Thus, while there are host of systemic issues, quality related to in-school processes appear to be one of the solutions that would focus on development of competencies among children.

Non-enrolment and drop out of children from schooling is, to greater extent, linked to the quality of education, though economic factors do play a significant role. Relevance of education to life and livelihoods, child friendly processes and joyful learning environment and commitment and motivation of teachers are some of the significant factors that would attract children to schooling.

Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE, 1999) has identified several aspects related to quality of education infrastructure, which is also critical for learning. For example

• As many as 52 per cent lacked playgrounds

• 89 per cent did not have toilets

• 59 per cent did not have drinking water

• 26 per cent did not have blackboards

• 59 per cent had no access to maps and charts

• 67 per cent lacked any kind of teaching kits

• 75 per cent had no toys for the children, and

• 77 per cent of the schools, there were no libraries. 

One would expect that, the situation now would not be significantly different from what was available in 1999, though there are some improvements (see Nirupam Bajpai and Sangeeta Goyal 2004).

When it comes to achievement of children, several micro level studies report dismal picture. Children's performance in basic competencies of 3Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) appear to be very low in government as well as private schools. While several factors are identified as reasons, quality of teaching learning processes appears to be one of the key factors determining achievement. This would mean that the foundational aspects of competencies need to be strengthened for children to achieve in later part of their schooling as well.

Evidences of Poor Quality of Learning Outcomes

Nirupam Bajpai and Sangeeta Goyal (2004) have compiled substantial evidences of poor quality of primary schooling in India, They observed that:

"…The actual quantity of schooling that children experience and the quality of teaching they receive are extremely insufficient to any mastery of basic literacy and numeracy skills. This seems to be true of both the educationally more advanced states as well as the educationally backward states". 

"In Maharashtra, community based surveys of twenty eight cities and eight rural districts found that only 30% of boys and girls in the age group 6-14 could read basic text fluently or do simple arithmetic (Banerji 2003). Grover and Singh (2002) too found in their study of two districts of Tamil Nadu that most students lacked functional literacy and numeracy skills. We note here that Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are two of the educationally most advanced states in India." 

"Similar results are reported by the PROBE team (1999) in their surveys of four North Indian states. Leclercq (2002) in his study of two districts of Madhya Pradesh found that in most schools visited, few children could read their basic texts fluently. The emphasis was on rote learning and there was little attempt in teaching activities to impart understanding or comprehension of the text."

"…In another study, Grover and Singh (2002) found that in nearly 70% of the schools visited (unannounced) in two districts of Madurai and Villupuram in Tamil Nadu, no instruction was taking place. Such severe teacher apathy and lack of commitment undermines the efficiency of the education system drastically" (ibid).

Yet another example is that, during a recent field visit to rural primary schools of Andhra Pradesh by AeA team, it was found that the learner achievement test scores of children, recorded as part of baseline for the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan of the district show a dismal picture of low quality in basic skills like reading and writing among primary children. The average test scores of all grades have not crossed 30 per cent in the two villages visited.

Given this context of poor quality of learning outcomes, AeA identifies improving quality of education as an important strategic goal to enhance overall education development of children. "Back to Basics" (B2B), thus would become an important intervention in the field that addresses quality aspects of learning.

Goal: To enhance significantly, learner achievement at the primary level.

Objectives

• To enable teachers practice competency based teaching methodologies that provide basic competencies among learners, and

• To enable effective and quality mentoring, monitoring and supervision mechanisms within education system that sustain quality teaching processes.

Scope

• Back to Basics (B2B) addresses systematically in-school processes and work with stakeholders to enhance quality of teaching learning processes, and

• B2B identifies strategic and innovative collaborations with government and other stakeholders like international donors, to address quality related issues on large scale.

Strategies

• To develop comprehensive strategic goals for quality of education for each school through stakeholder consultations including parents and children

• To initiate processes of capacity building of teachers in line with strategic framework for quality

• To develop a 'mentor' system for peer learning among teachers on using innovative and child friendly practices

• To develop monitoring mechanisms that focuses on quality of teaching learning practices (including onsite support to teachers), and

• To promote and develop professional peer groups of teachers for sharing experiences and ideas.

Implementation Process

B2B would be implemented in the field areas of AeA partner NGOs in a systematic way from 2006. Apart from this, strategic partnerships with large government programmes like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan would be established at the district and state levels so that B2B would be implemented on a large scale.