EENET asia Newsletters : Third issue November 2006 Contents

Assessing the Status of Education: A Collective Action with a Difference

Anupam Ahuja

One look at the picture inserted in this write up could raise some questions. Why is the boy carrying the burden on his head? What is the volunteer assessing the child for? Why is the volunteer working with the child on the roadside? What are the thoughts of the schoolboy (with his back towards us)? Why did the photographer take the picture? Though some of the features stand out clearly such as the burden on the boy’s head and the schoolbag on the other boys back, one wonders if we have answers to all these questions?

The fact is that the picture is a snapshot of a scene on a particular day in a district in Rajasthan a state in India in November 2005. Snapshots were taken by twenty thousand volunteers while carrying out an assessment of both the provisions and outcomes of elementary education in India. It looked at some basic indicators and has lead to many unanswered questions.

The entire activity took less than 100 days and the young people involved experienced a oneness of India in its villages. The team travelled to the remote areas of hilly north and the northeast, the plains of Harayana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh. Everywhere they were greeted with great warmth in every home. They also ventured into the east, west and south and also into dangerous territories where there is no contact readily available. Social contacts came alive and helping the team on the ground were innumerable hospitable people: families of volunteers, bus drivers, telephone booth operators, college principals, printers, neighbours and friends. The act of assessing children brought people together, children showed curiosity and were willing to be assessed and mothers wanted to know “Can my child read”?

The survey consisted of three parts - household level interviews, assessing children’s ability to read a simple paragraph and story, solve simple sums, and observe the school settings. This may seem to simplistic to many people in academia and to educationalists used to debating the fine points of learning and assessing. Yet discussions with people involved in the survey revealed that they felt that such an assessment helped to draw the attention of parents and community leaders to how children were learning and how the same could be improved.

The results have been published in the form of a report “Annual Assessment Education Report”. It consists of mainly tables, charts, and graphs and a discussion on the methodology. There is a limited textual analysis and commentary, as it is believed that facts speak for themselves. The intention is to launch a periodical ASER discussion to further analyze the data. The ASER is resulting in forming a movement that takes the scientific methods of assessment and analysis to large numbers of ordinary people and demystifies them. The plan is to take the ASER results back to the districts and villages so that people can think about what to do next. The people will it is hoped extend a helping hand to the various levels of government action and be partners in changing the situation.

The findings are quite interesting. The disturbing finding is that close to 14 million children are still out of school! The good news is that the gender gap in the percentage of out of school children has come down. The alarming findings relate to reading and writing. Close to 35% of children in the 7-14 age group could not read a simple paragraph (at grade 1 level) and almost 60% children could not read a simple story (grade 2 difficulty level). The situation with respect to mathematics is also quite alarming.

Despite so many years of back-to-back school programmes and bridge courses in some states the percentage of out of school children continues to be worrying. The situation for example in Andhra Pradesh is particularly alarming in the light of girl child labour in cottonseed farms and in cotton plucking. This state traverses a pre industrial agrarian situation with a highly modern information technology industry. The data generated by ASER needs far more rigorous analysis and this is planned for in the coming months.

The idea behind ASER was not to take a snapshot for display or to merely make a statement. It was more than that. The feeling was that India is our country, these are our children, and the snapshot is to inform ourselves, the people of India, so that we understand the situation first hand and act to change the picture.
The following lines capture the spirit involved:

We
People of India
From different states and regions
Speaking different languages
Sat with our children
And looked within
Inside our homes
At our villages
And prepared the report
For ourselves
To build a better India

The single most important contribution of ASER is that it is that an independent group got together with an interesting range of individuals and organisations to find out what is really happening to our children. Creating a space for independent (neither government sponsored nor donor driven) assessment of India’s progress towards universal elementary education is invaluable. This effort could perhaps encourage groups across the country and beyond to initiate similar audit of education, child development, health and indeed many other dimensions of development.

ASER is linked with constructive satyagraha to insist on the right of citizens to participate in the functioning of the Government. The belief is that good work has been done by governments and there is a lot of it which deserves to be applauded; yet we need to accelerate outcome oriented steps to improve the learning of all children in the country.

This write up has been adapted from the Provisional Annual Status of Education Report 2006, Pratham Resource Center, Mumbai, India. For more information contact: Pratham Resource Center; Ground Floor; YB Chavan Center; Gen. J. Bosale Marg; Nariman Point; Mubai; India 400 021 or send an email to: aser@pratham.org

EENET asia Newsletters : Third issue November 2006 Contents