Deconstructing the boards

“We have become unable to think of better education except in terms of more complex schools and of teachers trained for ever longer periods.”

 - Ivan Illich[i]

Late last month, both CBSE[ii] and CISCE[iii] declared that they were cancelling all remaining board examinations for classes 10 and 12 due in 2020. While in some cases students had sat for all their examinations, in many others they had been able to take only a few and the rest were yet to be held. Given the current pandemic, it is clear that organising the remaining examinations in the usual manner will be difficult in the foreseeable future.

Both boards have therefore worked out a via media whereby the average scores of examinations already completed or internal assessments (or both) will form the basis for scores in the remaining examinations. Since not everyone may find this a satisfactory solution, they’ve also proposed that a regular examination will be conducted when feasible, to enable students to improve their performance as calculated by these average scores.

Over the years, the conduct of the board examinations, declaration of their results, celebrating the toppers, and commiserating with those who haven’t done as well has become a regular routine. Each year there are inspiring stories of those who worked hard and did exceptionally well, and each year there are the tragic reports of children who took their own lives because the pressure became too much. Each year there is a resolve to do better next time, to improve the system and bring about meaningful change, and each year there is more chaos, heartbreak, and frustration, not just for the students, but also for the teachers, parents, and schools.

When Illich wrote Deschooling Society[iv] in 1971, he spoke of the need to invert the education funnel that channelled students into particular directions, imagining instead an inverted funnel that created an opportunity for a web of learning connections. This vision of education is one that we seem to have lost in our slavish adherence to the annual board examination rituals. In the process, we have ended up limiting ourselves, proving his view that “so persuasive is the power of the institutions we have created that they shape not only our preferences but actually our sense of possibilities”[v]. Surely there should be more to education than this? How then might we ‘invert the funnel’? What can we do to simplify the current system instead of complicating it further?

The age-based system of school classrooms has its origins in the 19^th century, when for various reasons it became acceptable to organise students in a school on this basis. The underlying assumption here is that all students have similar levels of learning and learn at more or less the same pace. But the truth, as anyone who has been in a classroom can tell you, is that there are wide variations between pupils, with the top ten percent of the class often being up to four or even five grade levels ahead of the lowest ten percent. To assume therefore, that a student is ready to take a board examination merely because she’s reached the age of 16 or 18 years and is in class 10 or 12 may not necessarily be appropriate.

Equally, the assumption that every student must have an equal interest in every subject is false; some students enjoy mathematics, others history or psychology or music – why then must we prescribe that there must be mandatory subject groups for such examinations? Why not allow students to study only the subjects that interest them?

An unintended side effect of the cancellations wrought by the pandemic has been to demonstrate yet again that the present system of board examinations actually has little or no relevance in today’s world. If a student’s performance can be assessed on the basis of internal assessments as will be done in several cases now, why can this not be the norm instead of the exception? Why can’t each individual school monitor student progress through the grades and award a certification of completion of class 10 or 12 based on that performance?

The challenge, some will say, would lie in ensuring standardisation – how would we be able to compare the assessment prepared by one school with another in order to decide which student was the more meritorious? How would colleges and universities select students based on merit if they couldn’t compare between assessments from different schools? The simplest way to do that would be for individual colleges and universities to have their own entrance examinations for admission, as indeed some already do. Any student who has received a certificate of completion of class 10 or 12 from their school would be eligible to sit such an entrance test, and based on their performance on the test would be eligible for admission. But since not every college or university has the means to conduct such examinations, how else might we simplify the present system?

A possible way of doing that would be to restructure the current annual board examinations into on-demand subject certification examinations. In other words, when a student feels she’s ready, she can register for and take a standardised examination conducted by the boards that would certify her level of performance in a particular subject. This would allow the boards to offer competency-based assessments in each subject, with students opting to take only those assessments that they require. And it would allow students to opt for such certification when they feel ready, not when they reach a certain age or class.

