Common entrance test for central varsities: plan, criticism

 

The Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET) was launched in 2010, a year after 12 new central universities had been set up under the Central Universities Act, 2009.

From the 2022-23 academic session, a common entrance test is likely to be implemented across central universities in India for admissions to undergraduate and postgraduate courses, marking a departure from the current predominant pattern of screening based on class 12 marks.

On November 26, the University Grants Commission (UGC) wrote to the vice-chancellors of the 45 central universities that “after detailed deliberations, it was resolved that the Common Entrance Test for UG and PG may be conducted for Central Universities from the academic session 2022-23 through National Testing Agency (NTA)”.

Answer to soaring cut-offs?

The push for a common entrance test comes at a time when unrealistic cutoffs for admission to premier institutions like Delhi University have underlined the need for alternatives. While the UGC hopes it will create a level playing field, critics fear it will encourage the coaching industry further.

The genesis

The Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET) was launched in 2010, a year after 12 new central universities had been set up under the Central Universities Act, 2009. In the year of its rollout, seven new central universities adopted CUCET. Over the years, the list grew, and this year 12 central universities, from Assam to Kerala, held CUCET with the assistance of the NTA, which functions under the Ministry of Education.

The UGC has been keen on bringing more central universities under the ambit of the CUCET ever since the National Education Policy, 2020 advocated this.. Last December, the UGC set up a seven-member committee under R P Tiwari , Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Punjab, to prepare a plan to implement CUCET from 2021-22. The committee’s report gave the proposal the go-ahead, but the UGC had to shelve the plan due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest push came on November 22, when the UGC held a meeting with the vice-chancellors of 45 central universities, following which the letter was sent.

What changes

The test will cover sciences, humanities, languages, arts, and vocational subjects, and is likely to be held at least twice every year.

CURRENT PATTERN: At present, the CUCET papers consist of two segments. Part A tests a candidate’s language, general awareness, mathematical aptitude, and analytical skills, while Part B evaluates domain knowledge. Both papers contain multiple choice questions (MCQs). For admission to MBA, LLB and MCA courses offered by some universities, there is one paper comprising 100 MCQs covering English, reasoning, numerical ability, general awareness and analytical skills.

The test does not have under its ambit engineering and medical courses that are offered by some of these central universities. These will not be included in the new pattern either.

AFTER EXPANSION: Although the UGC has not yet announced the pattern of the exams once it is expanded, the report of the Tiwari committee holds some clues. It says the test for the undergraduate level would be in two parts. Section A will be a common aptitude test carrying 50 questions, while Section B will be a “domain specific test” comprising 30 questions each from a chosen combinations of subjects. The committee also recommended that to begin with, a minimum 50% of a candidate’s CUCET score should be factored in during admissions to undergraduate courses. It will be a computer-based test.

The CUCET might also be called Common Universities Entrance Test (CUET) in its proposed new avatar.

The Tiwari committee has also recommended that existing policies regarding quotas, subject combinations, preferences etc that govern a particular university will remain applicable even after the rollout of a common test.

The rationale

The NEP, 2020 envisages that a common entrances will test the conceptual understanding and ability to apply knowledge, and will aim to eliminate the need for taking coaching for these exams. The flexibility of the NTA testing services will enable most universities to use these common entrance exams “rather than having hundreds of universities each devising their own entrance exams”, which will reduce the burden on the entire education system, it says.

Criticism

Not everyone has welcomed the idea of an overarching common entrance test, though.

Disha Nawani, Professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), agreed that the existing board-exam based screening is leading to unrealistic cut-offs, but felt a common entrance will not be an improvement. “Children come from very different socio-economic backgrounds and to expect them to sit together and tackle a centrally-set paper will not be fair. Eventually it will boil down to mastering the techniques to crack it which coaching institutes offer. As long as we continue to focus on modes of assessment instead of learning, this will be a continuation of the unjust system,” Nawani said.

Abha Dev Habib, associate professor (Physics) at Miranda House in Delhi, and Ayesha Kidwai, professor at JNU’s Centre for Linguistics and former president of its teachers’ association, called the proposal an affront to the autonomy of universities. “Many universities offer highly specialised as well as multidisciplinary courses. And using the NET score for admission to PhD programmes is a terrible move. It has no academic rationale and will not promote equality,” Kidwai said.

Source: Indian Express, 2/12/21

Prolonged closure of schools due to Covid poses threat to gender equality: UNSECO

 

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

Educational disruption due to prolonged closure of schools across the globe will not only have alarming effects on learning loss but also poses threat to gender equality, a new study by UNESCO has pointed out.

