Improving Primary Education

Ensuring basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills for all

S. Chockalingam

Adit Ravi

Neeraja Abhyankar

Satya Vandana Gorle

Sahil Sharma

Team :

Nirbhaya1729

The Problem

India has 191 million primary students(2001) but the output of education is a

cause for big concern as can be seen from the graphs.

Teacher Involvem-

ent

• Low motivational levels of teachers

• High Teacher absenteeism – 25% in 2003[2]

• Poor performance of existing teachers

Social

factor

• Parents’ reluctance due to socio-economic factors

• Poor Student retention (58% drop out)

• Socio Cultural factors- Girls’ education

Quality of education

• RTE – cause of downfall in the quality of education?

• Drop in learning levels as can be seen from the graphs

• Highly relaxed criteria for passing students.

Paucity of teachers

• A lack of respect for the teaching profession

• Low teacher salaries- A myth [3]

Systemic flaws

• Inadequate teacher accountability

• Lack of proper monitoring

[1]

[1]

All figures in %

Solution Strategy

High teacher absenteeism – Monitoring system

• Weekly monitoring of teacher attendance by locally employed ground

personnel

• Evaluation of teacher performance by Village Education Committee

Student retention at school and high drop out rates

• Strict o itori g of stude ts’ atte da ce with regular i ti atio of parents

• Attendance based monetary benefits as incentive to send children to

school ( example : subsidy on ration items)

• Making school enjoyable for students ( example : Interactive learning)

• Monitoring the quality of mid-day meal

• Awareness drives in the pre-enrollment phase

Paucity of teachers – Voluntary teachers

• Recruiting motivated and socially responsible professionals and

graduates

• Involving part-timers like housewives and retired people on a slot

based system

Solution Strategy

Quality of education

• Creating and cataloging a large online database of teaching learning

material. Using interactive learning material in the class

• A student mentor system explained later (using college students)

• Monthly ASSET [4] like standardized tests for effective evaluation

• Monthly auditing of each school (like Paheli [5] for villages)

People empowerment

• An augmented SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) [6] Village Education

committee(VEC) for education related decisions

• Community empowerment and involvement by including the parent

body and others in a large local body called Lok Shiksha Sabha, which

will play an active role in identifying issues

Overall evaluation

• A detailed feedback and audit system to ensure parent satisfaction,

good infrastructure, services and facilities

Central Team

Data

Analysis

Team

IT

Team

Feedback

Team

Economics

Team

Organizing

Team

Ground

Personnel Lok Shiksha Sabha (LSS)

(Regular Teachers,

Parents, Voluntary teaching staff)

Student

Mentors Part timers

Voluntary teaching

staff

Augmented SSA VEC

(Village Education

Committee)

Organizational Structure

Details of the model – A model for 15 schools

The different organs and their functions:

Ground personnel ( 2 per school => 30 for 15 schools)

•Collect daily attendance of students and teachers

•Check quality of mid-day meal every week

• Intimate parents of frequent absentees of the week and record reason for absence ( say 50 absentees per school per day => approx. 3 student visits per day per personnel)

•Submits the above reports and test reports to the Data Analysis Team at Block Office

Data analysis team (5 data analysts at the Block Office)

•Maintain updated electronic database of students, parents, test reports

•Analyze reports periodically and make intuitive reports of attendance, performance to be presented in the LSS (Lok Shiksha Sabha) meeting

• Inform teachers when their attendance falls in a week and record reasons for absence

IT Team

•Provides front end and back end support to the whole system ( ex – Maintaining the computerized database)

• Makes a library of related online learning material for the students and make it accessible to them

Details of the model – A model for 15 schools

Teaching staff

(a) Voluntary teachers: Recruiting motivated and socially responsible professionals and graduates to work as teachers for periods of 3-6 months (successful example – Teach for India [7] initiative ).These teachers go on awareness drives on education, related social issues like education of girl child during the pre- enrollment phase.

(b) Part-time staff: Employ qualified people on a slot based system to address paucity of teachers ( ex – educated housewives, retired people, unemployed graduates). They are paid per slot.

