Agencies
Abhijit Banerjee
Banerjee is recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics
Rukmini Banerji
Rukmini Banerji is CEO, Pratham
Given that schools have been closed for more than 18 months, the first priority for India now is ensuring a smooth transition back to school. This requires a focus on three key issues:
Most children are several years behind the grade level and, therefore, find it impossible to follow. So, teachers tend to default to teaching the few children who can follow the curriculum, and let the rest manage on their own. This reinforces the inequity in the classroom. The result is that children who once fall behind rarely catch up.
This pre-existing problem has been accentuated by the pandemic. Moreover, the children who were already behind, and are now even further behind, may find the classroom even more frustrating. This will reinforce their tendency to not participate with learning in school and strengthen the urge to not attend and eventually drop out. To prevent this potential disaster, the government needs to plan the reopening of schools in a way that focuses on this critical issue of heterogeneity of learning levels. The strategy has to have two components.
The Stepping Stones
First, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), a pedagogical approach aimed at helping children catch up to grade level developed by Pratham in India, and now one of the strategies being widely recommended across the world. The basic idea is to do quick and simple assessments of children — basic one-on-one oral maths and reading tasks. Based on these assessments, children are grouped by their current levels, rather than by their grade for a part of the day, and focus the teaching in that period on getting them to the next level.
This can happen in a few days, after which the children are tested again and regrouped. There are multiple randomised controlled trials of this approach, in India and elsewhere, showing that it leads to very substantial learning gains over a short period of time.
Second, a concerted effort to bring children back into school and ensure regular daily attendance. This will require working with the community, families and children to persuade them that school is the best place for children to be. This will be especially a challenge because the children have lost the habit of going to school. For this, careful monitoring of attendance is needed.
According to ASER 2018, in some states like West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, the attendance of enrolled children on any given day is less than 60%. Regular monitoring of attendance must be accompanied by systematic follow-up with the absent children’s families. Making the school an attractive place for children is one way to ‘pull’ children back to school. Sports activities, books and magazines they can read for fun, perhaps some tablets they can use on a shared basis.
Third, the pandemic is not over. The situation will remain fluid for months to come. Close contact between school teachers and parents is needed to plan well for these eventualities. Schools had shut suddenly in March 2020. But now with the experience of over a year-and-a-half, a much more comprehensive plan for learning can be put in place.
At least three scenarios warrant attention. What is possible when there is complete lockdown? When there is restricted movement, teachers can come to school. But schools have not opened officially for children. What can be done in such times? Finally, when schools are truly open, how does one maximise interaction and learning in that period?
The education system was failing to deliver quality teaching before the pandemic. Only half of all children in Grade 5 could fluently read a Grade 2 level text, or do arithmetic tasks expected by the end of Grade 2. This underscores the need for a broader shift in pedagogy to ensure that most children do not fall behind.
Writing on the Blackboard
This will require a change in how learning goals are prioritised, how different elements of the system align to support achievement of the goals, including teacher training, monitoring, support and assessment. Overall, the big change needed is ‘teaching the children’ rather than ‘teaching the curriculum’. The curriculum is a means to an end.
Focus on where children are today, and help them to move to where we want them to be tomorrow. The New Education Policy 2020 emphasises that children need to have foundational literacy and numeracy by Grade 3. High priority must now be given to guarantee that children in Grade 3 and beyond will also be reading fluently with understanding, and solving maths problems confidently in the months to come.
Banerjee is recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics, and professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, and Banerji is CEO, Pratham
- Heterogeneity in the classroom: Some children were able to take better advantage of online and remote education facilities than others. This was partly due to internet connectivity, and access to devices. But it is also because some families were better equipped to help children in an ongoing way than others. All of this has probably widened the gap between children in the same classroom, which makes it harder to teach.
- Children have now become used to life out of school. Many, especially those in their early teens or older, are working, either at home or outside, particularly girls. Reintegrating them into school system is critical, especially to prevent early marriage and other social issues.
- Be ready for rapidly changing situations as far as the pandemic is concerned. A variety of schooling and learning strategies need to be in place in case schools need to shut again.
Most children are several years behind the grade level and, therefore, find it impossible to follow. So, teachers tend to default to teaching the few children who can follow the curriculum, and let the rest manage on their own. This reinforces the inequity in the classroom. The result is that children who once fall behind rarely catch up.
This pre-existing problem has been accentuated by the pandemic. Moreover, the children who were already behind, and are now even further behind, may find the classroom even more frustrating. This will reinforce their tendency to not participate with learning in school and strengthen the urge to not attend and eventually drop out. To prevent this potential disaster, the government needs to plan the reopening of schools in a way that focuses on this critical issue of heterogeneity of learning levels. The strategy has to have two components.
The Stepping Stones
First, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), a pedagogical approach aimed at helping children catch up to grade level developed by Pratham in India, and now one of the strategies being widely recommended across the world. The basic idea is to do quick and simple assessments of children — basic one-on-one oral maths and reading tasks. Based on these assessments, children are grouped by their current levels, rather than by their grade for a part of the day, and focus the teaching in that period on getting them to the next level.
This can happen in a few days, after which the children are tested again and regrouped. There are multiple randomised controlled trials of this approach, in India and elsewhere, showing that it leads to very substantial learning gains over a short period of time.
Second, a concerted effort to bring children back into school and ensure regular daily attendance. This will require working with the community, families and children to persuade them that school is the best place for children to be. This will be especially a challenge because the children have lost the habit of going to school. For this, careful monitoring of attendance is needed.
According to ASER 2018, in some states like West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, the attendance of enrolled children on any given day is less than 60%. Regular monitoring of attendance must be accompanied by systematic follow-up with the absent children’s families. Making the school an attractive place for children is one way to ‘pull’ children back to school. Sports activities, books and magazines they can read for fun, perhaps some tablets they can use on a shared basis.
Third, the pandemic is not over. The situation will remain fluid for months to come. Close contact between school teachers and parents is needed to plan well for these eventualities. Schools had shut suddenly in March 2020. But now with the experience of over a year-and-a-half, a much more comprehensive plan for learning can be put in place.
At least three scenarios warrant attention. What is possible when there is complete lockdown? When there is restricted movement, teachers can come to school. But schools have not opened officially for children. What can be done in such times? Finally, when schools are truly open, how does one maximise interaction and learning in that period?
The education system was failing to deliver quality teaching before the pandemic. Only half of all children in Grade 5 could fluently read a Grade 2 level text, or do arithmetic tasks expected by the end of Grade 2. This underscores the need for a broader shift in pedagogy to ensure that most children do not fall behind.
Writing on the Blackboard
This will require a change in how learning goals are prioritised, how different elements of the system align to support achievement of the goals, including teacher training, monitoring, support and assessment. Overall, the big change needed is ‘teaching the children’ rather than ‘teaching the curriculum’. The curriculum is a means to an end.
Focus on where children are today, and help them to move to where we want them to be tomorrow. The New Education Policy 2020 emphasises that children need to have foundational literacy and numeracy by Grade 3. High priority must now be given to guarantee that children in Grade 3 and beyond will also be reading fluently with understanding, and solving maths problems confidently in the months to come.
Banerjee is recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics, and professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, and Banerji is CEO, Pratham
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
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