The global study titled “When schools shut: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures” brings to the fore that girls and boys, young women and men were affected differently by school closures, depending on the context.

“At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.6 billion students in 190 countries were affected by school closures. Not only did they lose access to education, but also to the myriad benefits of attending school, at an unparalleled scale,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO, Assistant Director-General for Education.

“Educational disruption of this extent has alarming effects on learning loss and school dropout. Beyond this, it poses threats to gender equality, including effects on health, wellbeing and protection that are gender-specific,” Giannini said.

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

“In poorer contexts, girls’ time to learn was constrained by increased household chores. Boys’ participation in learning was limited by income-generating activities. Girls faced difficulties in engaging in digital remote learning modalities in many contexts because of limited access to internet-enabled devices, a lack of digital skills and cultural norms restricting their use of technological devices,” the report said.

The study pointed out that the digital gender divide was already a concern before the COVID-19 crisis.

“The in-depth studies on Bangladesh and Pakistan in the global report revealed its gendered effects on remote learning during school closures. In the study on Pakistan, only 44 per cent of girls in participating districts reported owning mobile phones for their personal use, whereas 93 per cent of boys did so. Girls who did not own mobile phones reported that they relied on their relatives’ devices, typically those belonging to their fathers,” it said. “While some of the girls were able to use family members’ phones, they were not always able to do so. Their access was restricted since some parents were concerned that providing girls with access to smartphones would lead to misuse and could result into romantic relationships.”

“The longer girls were out of school, the higher was the risk of learning loss. From April to September 2020, the share of girls reporting that they did not study at all increased from 1 to 10 per cent,” it added.

Noting that the pandemic is a timely reminder that schools are sites not only for learning but also lifelines for girls and boys, an essential space for their health, well-being and protection, the report has several recommendations on how to challenge gender-based barriers for participation in remote learning.

“To advance equal access to gender-responsive and inclusive remote learning, it is recommended to provide a range of remote learning options including low-tech and no-tech solutions spearhead and support efforts to reach the most at-risk learners design, develop gender-responsive educational resources and tools besides providing appropriate teacher support and training use formative assessments to track learning outcomes,” it said.

Source: Indian Express, 22/11/21

Sharp spike in students with smartphone access, but UP, Bihar and Bengal lag: ASER survey 2021

 

The ASER report also underscored that the likelihood of a household owning a smartphone goes up with the parents' educational level.

Even as smartphone availability in households across the country has registered a sharp rise since 2018, many states have left Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal miles behind, show findings of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey 2021.

Overall, the availability of smartphones in homes of enrolled students has nearly doubled from 2018 to 2021, from 36.5 per cent to 67.6 per cent. But state-wise numbers show that the rise has been highly uneven, with some states that were laggards catching up with better positioned ones, while a few require further push despite showing some improvement.

For example, in 2018, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland had 58 per cent, 53.4 per cent and 50 per cent households of enrolled students respectively having at least one smartphone. In 2021, the corresponding shares have increased to 95.6, 92.9 and 92.9 per cent respectively. In Kerala, where 80.9 per cent families of students had smartphones even in 2018, the share has further risen to 97.5 per cent.

In contrast, Bihar has reported 54.4 per cent households of surveyed students with smartphones, up from 27.2 per cent in 2018; West Bengal 58.4 per cent as against 26.8 per cent in 2018 and 58.9 per cent in Uttar Pradesh compared to 30.4 per cent in 2018. The findings mirror a recent report of the Union Ministry of Education which showed that the digital divide has hit some states like Bihar disproportionately hard.

The ASER report also underscored that the likelihood of a household owning a smartphone goes up with the parents’ educational level. “In 2021, over 80% of children with parents who had studied at least till Class 9 had a smartphone available at home, as compared to just over 50% of children whose parents had studied till Class 5 or less,” it says, capturing the impact of the pandemic-induced disruptions on the marginalised and economically downtrodden.

But in a sign that even those at a position of disadvantage tried to catch up, numbers show that even among children with parents in the low education category, over a quarter of households had bought a new smartphone for their children’s studies since the lockdown began in March 2020.

Be that as it may, access of children to smartphones in a family was found to be limited across income groups. “Although over two thirds of all enrolled children have a smartphone at home, just over a quarter of these have full access to it for their studies (27%), while close to half have partial access (47%) and the remaining quarter have no access at all (26.1%),” the report states.

Even in terms of access, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal find themselves towards the bottom of the rankings. In Bihar, 53.8 per cent children of households with a smartphone cannot access it, in UP 34.3 per cent and 46.5 per cent in West Bengal.

