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Chapter VI
ANALYSIS OF COST OF QUALITY INTERVENTIONS IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN UTTAR PRADESH
6.0.0 Introduction:
In the previous chapter, cost of improving access to elementary education was discussed. Status of enrollment at primary and upper levels, underage and overage children, had been presented. Expenditure on improving access in terms of creating infrastructure facilities for elementary education e.g. opening of new primary and upper primary schools, reconstruction of school buildings, construction of additional classrooms, toilets and providing safe drinking water have also been presented. Increasing role of private schooling as it has implications for expansion of government school facilities, norms for opening of schools and for other facilities and implications of Right to Education Act in terms of creation of infrastructure and resources required, had also been presented.
As discussed earlier, one of the main objectives of universalisation of elementary education programmes has been to improve quality of elementary education in the state. The quality of primary education has much scope for improvement and cost estimates must include the cost of improving quality. Children are unlikely to attend and complete primary education, when it is of poor quality. Achieving universal primary education will require additional outlays for implementing measures that may result in improving quality. Indeed, issue of quality is deeply associated with the issue of quantity in primary education.
In this chapter, various initiatives undertaken to improve the quality of elementary education in U.P. will be discussed. Teacher pupil ratios, learning achievement of students, recurring expenditure on training of teachers, development of curriculum and textbooks, provision of teaching learning material, academic supervision and support system, evaluation system for students in Uttar Pradesh is presented. An estimation of improving the quality of schooling, as it has definite financial implications, would also be presented in this chapter.
Quality in elementary education is not limited to only improving learning achievement of students. It would be appropriate to understand the concept of quality as how it is defined with respect to elementary education.
6.1.0UnderstandingQuality in Elementary Education:
Quality refers to the objectives of the activity. The concept of quality can be understood in terms of efficiency, availability, cost effectiveness, user friendliness, task accomplishment, and environment friendliness. Expansion of the schooling system, increase in enrollment, and increase in retention and decrease in dropout rates are some of the indicators of quality in education.
The concept of quality of education involvestheoretical and practical constructs which revolve around aims of education, curriculum, pedagogy, infrastructure and textual/learning material, teachers, school organisation, environment and different relationships (teacher-student, school-community), and evaluation. Its detailing would require great length to elaborate. This framework is indicative and quality of a school is meaningless without a reference to what children are learning in the school, thus learning occupies a very significant position.
Generally, the terms effectiveness and quality are used interchangeably. Economists approach the issue of school quality empirically through the framework of educational production functions. One approach is focused on school effectiveness on the basis of achievement differences. Some studies have used other measures of school quality e.g. college continuation, dropout rates, students’ attitudes and school attendance rates. In India, there has been little empirical evidenced based research on the determinants of school quality. Govinda and Verghese(1993)[1] have used regression analysis to examine the determinants of student achievement in India.
The National Knowledge Commission has delineated the following critical components in order to raise the quality of school education: to setup a national body to monitor the quality of schools, to develop effective inspection systems to ensure meaningful monitoring, to raise the accountability of teachers, to revamp and modernize teacher training – both pre-service and in-service, to give priority to curriculum reform and make education more relevant for children, to push for reforms in examination to focus on language and comprehension, numeric and quantitative skills and ability to use knowledge creatively.
Operational meaning of the term quality education largely centers onattainment of competencies pertaining to the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of a child. The competencies as learning outcomes of a child may be described as- students can read and write critically, should have logical competencies, good communication skills, can apply knowledge in real-life situations.
Quality in primary education has been one of the important goals of new initiatives in the recent years. There is a range of things, from school building to academic monitoring, which could be seen as affecting the quality of school. Classroom processes, curriculum and textbooks, learning material used, and teacher training are other factors that affect the quality of primary education. Alternatively they are classified as content and process of education.