(c) Student mentors ( at least 450 mentors for 15 schools):

• College students who are mentors for students in nearby schools

• They work as part of a credited course (say a course like the existing NSS)

• Student – mentor ratio of 5:1 to be maintained

Organising team:

• Student mentor managers (15 per block, stationed at the Block Office) Manage the student mentors, collect monthly student status reports from them, make individual reports based on them and a compiled report for all students to be submitted in the LSS

• Teacher staff managers (5 per block, stationed at the Block Office): Recruit voluntary teachers, part-time staff and schedule classes (example – allotting slots to a part-timer when a teacher is absent)

Lok Shiksha Sabha

Members: All parents, augmented SSA VEC members, teaching staff, Principal

• Meets every month to decide the agenda of the monthly ASSA VEC meeting

• Goes through attendance reports, student status reports, audit reports, school test reports, ASSET like test reports and holds discussions

• A parent – teacher meeting to discuss individual reports

• Forum for any form of complaints, issues, suggestions from parents and the system

Augmented Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Village Education Committee:

The decision making body which has the structure of SSA VEC , augmented with 10 parent representatives and 2 teacher representatives (one for the regular teachers and one for the voluntary teachers).

• Meets monthly after the LSS meeting, discuss issues raised by LSS and acts on them (ex –Filing a complaint against the non-cooperative teaching staff at the DEO)

• Decides budget for local education related expenses

• Provides for monetary benefits to parents of students with good attendance (ex- For

Attendance > 70% , an extra subsidized LPG cylinder per year per family )

Feedback team

• Collect audit based feedback from all organs of the model, parents and make intuitive reports based on them to be given to the LSS

• Handle internal complaints and keep the system happy

Details of the model – A model for 15 schools

Sample Timeline of Events Impact

End of day

Ground staff takes attendance of students as

well as teachers

End of week

Ground staff submits attendance report to analysis team.

Obtains list of frequent absentees and visits them.

Student mentors visit schools

Twice in a semester

Standardised tests (ASSET like) conducted, scores appended to

report

Pre-enrolment stage:

• Recruit voluntary teachers and other staff

required.

• Volu tary teachers i teract with stude ts’ pare ts to emphasize the importance of education

End of month •Audits of infrastructure and midday meal submitted to analysis team •Lok Shiksha Sabha meets body of parents, school teachers committee and all employees. Open meeting. •Committee meets after the Sabha. Acts on the issues raised. •Student Mentors report to mentor managers

Criteria to measure impact : • Attendance of teachers and students.

• Performance in standardised tests

• Infrastructure and facilities in schools

Scalability and Sustainability : • Can be implemented as pilot project in a

few districts and then expanded, with

modifications depending on its

shortcomings.

• 60 people (excluding voluntary teachers)

employed for every 15 schools.

Expected Outcome : •About 4000 students to be ensured quality

primary education for an annual investment

of about 1.2 crores ( Rs 3000 per student per

year).

• Increased awareness and community

involvement .

Economics and Feasibility Estimated Expenses(for 15 schools per annum, all figures in INR)

Staff

Number Salary per month

(in INR)

Total per month(in

INR)

Ground Personnel 30 8000 2,40,000

Voluntary Teachers 15 15000 2,25,000

Data Analysis Team 5 12000 60,000

Student Mentor

Managers

15 12000 1,80,000

Teaching Staff

Managers

5 10000 50,000

Slots(Part timers) 100 per month 150 per slot 15,000

Feedback Team 5 12000 60,000

Total per month : 8,30,000

Total salary expense per annum = 99,60,000

Miscellaneous expenses = 20,00,000

(Office cost, transport, subsidy, incentives etc)

Total expenditure per annum = 1.2 crores(approx)

Sources of funding : Government grants & Donations from corporate sector

Risks, Challenges and Plausible solutions

Risk Plausible solutions

Insincere ground personnel • Proper screening to ensure motivated

people are recruited

• Principal takes the ground staffs attendance

• In extreme cases, take ground staff's

biometric attendance

Lesser number of voluntary teachers/ student

mentors in some places

More digital learning like video lectures,

online notes etc

Large money involvement leading to corruption

at office level

• Proper economic audit by an external

agency

• A website accessible by the public which

clearly shows details of all transactions

Low participation in the LSS and ASSA VEC

meetings

Complementary meal during the meeting

References

[1] http://www.asercentre.org/education/data/india/statistics/level/p/66.html

[2] http://goo.gl/jkhv7u

[3] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3160

[4] http://www.assetonline.in/asset_online/index.php

[5] http://www.indiawaterportal.org/source/paheli-peoples-audit-health-education-

and-livelihoods

[6] http://ssa.nic.in/main_page

[7] http://www.teachforindia.org

***End of Presentation***

Resources Used

http://mhrd.gov.in/documents/term/137

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/TLLWxKjaJG790cs99bIv2L/Challenges-to-primary-

education.html

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/nSU6PpzDw9Qi1Pbp11nviI/Using-evidence-for-better-

policy-case-of-primary-education.html

http://www.dseap.gov.in/Educational%20Statistics.pdf

http://indiancag.org/manthan/research-documents/primary-education.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_China#Primary_education