Written by Sourav Roy Barman

Source: Indian Express, 18/11/21

Every additional year of education increases person’s average income by about 6.7% in India: Study

 

The study also found that every rupee invested towards the completion of school education is expected to bring an economic benefit between Rs 4.5 and Rs 8.2 in terms of the future earnings of each individual.

Every additional year of education in India increases a person’s average income by about 6.7 per cent, according to a new study that noted this return is higher for girls than boys.

The study was commissioned by the NGO, Population Foundation of India, on why the government needs to invest in young people’s health, education and well-being.

Based on an analysis of secondary data, it was found that every additional year of education in India increases a person’s average income by about 6.7 per cent.

“This return is higher for girls than boys. Each additional year of education yields an 8.6 per cent increase in women’s monthly wages, while for men the number stands at 6.1 per cent,” it said.

The study also found that every rupee invested towards the completion of school education is expected to bring an economic benefit between Rs 4.5 and Rs 8.2 in terms of future earnings of each individual, it said.

The study pegs the total cost of establishing adequate mental health facilities for adolescents at Rs 8,134 crore over the next six years. According to the findings, another Rs 2,745 crore would be needed per year to cover the treatment costs.

It projects that the cost of providing iron and folic acid tablets to school-going adolescent boys and girls and out-of-school adolescent girls would cost roughly Rs 3,000 crore per year.

Speaking on mental health issues faced by adolescents, PM’s EAC Chairman Bibek Debroy said there was a serious lack of data given that most cases are under-reported due to the stigma around such problems.

He also talked about the need to act fast to realise India’s demographic dividend. “Beyond 2035, or thereabouts, India will begin to age. Even more important is that we get our policies on these people who are entering the labour market right,” said Debroy, who released the study on Monday.

Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India, stressed the need for collaborative action between various arms of the government and civil society organisations to work towards adolescent development.

Source: Indian Express, 16/11/21

There’s a mismatch between India’s graduate aspirations and job availability

 

Shobhit Mahajan writes: There is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations. This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society.

Anju and Anita had come to me for advice on future career prospects. They were both students in my MSc course. During the conversation, I found out that Anju was the daughter of a vegetable seller while Anita’s father worked as a clerk in a private office. Both of them had been giving tuitions to school children right after their Class XII to fund their education. They would come back from their college at 5 and from 6 to 8 in the evening they would give tuitions to a group of children at another child’s house since their place did not have enough room.

The fact that they belonged to very modest families was not surprising. The results of a survey I did last year of our students in MSc Physics at Delhi University had already made me aware of the socio-economic background of our students — more than half of them were from villages or small mofussil towns; more than 50 per cent came from families where they were the first generation of college-goers; more than a quarter of them belonged to farming families and about 70 per cent of them reported their family income as less than 5 lakh a year.

The enhanced enrollment of students from these socio-economic backgrounds is primarily a result of the extension of reservations to OBCs and EWS. In addition, the massive increase in the number of higher education institutions has led to an enlargement of the number of available seats — there are more than 45,000 universities and colleges in the country. The Gross Enrollment Ratio for higher education, which is the percentage of the population between the ages of 18-23 who are enrolled, is now 27 per cent.

What is remarkable is that despite all these initial disadvantages, these students managed to finish their undergraduate degrees and some of them were now even looking at their prospects post their Master’s degree. They, and obviously their parents, have high aspirations for their future. And, this is where there is a huge mismatch between their aspirations and what they are likely to attain.

A majority of the students are aiming to get some kind of a government job post their degree. Unfortunately, the spectacular increase in enrollment in recent years has not been matched by a concomitant increase in jobs. Employment opportunities in the government have not increased proportionately and may, in fact, have decreased with increased contractualisation. Even in the private sector, though the jobs have increased with economic growth, most of the jobs are contractual. Worse, the highest increase in jobs is at the lowest end, especially in the services sector — delivery boys for e-commerce or fast food for instance. A student who has finished his college against all odds is not very keen to take up a job in a call centre or worse as a delivery agent for e-commerce or fast food.

Thus what we see is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations. This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society, some of which we are already witnessing.

Attitudes towards work would not change overnight — the time scale for change in societal attitudes is possibly in decades. A reduction in the rate of increase of universities and colleges might not be politically feasible given the huge demand for higher education. But there are several things that the government can attempt to do. A concurrent increase in the number of high-quality vocational institutions is something that can be done.

There are upwards of 15,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country currently. These institutions provide training in various trades like air conditioning mechanic, electrician, mechanic etc. The quality of these of course is very uneven. They are also, by and large, poorly maintained and lacking in resources, both physical and human. The curriculum remains outdated and has not been upgraded to include some of the newer skills like maintaining networking and telecom equipment.