In Australia for instance, a student in class 10 can opt to take advanced classes and do class 11 maths or physics say, and then take the class 12 certification exam when they feel they are ready. The same is the case with the GCSE A levels, where students can choose to do one, two, or more examinations when they are ready. A system of on-demand certification could allow advanced students to stretch themselves by doing higher level subjects if they so chose, while others could seek such certification at their own pace. The flexibility of such a system would allow the boards to address the needs of different types of students at different points in time.

A structure like this would also mean that those who choose to avoid any end-of-cycle examination could do so without pressure or stigma, thus reducing the motivation for some to drop out of school altogether. Many students wish to move into vocational training or the job market at the end of class 12 instead of continuing with higher education – armed with their class 10 or 12 completion certificate from the school, they could take the entrance examinations for vocational courses without needing to complete a board examination of the type offered today. Essentially this would create multiple pathways to exit school after class 10 or 12, allowing students the freedom of choice to pursue subjects of interest in the appropriate setting.

Changes of this nature would require the boards themselves to change, to put in place systems and technologies that would let them offer such on-demand assessments. They would need to develop the capacity for conducting standardised, competency-based assessments, as well as the ability to undertake psychometric analysis to enable comparisons. They would need to create a question bank with items of comparable difficulty, covering various aspects of the curriculum so that students are assessed fairly and equitably, no matter which assessment they take. Most of all, they will need to establish that each assessment provides valid and reliable data from which appropriate conclusions may be drawn. The good news is that none of these changes are particularly difficult, and with India’s participation in PISA 2022[vi], many of these capabilities are already being considered or created.

Instead of complicating education for the learner, we need to simplify it, making the experience as stress-free and enjoyable as possible for those going through the process, supporting the creation of a thirst for lifelong learning. Providing multiple pathways to exit the school system after class 10 or 12, deconstructing the current board examinations and replacing them with a more flexible assessment system would be important first steps in that process.

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[i] Illich, I. (1969, November 6). Outwitting the “Developed” Countries. The New York Review of Books.

[ii] Central Board of Secondary Education, www.cbse.nic.in.

[iii] Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, www.cisce.org.

[iv] Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row.

[v] Illich, I. (1969). op cit.

[vi] Previously 2021, now deferred by a year.

Returning to school

In February this year, children and parents across the country were looking forward to the new academic session beginning immediately after the annual exam – new classes, books, uniforms, friends, and perhaps in some cases, even new schools. Then COVID-19 made its unwelcome presence felt, and everything changed. Schools and offices were shut, children and adults confined to home, and life as we knew it became a thing of the past.

More than three months later, the world has come to terms with the fact that the virus is here to stay and is readjusting itself to this changed reality. With economies having suffered due to severe lockdowns, governments are taking steps to reopen everywhere, ensuring suitable precautions. This includes schools too, and plans have been made to gradually restart, bringing in various grades in a phased manner. What might be some of the things to consider as we begin this process?

First, the more obvious – adoption of administrative and logistical measures such as more intensive cleaning and sanitisation processes, the use of masks and hand sanitiser, frequent hand washing for all, monitored social distancing, fewer students in each class to allow physical separation, staggered classes, reduced entry points, and so on. These are self-evident steps, relatively easier to implement with a little care and monitoring, and will help ensure health and safety for all.

Second, most schools will probably begin by bringing back senior students along with the very young, followed in phases by the other grades. While older students can understand the need for various precautions, children in kindergarten or grades 1 and 2 may find that more difficult. It is hard to ensure that such young children follow social distancing norms, nor can they be implemented in any practical sense with 5-8 year olds. For instance, several primary schools in Australia, which opened about a month ago, have had to shut down again as a result of infections among younger children. As we reopen in India too, schools will need to be prepared for the inevitable periodic shutdowns from time to time, as and when cases of infection among young children are detected.

Third, these strategies could – in some cases – be combined with a blended learning model through the use of alternate approaches, to reduce the need to come to school. During the period of lockdown, several schools had adopted online technologies to stay connected with their students; naturally, this has not been possible in all cases since not all children have access to the internet or devices, but even in less well-resourced schools, attempts have been made to use messaging tools to share school work. Even when there is limited access to technology, schools can consider simple solutions like handing out worksheets and varied assignments to children when they come to school, for completion at home; students could then be in school for some days in the week and learning at home on others. Wherever possible, the use of such methods could help reduce the need for children to be physically present in a classroom.

