India should give its school education system a radical rejig

Children living in poverty have less, get less and experience far tougher lives. Among other things, they get inadequate nutritional content and significantly less care and supervision because adults are away all the time toiling to earn a living. They are frequently absent from school because they fall ill more and for longer, and also have to help adults with their livelihoods.

Poverty and social exclusion cause significant stress and other mental-health issues. In short, the deficits and deprivations that children live with affects their educational achievement profoundly. In general, there is a reasonable understanding of these underlying sociological and psychological factors, but an inadequate understanding of their curricular and pedagogical implications.

Most schools serving similar populations India are far less endowed than ours. Much must be done to fix this—in at least three categories—apart from important responses outside the educational system like poverty reduction and ensuring good public health.

First, the basics that have been repeatedly committed to by various policies across the past few decades need to be implemented. An adequate number of teachers is essential in every school. National or state averages of the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) hide India’s lack of teachers in rural and disadvantaged areas.

Teachers must be there for all subjects that are to be studied, and we can’t make, say, a Hindi teacher teach Maths in grade six. The teacher education system must be transformed to root out corruption and improve quality. A culture of empowerment and trust must be fostered, which is at the core of what keeps teachers motivated.

We must reform tests and examinations to assess genuine learning and understanding and not just rote memorization, change the high-stakes nature of board examinations and college-entrance tests, ensure that each school has reasonable range and quantity of good-quality learning resources, including books for the library, textbooks for all children and age-appropriate experimental kits.

We must ensure that there are reasonable classroom spaces and toilets with running water. It’s obvious that these are basic. What should be equally obvious, but is often not, is that the basics are often missing from schools where they are most desperately needed—the vast majority of schools where children in poverty and near-poverty study.

The second category is of things that could compensate in some manner for deficits and deprivations at home. The PTR must be much better, say 15:1 instead of the statutory commitment of 30:1 in schools that serve children in poverty. The lack of resources and attention at home must be balanced with enhanced attention at school. A uniform PTR for India is unreal and ineffective; it must be based on an assessment of student needs.

Schools or groups of schools must be resourced with social workers. The intensity of effort required to understand what’s happening in each child’s life to support them appropriately when they live in poverty is not practical for teachers preoccupied with the classroom. Social workers should perform this role. They could ensure enrolment and attendance, engage parents, and offer relevant support outside school.

We must improve the nutritional content of midday meals and also offer a nutritious breakfast. Currently, in primary grades, the per-meal budget is a paltry ₹5.50. Some states do top it up with money for milk or eggs, but those are exceptions. The quality of a child’s nutrition has profound immediate and lifelong effects. Ignoring that is a grave mistake.

Actions in the first two categories are necessary but may not be sufficient. Those in the third category ask for radical changes in our school education system.

The rigid enforcement of age and cohort-based classes does not work well. Instead, children can be grouped based on their learning levels.

Educators know that children must be taught on the basis of what they know and build from there. Most effective teachers try to do this even within a class. But if the design of our schools were to dispense with the notion of classes, that will provide teachers enormous flexibility. Particularly because many children across classes have the same learning levels and should be together, instead of being separated.

Such a fundamental change will require a redesign of how teachers are allocated work. The structuring of schools into classes is more for administrative convenience, while structuring in groups of common levels of learning with fluidity of movement would be for educational effectiveness.

Something even more radical must be considered. What must every child learn in school while the rest can be left to her to learn outside school or later in life? I suspect we are trying to teach our children too much. The trivial is crowding out the important. Less will be better because we have compulsively kept loading the curriculum.

The National Education Policy and the National Curriculum Framework 2023 acknowledges this overload problem. But, given the reality of our education system and societal dynamics, easing the burden will require nothing short of a revolution. More about this in another column.