And yet, there is a huge competition for admission into these institutions, and polytechnics. In some places, it is harder to get into these than to get admission to the local government college. The reasons are obvious. Manufacturing units prefer hiring them for blue-collar jobs since they at least have a modicum of training. In addition, the pass-outs from ITIs also have the option of being self-employed in the various service-related sectors.

Upgrading the existing ITIs, opening many more new ones with high-quality infrastructure and updated curriculum is something which should be done urgently. There is a scheme to upgrade some ITIs to model ITIs. However, what is required is not a selective approach but a more broad-based one that uplifts the standards of all of them besides adding many more new ones. Industry might be more than willing to pitch in with funding (via the CSR route) as well as equipment, training for the faculty and internships for students. After all, the industry czars never cease to remind us about the shortage of skilled labour in the country. And surely, if the government can spend thousands of crores on existing and hypothetical Institutes of Eminence, funds should not be an issue for this exercise which, coupled with our demographic dividend can be a boon for the economy and the society.

For Anju and Anita though the future remains uncertain. They would finish their MSc, possibly do a BEd, and keep trying to get a teaching job in a government school. If they are lucky — they would succeed though in all likelihood — they would have to settle for teaching in a private school for a pittance. And, of course, continue giving tuitions to support themselves and their families.

This column first appeared in the print edition on November 1, 2021 under the title ‘Future imperfect’. The writer is professor of physics and astrophysics, University of Delhi

Source: Indian Express, 1/11/2021

Education Ministry report: At least 40% school children in 7 large states lack access to digital devices

 

The report, Initiatives by the School Education Sector in 2020-21, shows that the digital divide has hit some states disproportionately hard, while a few may have coped well due to adequate availability of smartphones and television sets.

BETWEEN 40% and 70% school-going children in seven large states – Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand – do not have access to digital devices, according to a report prepared by the Union Ministry of Education that documents the response to challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report, Initiatives by the School Education Sector in 2020-21, shows that the digital divide has hit some states disproportionately hard, while a few may have coped well due to adequate availability of smartphones and television sets. However, the picture remains incomplete in the absence of data from states such as Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and questionable claims like that of Rajasthan that it does not have students without digital access.

The report, which was made public on Wednesday, has been prepared based on data shared by 22 of 28 states, and seven out of eight Union Territories. The state-wise interventions to bridge the divide also reflect the same disparity – with some like Tamil Nadu claiming to have distributed 5.15 lakh laptops among students, as against 42 mobile phones by the Bihar government.

In absolute numbers, prepared on the basis of surveys of various sample sizes by the states and UTs in 2020 and 2021, 29 crore students, including 14.33 crore in Bihar, were found without access to digital devices. “The ‘new normal’ may also have a huge impact on the learning levels for almost all children; learning loss may be a reality for many children,” the report says.

Among the states to have responded, those having a very high share of students without digital access include Madhya Pradesh (70%), Bihar (58.09%), Andhra Pradesh (57%), Assam (44.24%), Jharkhand (43.42%), Uttarakhand (41.17%) and Gujarat (40%). Among the better placed states and UTs are Delhi with around 4% students without access, Kerala 1.63%, Tamil Nadu 14.51%.

A look at some of the findings of the report:

Assam: The state reported 3,10,6255 students with no digital device. According to Unified District Information System for Education data, it has 7,01,5898 students across 65,907 schools. While the state did not distribute devices, it organised home visits by teachers, and launched a toll-free helpline for students to clear academic doubts and address psycho-social issues.

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Andhra Pradesh: The state surveyed 29.34 lakh out of the total 81.36 lakh students in May 2021 and found 2,01,568 students have no cellphone access. Parents of 10.22 lakh have phones that can only make calls, and 4.57 lakh students have access to phones with no mobile data. It found that 3.88 lakh students don’t have access to TV. Only 5,752 students have laptops. The state has so far distributed 2,850 laptops and 18,270 tabs, and is planning a toll-free number.

Bihar: The state, which has 2.46 crore students, reported that 1.43 crore children have no access to digital devices. In terms of interventions to bridge the gap, it gave cellphones to 42 students, and plans to provide tablets to 250 schools. With assistance of UNICEF, mobile vans equipped with TV, videos, math game, and toys were deployed across seven districts, with special focus on Mahadalit/Mushahar communities.

Gujarat: A UNICEF survey of 12,000 schools found 40% of the students did not have access to smartphones and Internet. The state has 1.14 crore students across 54,629 schools. To bridge the gap, the state government distributed blended learning modules, and launched an IVRS helpline. Around 11,200 devices were provided to students and 40,000 to teachers.