Several commentators have expressed concerns about the loss of learning that is likely to have taken place during this time and the need to ensure that children get back to regular school work as quickly as possible. The truth is however, that both the students and teachers will need time to ease back into a more or less regular routine. The biggest mistake we might make therefore, would be to immediately start focusing on trying to make up for lost time and pushing to get back to learning as usual.

Consider what they have dealt with in the last few months. An overarching sense of fear about an unknown virus and its effects. Insecurity about jobs and livelihoods. Financial distress as jobs have been lost or savings have dwindled. Worries about providing for the family. The burden of obtaining provisions and necessities for daily needs. Loneliness and isolation from extended families or friends. The stress of seeing parents and loved ones worry about all of these – in other words, life in a pressure cooker environment with multiple sources of anxiety. Most people have faced these and other uncertainties, and school students and teachers are no exceptions. To expect them to come back to school and pick up from where they left three months ago is unrealistic and insensitive.

Children will come back to school with many apprehensions and misgivings. The first thing they need is reassurance and pastoral care, not a regime that expects them to start rigorous swotting for annual examinations as if the intervening months had never happened. Their mental and emotional well-being needs to be ensured before we can reasonably expect them to start routine schoolwork again. They will need counselling, story-telling, handholding, and validation. This means extra effort on the part of the school and teachers, many of whom would be in need of such reassurance themselves.

We often assume that teachers are superhuman, expecting them to be able to manage everything from teaching to supervising mid-day meals, collecting vast quantities of data, or undertaking census or revision of electoral rolls, but that is not really the case. Schools will need to plan for and put in place programmes that address teachers’ requirements for support and reassurance also, ensuring that they are ready to deal with their students before reopening. Teachers can only provide support to their students if they themselves have had their concerns allayed.

For years now, the big challenge in India's school sector has been the improvement of learning outcomes. This period marks a brief break from that all-consuming narrative – if we get the task of supporting our students and teachers right, we can go back to making progress in improving learning, albeit with some delays. If we get it wrong though, we will be looking at lower learning levels in the near future and that much more additional work to get them back on track.

Reforming Aided Schools in Delhi

Some time ago, I was asked by the Government of NCT Delhi to chair a committee[1] set up to review the policy and functioning of aided schools in Delhi.  Our report was submitted to the government recently.  I had the good fortune of working with Ms Ranjana Deswal, Special Director, Directorate of Education, and Mr Hemanth Pothula of the Education Task Force as the other two members of the committee.

The committee’s brief was to “review the current status of 211 aided schools, and to suggest measures to improve their functioning and performance”.  Over a period of nearly 10 months, we met multiple stakeholders, from school managements to heads of school, teachers, parents, academics, civil society members, and others, to understand firsthand what some of the major issues might be.  Based on the feedback we received, we have made a set of specific recommendations to the government, which we believe have the potential to significantly improve the functioning of these schools.  In so doing, we also referred to and relied upon the work done by previous committees, including the Shailaja Chandra Committee that examined the need to review the Delhi School Education Act and Rules, 1973.

Aided schools in Delhi are a legacy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when various groups established schools to impart modern education along with their particular values.  Beginning with the DAV and Sanathan Dharma schools, government grants were given to various types of groups, including Arabic, Sanskrit, Islamic, Christian, and Sikh societies who wished to provide education to as many Indians as possible.  It is worth noting that all these groups were motivated by philanthropic considerations, and saw it as their duty to help educate the young.

Given the history of their establishment, aided schools in Delhi enjoyed a great deal of functional autonomy, with very little interference by government agencies.  After enactment of the Delhi School Education Act and Rules, 1973 (DSEAR), the functioning of these schools was regulated more closely, with various provisions of the Act dealing with government aid and the manner of its utilisation.  Over the years, especially after enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, and a slew of court judgments on various aspects, these provisions have become quite restrictive, and schools no longer enjoy the kind of autonomy they once had.