Improving the quality of education can be termed in other words as improving value for money. Delivery mechanism in primary education is complex, teacher motivation and capacity building, community demand and control, professional and technical issues are central to it. Quality enhancing measures will generally include reducing pupil-teacher ratios, more teaching learning materials and textbooks, more participatory school management, increases in real wages and salaries for teachers etc.[2].Thus, to improve the delivery mechanism in primary education for improving value for money, options will have to be explored:
- improving teacher competence,
- increasing internal efficiency as dropouts and repeaters increase the cost in a number of ways,
- Higher access to the teaching learning material for students and teachers and savings on different fronts.
Issue of quality also includes that money should be allocated in recurrent expenditure for training of teachers, material for teachers and other related inputs, and subsidies for girls’ education.
Dreze and Kingdon (2001)[3] found that several school quality variables in India had significant effects on years of primary school attained. Quality of classrooms have strong positive effects for girls, while teacher absence due to non-teaching duties had a negative effect on boys only, and class size was shown to have a negative effect on both girls and boys.From an economic efficiency perspective, quality aspects of education deserve attention.Universal free provision of education does not necessarily best serve equity goals.[4]Besley and Coate (1991) derive three conditions that are necessary for public provision of a discreetly demanded private good, education to be redistributive: private sector provision must be allowed, private sector quality level should be at least a little higher than the public sector quality level, and quality must be a normal good.[5]
6.2.0 Quality Education in Uttar Pradesh- A Major Concern:
In Uttar Pradesh, under different projects for universalising elementary education,efforts made to address the quality issues revolved around the quality of infrastructure and support services, teacher characteristics, pre-service and in-service education of teachers, curriculum and teaching learning material, classroom processes, textbooks, pupil evaluation, monitoring and supervision.
The externally aided Basic Education Project (BEP) and later on DPEP took to address the issue of quality learning. It sought to activate the education system to be more responsive to the needs and constraints of specific segment of population, particularly girls, children of socially deprived-groups, 'difficult-to-be-reached' and 'last-to-be-reached' segment. The objective was to create better infrastructure, teacher motivation and text books, besides providing space for local communities to participate in planning and management of public spending on education. In DPEP years, lots of efforts were made in multi grade teaching. Although multi grade teaching situations were more of a socio political and managerial issue, however pedagogical considerations and solutions were presented to sort this out. In pursuance to cost cutting in primary education, para-teachers were contracted in large numbers in place of full time regular and trained teachers.
Different documents, training material and reports developed during implementation of District Primary Education Programme in the state, all largely present the notion of quality improvement in education system as one that employs child-centered, activity based joyful learning methods, uses textbooks that allow child-centric activity based learning in multi grade multilevel classrooms and in order to attain a certain level of learning.
As aresult, it was envisaged that learning levels will improve over the baseline assessments, gender and social gaps would be narrowed in learning levels.
6.3.0 The School and Teacher Characteristics Correlated with Performance:
Status of learning levels have been captured through different assessment surveys over the years. It would be pertinent to analyse this phenomenon.In the following discussion, causes and factors that have a bearing over the learning levels of students would be presented. At first, some of the factors that influence the learning levels of students at primary leveli.e. pupil teacher ratio, class size and teacher characteristics would be discussed.
6.3.1 Pupil Teacher Ratio and Teacher Characteristics:
Norms of pupil teacher ratio havebeen prescribed in the state and there has been constant emphasis on reducing the pupil teacher ratio at primary level. Recruitment and deployment of teachers, rationalisation of teacher posts are some of the management issues. It is noteworthy that although in 2013-14, average number of teachers in government schools is 3.6 per school; however at least 7.33 percent primary schools are single teacher schools in Uttar Pradesh.
Teachers’ salaries account for a considerable chunk of public education expenditure. In this respect, pupil teacher ratio provides some insight into the equity of education expenditure and the potential quality of learning for students. As the number of teachers is among the main determinants of the overall quality of education, the pupil teacher ratio provides some indication of educational quality. According to the UNESCO statistical yearbook, in 2008, the global average indicates that each primary-level teacher was responsible for 25 students. In Europe and North America, one primary school teacher was responsible for 14 students, while the primary-level pupil-teacher ratio was 41:1 for Africa and 25:1 for Asia and the Pacific in 2008. A smaller pupil teacher ratio, that would enable teachers to pay closer attention to each student, should result in improving the quality of education. However, a low pupil teacher ratio does not necessarily guarantee a good quality of education. Teacher distribution patterns, and teachers’ skills, competencies, experience and training, are also crucial in ensuring a high level of educational quality.
