Abstract
The concept of “ready schools” implies that schools recognize and engage with the characteristics and needs of the children they aim to educate. But as school systems grow in size and reach populations with little or no prior experience of schooling, the notion that schools should aim to understand, communicate with, and respond to individual children and their families seems to be moving further and further out of reach. This chapter uses data from the India Early Childhood Education Impact (IECEI) Study and the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) to examine two basic assumptions about how the school system is structured, not only in India but around the world and the extent to which these are valid in the Indian context. The first assumption is that children in a given grade are roughly the same age, and the second is that children in a given grade are at roughly the same learning level. Based on this evidence, the chapter concludes that schools in India are far from “ready” to help children learn.
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- 1.
This situation is changing even as this book goes to press. Historically, school education was the responsibility of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), whereas early childhood education came under the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD). Very recent policy changes, most importantly the establishment of the MHRD’s Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan with the objective of bringing all stages of education from preschool through Grade 12 under a single, unified umbrella, are already beginning to alter this landscape with the establishment of a 2-year preprimary class within primary schools. Exactly how this national level policy shift will be reflected in the programs and responsibilities of the different institutions on the ground is yet to be seen.
- 2.
The 2006 talk by Sir Kenneth Robinson, a British author and expert on education in the arts, on ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ was presented at a TED Conference, a media organization that posts talks online for free distribution under the slogan ‘ideas worth spreading’. It went on to become one of the all-time most popular talks ever posted under the TED Talks label.
- 3.
See Kaul et al. (2017) for the final report of the study.
- 4.
Conducted annually from 2005 onward, ASER generates estimates of children’s schooling and foundational learning status for every rural district and state in India.
- 5.
Although the RTE Act specifies that children should enter Grade 1 at age 6, many states in India permit them to begin primary school at age 5 (GoI, 2014).
- 6.
UNICEF has compiled country-wise breakdown of age data which is available at https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/birth-registration/#.
- 7.
See, for example, Srinath (2013) for an analysis of age spikes in Census 2011 data.
- 8.
Although not necessarily enrolled. The IECEI study examined what children were actually doing, regardless of their formal enrolment status.
- 9.
See Chap. 11 in this volume for a detailed discussion of children’s trajectories in the early years.
- 10.
Anyone who has spent time in rural primary school classrooms can attest to the presence of these young children who are usually found sitting quietly at the very back of the class, ignored by both the teacher and the other students present.
- 11.
Some states have implemented multigrade, multiage classroom pedagogies in early grades, such as Activity Based Learning in Tamil Nadu and Nalli Kalli in Karnataka.
- 12.
For example, recent collaborations between ASER Centre and District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs), which are the government’s official teacher training institutions , provided opportunities to document how candidates in preservice teacher training programs are expected to design lesson plans for single grade classrooms, despite the fact that in many cases the classes they actually have to teach are multigrade.
- 13.
See Kaul et al. (2017) for a detailed discussion of the school readiness tasks that were administered and children’s performance on each.
- 14.
ASER Centre, unpublished analysis
- 15.
Teachers are required by law as well as force of convention to complete the syllabus within the academic year (see RTE, Article 11).
- 16.
Although a few studies from the 1990s did attempt to analyze textbooks’ level of difficulty relative to what children could do. See, for example, Kaul et al., 1995.
- 17.
This question has also been explored by Banerji and Nanda in Chap. 3 of this volume.
- 18.
- 19.
As part of the IECEI study, a detailed analysis of institutional quality was conducted in preschool centers and schools across the three study states. Results of this analysis show how private and government preschools/schools distributed their time between different kinds of activities, and the extent to which private institutions at both preschool and primary school levels focused on formal teaching activities (Kaul et al., 2017).
- 20.
We created a binary outcome variable – whether a Grade 1 child was at the beginner level (yet to learn how to read letters) versus whether (s)he was able to read letters or more (recall from Table 10.3 that overall, 43 percent of the cohort was at the beginner level and the remaining 58 percent was able to read letters/text of varying levels of difficulty). The variable of interest is age of the child, which ranged from 5 to 12 years (covering 99.5 percent of the cohort). The model controlled for the child’s gender and management type of the institution that the child attended. The type of house, whether it was kutcha, semi-pucca, or pucca, was used as a proxy measure for household wealth. The model also controlled for mother’s education. If a child was unable to read letters, (s)he was assigned a score of 0; otherwise regardless of reading level (s)he was assigned a score of 1.
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Annexure: Odds Ratio of Being at the Beginner Versus Higher Level for Reading and Math for Grade 1 Children
Annexure: Odds Ratio of Being at the Beginner Versus Higher Level for Reading and Math for Grade 1 Children
Reading ability (0: Unable to read even letters; 1: Able to read letters or more) | Math ability (0: Unable to recognize digits; 1: At digit recognition or higher level) | |
|---|---|---|
Age of the child | 1.517*** | 1.598*** |
(0.0297) | (0.0349) | |
Child’s gender (Reference category: Male) | 1.084*** | 0.992 |
(0.0328) | (0.0314) | |
Management type (Reference category: Government) | ||
Private | 2.333*** | 2.571*** |
(0.0967) | (0.113) | |
Other | 0.558** | 0.560** |
(0.139) | (0.135) | |
House type (Reference category: Kutcha house) | ||
Semi pucca | 1.201*** | 1.121** |
(0.0580) | (0.0558) | |
Pucca | 1.527*** | 1.577*** |
(0.0695) | (0.0751) | |
Mother’s education | 1.117*** | 1.112*** |
(0.00639) | (0.00663) |
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Bhattacharjea, S. (2019). Are Schools “Ready for Children”? Assumptions and Ground Realities. In: Kaul, V., Bhattacharjea, S. (eds) Early Childhood Education and School Readiness in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7006-9_10
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