At the same time, the state government meets 95 percent of the recurring expenses of aided schools and allocated Rs 335 crore for them in 2015-16.  It is not unreasonable for the government to require prudence in expenditure of public money, or to demand oversight in the functioning of such schools.  Balancing these competing requirements – of autonomy and public oversight – is a challenge for both parties, and needs them to work together to ensure the interests of the ultimate beneficiaries, the students, are fully met.

Our committee visited some of the aided schools and heard evidence from numerous stakeholders.  The problems of these schools essentially fall into one of several categories:

• Financial viability
• Insufficient rates of financial support
• Procedural delays in obtaining various approvals
• Appointment related issues 
• Staff matters, including lack of capacity building and training
• Increasing litigation

One of the major shortcomings we observed with the system of funding these schools as it exists today, is the fact that while there are conditions imposed for continuing to receive the grant-in-aid, none of these relate to academic or school performance.  Given that the Delhi SCERT has recently finalised performance quality indices for its own schools (Dilli Shaala Siddhi), we felt it would be appropriate to extend these parameters to aided schools also.  Accordingly, our first and most important recommendation has been to suggest that performance standards be agreed with each individual aided school at the beginning of the academic year, and captured in the form of an agreement between the school management and the Directorate of Education, against which performance should be assessed on a regular basis.  Schools that meet their performance benchmarks should stand to gain, while those that do not should lose.

The next and obvious step then, is to reintroduce a system of periodic inspections, to determine how schools perform over time.  In addition to inspections by the Directorate, we suggested that a panel of external experts be created, from which people may be drawn in order to ensure regular inspections of the schools.  This would recreate a culture of regular monitoring, highlighting gaps and ensuring high quality at all times.  Such inspections, including third party assessments, would also be necessary to provide reports about schools meeting the performance benchmarks agreed with the Directorate.

Over time, a number of allowances and grants available to aided schools have either been stopped altogether, or held at a level where they have been rendered meaningless.  We have therefore suggested that grants previously admissible be restored, and rates of contingency grants currently paid be linked to an identified price index so that they can be revised from time to time.  Most importantly, we have recommended that the government – which is already funding 95 percent of aided school expenses – consider providing an additional 5 percent as incentive to those schools that meet or exceed their agreed performance benchmarks.  In the committee’s view, this would be a suitable incentive for school managements to perform better.

At the same time, consequences for non-performance should be severe.  The committee recommended that schools that fail to meet their performance standards for three consecutive years should either be handed over to another management, or closed down entirely, with the children and staff being reallocated to nearby neighbourhood schools.  Implementation of this recommendation in earnest would help send the message that the state government is serious about improving performance.

We have also made various suggestions to deal with staffing issues faced by aided schools; for instance, while government schools are provided with security and sanitation staff in lieu of Group D posts surrendered, requests from aided schools to outsource these activities have not been accepted fully.  We recommended that the system being followed for government schools be extended as-is to aided schools.  Other recommendations dealt with, inter alia, capacity building of aided school teaching staff in the same manner as government teachers, easing the recruitment process to make it more efficient and responsive, providing substitute teachers against long vacancies, and introducing IT into various processes.

The committee strongly felt that the aided school model is one that can be successful, with a little more support from the government.  In contrast to those who recommend fully privatising such schools, we felt that this model is a great example of so-called public-private partnerships, with private management of public funds.  I hope some of our recommendations can be implemented by the government over the next few months – the beneficiaries can only be the children who attend these schools.

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[1] The Committee to Review Current Policy for Government Aided Schools in Delhi.  Our report, although submitted to the government, has not yet been released in the public domain.

The Reality of Skilling India

Background

In the last few years, India has attempted to put in place policies and mechanisms to take advantage of her apparent demographic dividend, in recognition of the importance of skilling her young people before they reach the job market. The World Youth Skills Day (July 15^th) provides an opportunity to reflect on our current situation and the additional steps we need to take in order to achieve our goals.