Jharkhand: Out of 74.89 lakh students, 32.52 lakh do not have digital access. The state informed the Centre that tablets had been provided to schools and cluster resource centres in 2018-19. As the number of android phones in remote tribal-dominated villages is “very low”, the state tied up with UNICEF to develop modules of home-based learning and started mohalla schools in remote areas.

Madhya Pradesh: An education department survey of 98 lakh of the state’s 1.57 crore students found that 70% of them do not have access to smartphones. The April 2021 survey said 53 lakh have access to TVs, and 57 lakhs to radio sets. Among the interventions listed are mohalla classes and regular teacher-parent interactions over the phone. A radio school programme was also launched immediately after the national lockdown.

Uttarakhand: State authorities surveyed 5.20 lakh out of 23.39 lakh schoolchildren and found 2.14 lakh do not have access to digital devices for online learning. It proposes to distribute more than 35,000 e-books to school students. The state also attempted community outreach to keep in touch with such students, distribute worksheets among them and also took the help of community radio in five districts

Driving home a point

The Education Ministry report once again spotlights the grim reality of differential access to education, made starker by the pandemic-induced disruption and the consequential digital divide. The official figures also validates the concerns expressed by non-profits working in the education sector. The report also highlights the interventions at various levels to bridge the divide, but one cannot emphasise enough on the need to scale up the efforts.

Source: Indian Express, 8/10/21

Universities are key in educating the young

 

While Central universities are doing well, few State universities stand out

While we have highlighted the importance of introducing humanities and social sciences in the IITs, the roles that universities and colleges play in educating their youngsters need to be pointed out. During the British colonial rule, while on one hand they charged exorbitant amounts as taxes for their revenue, there were some academicians too, who set up colleges and universities in the Bombay, Madras and Bengal Presidencies. In Bombay, they set up a regular academic college, and medical and law colleges. In Madras, they set up the Madras Presidency College in 1840, and in Bengal the Calcutta Presidency College in 1817.

All these offered quality and contemporary education. In addition, Christian missionaries also started some colleges in Delhi, undivided Punjab, Madras and Assam. Notable among these is the Christian Medical College at Vellore, which continues to offer world-class clinical practice and research to this day.

Royal initiatives

Quite besides these are the schools and colleges started by the Maharajas and Princely State Kings across India, particularly in the South. They have been the bedrock of imparting knowledge and wisdom, history, geography, and religions, over the last century. They have produced scholars, historians, writers and poets, civil servants, judges, chief ministers, governors and Presidents of India, and also M.S. Swaminathan of the Green Revolution and M. Visvesvaraya, the famous dam builder, and also the Nobel Prize winners (C.V. Raman, S Chandrasekhar and most recently Venky Ramakrishnan who is an alumnus of the century-old M.S. University Vadodara).

Outstanding institution

One outstanding institution founded in 1909 at Bangalore through the joint efforts of J.N. Tata and the Maharaja of Mysore is the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which has been spearheading research in science and technology from the very beginning. Outstanding research in genetics, molecular and cell biology, and protein structure and function has been going on from the very beginning. In recent times, IISc has become world-famous for its achievements in computer science and software technology. Thanks to the series of books on this subject by Dr. V. Rajaraman (which has been the Bible for thousands of students) and the investment by Shri. N.R. Narayanamurthy, who founded Infosys Foundation, India has become a world-leader in software. They have made many graduates from IITs and universities to turn to this area and flock to Silicon Valley in California for jobs, and do very well there.

Moving on to two Central Universities at Delhi, namely, Delhi University with its North and South campuses, and Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU, we find quite notably that apart from their proven expertise in the areas of economics, humanities and social sciences, they have been doing remarkably well in science and biotechnology. The North Campus has been a forerunner in botany and plant sciences, and the South Campus in medical and biotechnology. And JNU, apart from its distinction in economics (Prof. Utsa Patnaik, who estimated how the British Empire impoverished India by 500 trillion dollars to become the richest Empire in the world), has also an active genetics and biotechnology group (Prof. Anand Ranganathan) that works on TB and Malaria, thus protecting us from these diseases.

But, alas, none of the 400+ State universities successfully stand out in their achievements – be it in language and literature, economics, technology and its use. The lone exception may be Punjab University which has come to the service of the community through its excellent rice production, successful fight against swarms of locusts, and also in the history of the Punjabi language. We have already referred to the work being done at the Jadavpur and Presidency Universities at Kolkata, and also the Osmania University at Hyderabad, in certain areas of science and technology, besides language, literature and economics should be mentioned.

