At the macro level, the last 15 years have created a huge gap between the world’s two largest countries. Between 2010 and 2023, China’s gross enrollment rate (GER) of students in higher education rose from 26.5% to 60.2%, while the comparable GER in India has stagnated between 25% and 28% since 2017.
Low levels of basic mathematics and reading skills at an early age and low enrollment in higher education have resulted in labor productivity in India being 44 percent lower than in China.
More importantly, however, the inability of students to acquire even basic literacy and numeracy skills has led to disillusionment among students, teachers and parents.
As a result, 8 out of 10 Indian students who enter Grade 1 do not make it to Grade 8, 25% of teachers do not even show up for classes and parents hardly care whether their child is learning or not. This has created a vicious cycle.
The problem is not education spending, but society’s commitment and attitude toward education, which have a disproportionate impact on a child’s learning outcomes.
In Vietnam, World Bank researchers found that half of the country’s differences in scores on the 2012 and 2015 PISA tests could be explained by societal factors, such as parents’ expectations of students and teachers leading to increased discipline. At the same time, the country ranked in the bottom three in the world in overall per capita spending on education.
If we compare this with the School Management Committees (SMCs) in India, the most important forms of community involvement in our public education system, the difference becomes clear: 88 percent of government and government-aided schools have established SMCs, but head teachers, teachers and, above all, parents are not fully aware of their existence.
To break this vicious cycle, institutionalized interventions are needed to change the behavior of key stakeholders who are part of these communities. This means creating a mechanism to increase the involvement of teachers and parents.
We need to let our teachers teach. According to a study by Samagra, most teachers spend less than 37% of their time teaching, leaving them with only 13 hours per week.
In such circumstances, teachers resort to the standard method of teaching students who they believe have learning potential and ignoring others. To make matters worse, low self-esteem, lack of autonomy and lack of recognition tend to demotivate them.
We need to make it easier for teachers to teach effectively in the limited time available while showing them their progress. This includes providing them with the right teaching materials and tools and integrating technology.
A pilot study by education technology company Chimple in Satya Bharti schools, where teachers were provided with an app that allowed them to assign work according to children’s abilities, showed that not only did children learn better, but 94% of teachers agreed that such a model was helpful for students. Technology can also be used to reduce the administrative burden on teachers.
At the same time, teachers must be provided with opportunities to develop through structured teacher training. Currently, only a third of teachers say that their training was useful, mainly because these courses are ad hoc and do not focus on the core skills needed to teach basic literacy and numeracy (FLN).
A framework for recognising excellence can have further impact. Madhya Pradesh has a ‘Classroom Heroes’ programme that recognises exemplary teachers and their practices. Such recognition has led to greater ownership, values-orientation and a renewed sense of dynamism in teaching style.
However, students spend only 20% of their time in the classroom and the rest at home. This makes parents not only important stakeholders but also the key drivers of quality demand.
International studies have shown that schools with strong parental involvement are ten times more likely to achieve better learning outcomes.
However, there are pitfalls. Parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) distorts their perceptions of their child’s academic performance. High-SES parents are more likely to believe their child is above average than low-SES parents, resulting in the children of high-SES parents spending over 70 minutes more on school activities each week, creating a large gap in learning outcomes between the two cohorts.
In addition, parents are unclear about their role and do not feel confident enough to support their child given their own low literacy skills. To address this problem, parents need to be provided with contextual information about their child’s performance.
This can be done either in parent-teacher meetings or via text messages. In the US, providing information on metrics such as child absence, missed assignments, and poor grades resulted in a 27% reduction in course absences. Engaging engaged parents and teachers inevitably leads to more engaged parent-teacher meetings.
There are areas in India and around the world where there has been a significant change in the behaviour of children to enable them to get an education. As the saying goes, “It takes a village to educate a child.” But that village is made up of teachers, parents and community leaders.
If we find ways to engage them, we can bring about the lasting behavior change needed to make India’s Nipun Bharat Mission, the national initiative to promote literacy and numeracy, a success.