The numbers are well known, but bear repetition – India’s strength over the next couple of decades is expected to lie in her demographic dividend, i.e., the 65% of her population that is under the age of 35, who are or will be the next productive generation.  Each month, just over a million young people join the workforce, yet only a minuscule number are formally trained. These young people can potentially fill a requirement for skilled personnel not only in India, but also in other countries across the world that will be dealing with ageing populations during this period.

But this significant demographic dividend brings challenges and opportunities in equal measure; any failure to address its obligations now will have significant consequences in the future, including some that may have an impact on our very social fabric.  Signs of this impact are already visible in daily newspaper headlines, which describe a sharp increase in petty and serious crimes, all too often perpetrated by poorly educated and unemployed youth.  An interesting analysis on this situation by my friend Amitabh Pandey can be found here.

Policy Interventions

On the policy side, the national skill development policy was revised in 2015 in the form of the National Policy on Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015.  A National Skill Qualification Framework separately prescribes competencies required at various levels of skill in the form of knowledge, skills and aptitude.  However, the supply side of training and skill delivery needs to be accompanied by expanding opportunities available to youth on the demand side; this implies bringing about an investment climate that encourages the creation of jobs.  FDI norms have recently been eased in 15 sectors, which have the potential to generate some 4 million additional job opportunities, yet much more needs to be done. The 2016-2017 Budget had also proposed steps to supplement the Make in India initiative, reinforcing the need to build capacities of Indian youth, yet one of the contradictions with which policy makers continue to grapple is the fact that while on the one hand there is unemployment, on the other, industries deal with large scale vacancies. Clearly this mismatch between employment seekers and employers is one that needs to be addressed on priority; the question to ask if we're seeing enough action on the ground.

Role of Industry

This process cannot be left to government alone – industry too needs to step up its engagement and accept responsibility as part of its national and social obligations.  There is also a need for stronger industry-academia interaction; we need to see high quality industry engagement with the actual process of skill development.  Creation of industry cells at ITIs and polytechnics to enable exposure to current methodologies and processes is one possible form of engagement.  In today’s world, technology changes rapidly, making it difficult for technical institutes to keep up. This is where industry can step in to complete the learning process and to help training institutes to stay abreast of current developments.  The example of the German dual system is often cited, precisely because it involves such a strong relationship between industry and training, with trainees completing part of their course on the job in their chosen fields.

Situation on the Ground

In a recent study that was carried out on behalf of CII Northern Region, it was found that young people are in general, quite willing to pay in order to acquire skills and skill certification, believing that such certification can lead to better opportunities; this willingness does not however, find immediate reflection among employers, who are not ready to pay a premium for skill training.  This contradiction arises partly from the fact that employers are not fully comfortable with or sure of the reliability and integrity of the assessment and certification processes, which underlines the need to strengthen these systems so that we have in place robust and dependable mechanisms for assessing and certifying the skill levels of employment seekers.  Nothing illustrates the criticality of such mechanisms better than the recent scandal involving exam toppers of the Bihar examination board.  However, the importance of industry recognising skill certification through a wage premium in order to encourage the acquisition of skills cannot be emphasised strongly enough – failure to do so could become one of the most important causes of our eventual failure in this area.

In order to achieve sustainable progress in vocational training and skill-intensive education, these will also need to be seen not as parallel options, but as supplementary streams to mainstream education.  This requires closer integration with the school system, something that the CBSE has recently started with its vocational education courses in grades 9-12.  What we need to see also is greater awareness generation about these options at the school level, not just among students but also among teachers and educational administrators. Skilling cannot be an ad hoc activity; it needs structure and clear targets in order to take up the massive task of skilling 400 million people. Holistic planning that involves all stakeholders thus becomes essential to bridge the demand and supply gap of the workforce.

Conclusion

The state of education in India is well known; systematic neglect over the years, prioritising certain forms of higher education over school education and general literacy, and overall mismanagement have led to a situation where more than half the children in grade 5 cannot read a grade 2 text.  We need to be certain we do not repeat this experience in the skill development sector.  Poor learning levels in school, combined with often questionable skilling courses and a reluctance to pay wage premium are a recipe for disaster.  We have only the next 2-3 years to get the formula right; if we don't, we're staring at a guaranteed demographic meltdown instead.