Private universities

Recently, several non-profit private universities have been started and are doing excellent service in software sciences (Azim Premji University), genetics, molecular biology and virology, sociology and history (Ashoka University), and SRM University in Chennai and Amaravati. May there be more such private and non-governmental universities!

dbala@lvpei.org

Source: The Hindu, 2/10/21

Our

Only 19% schools have access to internet: UNESCO report

 

The teaching workforce has a deficit of over 1 million teachers and the need is likely to grow, given the shortages of teachers in certain education levels and subjects such as early childhood education, special education, physical education, music, arts, and curricular streams of vocational education.

While the gross enrolment ratio (GER) for elementary schools has increased from 81.6 in 2001 to 93.03 in 2018-19 and stands at 102.1 in 2019-2020, overall retention is 74.6 per cent for elementary education and 59.6 per cent for secondary education in 2019-20, states the UNESCO 2021 State of the Education Report for India: No Teachers, No Class.

“Quality of education is the core challenge of the next decade when it comes to improving overall educational standards, retention, transition, and equity in academic achievement. Hence the focus of this decade on teachers and teaching,” read the report, which was launched today.

Since March 2020, schools in India have not been functioning physically. Foundational learning, which is the focus of the early classes, is set to slide even further down from current low levels.

The report added, “The use of technology in education for the purpose of teaching and learning has emerged as important, but this has also exposed a range of issues – lack of devices and Internet bandwidth for a significant proportion of students, lack of preparedness of teachers in the use of technology, and lack of resources in Indian languages.”

According to Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE+) data for the 2018-19 school year, a total of 9.4 million teachers were employed across 1.6 million primary and secondary schools (class 1-12) in India. The figures for 2019-20 were nearly 9.7 million and 1.5 million, respectively.

Lack of digital infrastructure and internet connectivity

The overall availability of computing devices (desktops or laptops) in school is 22 per cent for all India, with rural areas seeing much lower provisioning (18 per cent) than urban areas (43 per cent). Access to the internet in schools is 19 per cent all over India – only 14 per cent in rural areas compared to 42 per cent in urban areas.

“In about 15 years, 27 per cent of the current workforce will need to be replaced. The workforce has a deficit of over 1 million teachers (at current student strength), and is likely to need to grow overall given the shortages of teachers in certain education levels and subjects such as early childhood education, special education, physical education, music, arts, and curricular streams of vocational education,” the report said.

Pupil-teacher ratio improved in government schools

The total number of teachers in the system grew by 17 per cent from 8.9 million teachers in 2013-14 to 9.4 million in 2018-19. The overall pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) – reflecting the effort of the state to meet the RTE Act teacher-requirement guidelines – changed from 31:1 in 2013-14 to 26:1 in 2018-19.

In the same period, the proportion of teachers employed in the private sector grew from 21 per cent in 2013-14 to 35 per cent in 2018-19. The proportion of private schools with teacher requirements (as per a PTR of 1:35) has gone down by 10 per cent, while that of government schools decreased by 6 per cent.

Single-teacher schools number is 1,10,971, that is, 7.15 per cent. About 89 per cent of these single-teacher schools are in rural areas. States with a high percentage of single-teacher schools include Arunachal Pradesh (18.22 per cent), Goa (16.08 per cent), Telangana (15.71 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (14.4 per cent), Jharkhand (13.81 per cent), Uttarakhand (13.64 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (13.08 per cent), and Rajasthan (10.08 per cent).

Women make half of the teacher workforce

Half of India’s 9.43 million school teachers are women. State to state variation in the proportion of women teachers in the workforce is considerable.

States and union territories (UTs) where over 70 per cent of teachers are women include several that are ranked high in the Performance Grading Index (PGI). These include Chandigarh (82 per cent), Delhi (74 per cent), Kerala (78 per cent), Punjab (75 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (75 per cent). Other states-UTs with a higher proportion of women teachers are Puducherry (78 per cent) and Goa (80 per cent). Five states have a low proportion of women teachers (40 per cent or less): Assam (39 per cent), Bihar (40 per cent), Jharkhand (39 per cent), Rajasthan (39 per cent) and Tripura (32 per cent).

The data suggests that the teaching cadre is generally young, with over 65 per cent of teachers aged less than 44 years. The median age of school teachers is 38, and the average family size is four.

On average, 86 per cent of schools across the country – 89 per cent of urban schools and 85 per cent of rural schools – are accessible by road. In hilly or mountainous states and union territories, such as in the north-east, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir, the proportion drops to between 59 per cent and 68 per cent.

