ASER Centre, in collaboration with UNICEF and UNESCO, launched the report of a study on teaching and learning in rural India. This study followed about 30,000 children in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan during 15 months to see how much they learn and what most affects their learning. The study looked at school organization, teacher background, teacher capability for teaching, classroom processes and learning outcomes. Research teams also visited homes of the children to understand how families’ social, economic, and educational characteristics relate to children’s learning. This study can provide significant inputs as states gear up to implement the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act.
Key findings:
• Attendance is the one of the most important factors in children’s learning. Not only do children need to be enrolled in school but they need to attend regularly in order to learn well.
• Children’s learning outcomes do improve during the course of a year, but even in states with the best learning outcomes, children’s learning levels are far behind what is expected of them. If textbooks are used as the reference point, then in all five states that were studied, most children are at least two grades below the required level of proficiency in both language and math.
• Neither higher educational qualifications nor more teacher training are associated with better student learning. Nor are teacher background characteristics such as age, gender, or experience major influences on student learning. What does matter is teachers’ ability to teach, for example:
§ Mastery of content knowledge.
§ Ability to spot common mistakes in their students’ work.
§ Ability to explain in simple language or in easy steps to communicate education content to young children.
§ Ability to create questions or activities for children.
§ Ability to spot common mistakes in their students’ work.
§ Ability to explain in simple language or in easy steps to communicate education content to young children.
§ Ability to create questions or activities for children.
• Child-friendly classrooms improve children’s learning. But 850 hours of classroom observations demonstrate that most primary school classrooms are not child friendly at all.
§ Students ask teachers questions in about a quarter of all classrooms.
§ Students’ work is displayed in about a quarter of all classrooms.
§ Teachers smile or laugh with students in about one fifth of all classrooms.
§ Teachers use local information to make content relevant to children in about one fifth of all classrooms.
§ Teachers use some kind of teaching and learning material other than the textbook in less than 1 out of every 10 classrooms.
§ Students ask teachers questions in about a quarter of all classrooms.
§ Students’ work is displayed in about a quarter of all classrooms.
§ Teachers smile or laugh with students in about one fifth of all classrooms.
§ Teachers use local information to make content relevant to children in about one fifth of all classrooms.
§ Teachers use some kind of teaching and learning material other than the textbook in less than 1 out of every 10 classrooms.
• The composition of students in an average primary school class is complicated. Most classrooms had fewer than 30 students present in all. But in about three quarters of classrooms, these students comprised children from two or three grades sitting together. This multi-grade problem is further complicated by the fact that within a single grade, children are very different from one another. For example:
§ Children vary considerably by age: While about 7 out of every 10 students are at the age appropriate grade, 3 out of 10 are either younger or older.
§ Children have different learning levels: While some children are comfortably able to deal with grade level subjects and skills, the majority are far below grade level expectations in language and math.
• Use of library books improves children’s learning. More than 6 out of every 10 students come from households where no adult woman has ever been to school. And more than half of all students have no print materials available at home. Thus children do not have materials to read at home. Although schools often have libraries, children were observed using library books in less than a quarter of all schools.
• Children whose home language is different than the school language of instruction learn less and attend school less often. One out of every ten sampled students comes from a family whose home language is different from the school’s medium of instruction. Implications of these findings, especially for implementation of the RTE Act:
ü Systems must be put in place to track attendance, not just enrollment, and ensure regular reporting and monitoring of attendance.
ü Textbooks need urgent revisions. They need to start from what children can do and be more realistic and age appropriate in what children are expected to learn, with clear learning goals. This is especially important in light of the RTE objective of age-grade mainstreaming for all children.
ü Teacher recruitment and training policies need to assess teachers’ knowledge, but more importantly their ability to explain content to children, make information relevant to their lives and to use teaching learning materials and activities other than the textbook.
ü As per the Right to Education Act, indicators for child-friendly education need to be defined and measured regularly as a part of the markers of quality education.
ü Libraries, with take home books for reading practice at home, should be monitored as part of Right to Education Act indicators. Family reading programmes could also be part of innovations to help support first generation school goers.
ü Mother tongue instruction and programmes for language transition need to be introduced and expanded.
ASER Centre released ‘Inside Primary Schools: A study of teaching and learning in rural India’ in New Delhi on October 28, 2011. Read the Policy Brief, Press Release, the full report,
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