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21

How online education can give disabled children greater learning opportunities

 Globally, about 15 per cent of the population lives with some form of disability. Of this, 80 per cent lives in developing countries. Persons with disabilities (PwDs) are among the most marginalised groups. They encounter a range of barriers and are more likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes. Limited support infrastructure can have a significant debilitating impact on everyday life. WHO now considers disability a human rights issue. It emphasises that people are disabled by society and not by their bodies.

Over the last 65 years, the overall global literacy rate has increased by 4 per cent every five years — from 42 per cent in 1960 to 86 per cent in 2019. However, the global literacy rate for the disabled is as low as 3 per cent with just 1 per cent for females. Ninety per cent of disabled children in developing countries do not attend school, says UNESCO. The school drop-out rate is also high due to the lack of adequate infrastructure, inaccessible reading material and untrained teachers. An insignificant number make it to institutes of higher learning.

Lack of education has a trickle-down effect. Most disabled children are not equipped with foundational skills for employability. According to the UN, in developing countries, 80 to 90 per cent of PwDs are unemployed, whereas in industrialised countries, it is between 50 to 70 per cent. In most countries, the unemployment rate for PwDs is at least twice that of those who have no disability.

The pandemic has made us realise how technology is reshaping education. Lockdowns made schools rapidly migrate to online education. This metamorphosis of education systems has far-reaching implications for disabled children. Online education has the potential to make learning more accessible for PwDs. It takes care of physical barriers created by transportation and mobility issues. Children have the advantage of accessing learning from the safety and comfort of their homes. It saves them from unnecessary inhibitions in attending physical schools. Disabled students in higher education too can have access to lectures, libraries and resources without the need to physically navigate remote campuses.

Online learning, both in the synchronous and asynchronous modes, offers added flexibility and the advantage of self-paced learning. With technological aids and assistive devices, it is possible to train disabled children in various skills. E-learning allows the review of materials and repeated viewing of video lectures. Various assistive technologies like screen readers, text magnifiers, speech recognition software, braille keyboards, sign language interpreters, videos with subtitles, audio recordings, etc, can be used.

Internet penetration is increasing fast. As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide — almost 60 per cent of the global population. In 104 countries, more than 80 per cent of the youth population is online. Out of the 830 million young people who are online, 320 million (39 per cent) are in China and India, which are among the countries with the highest incidence of disability.

Prices of internet services have dropped by 50 per cent on average over the last three years and broadband and mobile services are available at much higher speeds. This augurs well for online education. Children are quick learners and adapt fast. With adequate support, adopting e-learning may not be a huge challenge.

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals focus on “inclusive and quality education for all”. With barely nine years left for the target, greater strides have to be made. Governments and educational bodies have an important role to play in making ICT accessible to disabled students. Those at the forefront of education administration can facilitate designing online courses and learning modules in easy-to-deliver formats. Initial challenges do exist, but students who did not attend schools due to physical limitations at least have an alternative now. This can be a good starting point to bring in students who have been denied access to schools.

Advances in the digital economy are creating unprecedented work opportunities for the disabled, a report by ILO says. With the rise of the gig economy, most work is being done from homes, creating new job opportunities for physically restricted PwDs. Online education could prove to be a turn of the wheel in the quest of PwDs to gain a meaningful life.

This column first appeared in the print edition on September 25, 2021 under the title ‘Learning without barriers’. The writer is professor, Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Studies & Research, Aligarh Muslim University

Source: Indian Express, 27/09/21

Students are copying from the internet. And it’s because of how we teach

 Since the onset of COVID-19 last year, it’s not only the virus that has perfected the art of copying. Students across the globe are acing it. With an expansive, permanently available repository at their fingertips, copying is a breeze. In online exams, students have the choice of copying from each other, from the internet and from other resource material. Consequently, setting a question paper in these times has become more challenging than answering one.

For most subjects, evaluation is a fundamentally problematic task anyway. When confronted with an answer, the evaluator has to convert the worth of the answer into a number. Even with a rubric at hand this is never straightforward. And it would be best to not talk about the reliability of these scores. Different evaluators at different times and the same evaluator at a different time would rarely give the exact same marks to an answer. It is such a fragile scoring system on which entire careers are built. The pandemic has compounded the difficulty of evaluation.

Do I give more marks to an answer that is original but incomplete or even off-the-mark or to an answer that’s more comprehensive but is copied?

The other day, it struck me that I keep telling students “write in your own words” and I wondered why I keep using this phrase all the time. In whose words will they write if not their own should have been the obvious comeback. But unfortunately, it is not. Students prefer to write in other people’s words. With so much text at their fingertips, writing has become synonymous with browsing, selecting and pasting.

Rather than reprimand these young people for their unethical behaviour, we need to seize this moment and radically overhaul our education in the light of the internet. The internet is never going to go away. On the contrary, it will continue to grow not only in size but also in its intelligence. By continuing to teach students a huge range of subject matter and covering a lot of ground, we leave them with little or no time to grasp, internalise, reflect, probe and play with the ideas and concepts they learn. And, then, because their involvement in what they have learnt is so low, they don’t feel confident to articulate or explain it in their own words. In any case, years of rote learning and reproduction have led to a lack of confidence while using language to articulate any complex idea.

We have to recognise that in this battle the internet is always going to win when it comes to quantity. We stand a chance if, and only if, we focus on quality. And that will mean a drastic reimagination of what and how much we teach. If we don’t give our students the time and the tools to read, think, articulate, write and, instead, focus on how much content they know, then we will be failing our students as well as our society.

Written by Dipti Kulkarni

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 8, 2021 under the title ‘Beyond copy, paste’. The writer is assistant professor, NMIMS University, Mumbai

Source: Indian Express, 8/04/2021

Indian education system must stop chasing ‘learning outcomes’

 In the present context, which seeks to demonstrate, measure and quantify learning, learning outcomes (LO) have become a fetish with policymakers and textbook developers, an idea popularised by large-scale assessment surveys, such as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), in India. LO essentially refers to grade-appropriate, basic competencies in numeracy and literacy, which schoolgoing children are supposed to acquire.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the apex body responsible for making curriculum, syllabus and textbooks, has already come out with two documents listing learning outcomes at elementary and secondary stages, while the one for the higher secondary stage is underway. This is because the new National Education Policy 2020 underscores the importance of foundational skills as being central to a child’s schooling. State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) will be soon expected to toe the line. However, the government of Andhra Pradesh has already initiated the exercise. Besides deciding to convert all government schools from Classes I to X to English medium, the state education department was directed to prepare “mirror image” textbooks — with lessons printed in English and Telugu, side by side. This seems to be more of a mechanical exercise without any sound pedagogic rationale. A quick review of the new textbooks shows that they centre around LO and follow a didactic approach of essentially presenting information/facts that children are supposed to passively consume and memorise. Such books typically deny the agency of both the teacher and the student, making them subservient to the printed text. They are physically heavy but conceptually terse.

It was with great difficulty that National Curriculum Framework, prepared by NCERT in 2005, changed the form and nature of textbooks. Any change of government at the Centre or state level was/is usually followed by a change in textbooks, particularly history. Besides blatant misuse as a political tool, textbooks suffer from other limitations. They reproduce social inequalities by either omission of diverse social groups or their misrepresentation. The landmark Learning Without Burden (LWB) committee (1993) identified dense, poorly written and weakly conceptualised textbooks as being primarily responsible, in addition to unwieldy syllabi and rote-based exam system, for burdening children’s school lives. The NCF 2005, with its roots in LWB, redirected the meaning of quality education to curricular, pedagogic and assessment practices being followed inside the classrooms. It sought to connect the life of the child outside school with learning in the classroom.

Soon after, NCERT developed “exemplar/model” textbooks which were conceptually sound and used a variety of pedagogic techniques to bring in real-life issues in the book. The social science textbooks particularly acknowledged social conflicts which children experienced in their lives and helped make sense of them. They also gave fresh life to the meaning of learning which was no longer a one-way track of passing on information to children but became a process of constructing knowledge meaningfully by both the teacher and the student.

A few states took the lead and initiated the formation of state curricular frameworks, position papers and the development of textbooks. Undivided Andhra Pradesh was one of them. However, with the revision of the earlier written books, which were both pedagogically sound and collaboratively developed, it seems like the state is bent on undoing its own achievements.

There is no denying that textbooks, just like curricular frameworks, syllabus, and assessment practices, need to be revised periodically. However, textbooks tailored to measure the acquisition of LO on part of children is a self-defeating exercise. This singular focus on LO will take the teaching-learning processes away from the possibility of a meaningful co-construction of knowledge to a teacher teaching to the test. Since teachers’ own appraisal is contingent on children’s performance in these tests, they feel pressured to ensure that children know the basic minimum and somehow pass the test.

The choice is ours — whether we will allow testing to take precedence over learning or celebrate learning as a meaning-making exercise by both the teacher and the student.

Written by Disha Nawani

This article first appeared in the print edition on March 31, 2021 under the title ‘Testing over learning’. The writer is professor and dean, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Source: Indian Express, 31/03/21