Poor learning in schools may be, in part, due to high absence rates among teachers. Chaudhury et.al.(2006)[6] providesstatus of absence in schools in several developing countries including India. Absence ranges from 11 to 27 percent among primary school teachers. Interventions that provide physical resources alone are not enough to improve outcomes if workers delivering the service do not perform as expected.[7]
Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 has prescribed the teacher pupil ratio at the primary level.In Uttar Pradesh, teacher-pupil ratio is positively and significantly correlated with language and math test scores in all grades[8]. An extra teacher is associated with 3 percentage point increase in scores. Teacher activity is positively and significantly correlated with language and mathematics test scores in all grades. If 80 percent of the teachers were to become actively engaged in teaching, language and mathematics scores would be higher by 7 and 8 percentage points respectively. Controlling for activity, teachers’ attendance is not significant in most regressions. Other characteristics of the school and teachers including teacher training are insignificant.The one school characteristic that is consistently and significantly correlated with learning achievement is teacher engagement in teaching.Most other school or teacher characteristics are not associated with test scores.Although reported test score correlations (not causations) based on a cross section survey, above report claims that findings are consistent with international evidence on the impact of school and teacher characteristics on student test scores.
6.3.2. Class Size:
There has been emphasis on the size of the class, however, a number of studies find no conclusive impact of class size on student performance[9]. There is evidence however that the impact of policies on class size may depend on the level of education concerned and the absolute level of class sizes. Class size may matter when the average size is quite large.
6.3.3 Teacher Attendance and other Characteristics:
In Uttar Pradesh, number of teacher posts has been on constant increase, as with the opening of new schools, additional posts have been created. Under the DPEP and SSA, para-teachers were deployed, instead of regular teachers as the first option was considered a cheaper option. Studies on teacher effectiveness also provided the evidence in favour of para-teachers. There is fairly robust evidence that of the school level variables which can be influenced by policy, factors to do with teachers and teaching are the most important influences on student learning. The broad consensus is that teacher quality is the single most important school variable influencing student learning.[10] But what it is about teachers that matters is less well known. Researchers agree that many important aspects of teacher quality are not captured by the commonly used quality indicators such as education, experience, and content knowledge. Recent studies have demonstrated that teacher attendance has a positive impact on test scores[11]. Results show that teacher effort is positively correlated with student performance, unlike other attributes of schools or teachers including education and experience that have no correlation.
The social distance between the teachers and the children is wide in government schools (which cater tothe very poor). Social attitudes and community prejudices play an important role in determining the ability andwillingness of teachers to empathise with children and teach them love[12].It has been observed that teachers lack the skills to manage so much diversity in terms of learning levels, child’s background and age in the classroom. Training programmes for teachers aregenerally designed keeping in focus the urban and better equipped schools where one teacher manages one class. The problemsfaced by teachers in multi-grade and multi-level situations, where teacher-pupil ratios are high, are rarely covered in trainingprogrammes. In these situations, teacher find it difficult to connect to training programmesprobably because they have todeal with diverse group of students, different levels of students and most importantly, children who are undernourished, hungry and frequently ill.[13]
While inadequate and dilapidated facilities and infrastructure of schools are often documented, the malaise of primary education is deeper, having its roots in lack of incentives and accountability for public schools and teachers. According to Drèzeand Sen[14]: “the most striking weakness of the schooling system in rural Uttar Pradesh is not so much the deficiency of physical infrastructure as the poor functioning of the existing facilities. The specific problem of endemic teacher absenteeism and shirkingplays a central part in that failure. This is by far the most important issue of education policy in Uttar Pradesh today”.
The above discussion briefly presents some of the important factors that influence the quality of schooling. Now correlates of students learning achievement e.g. teacher and student attendance, status of learning levels of students would be presented in the following paragraphs.
6.4.0Quality of Schooling: Learning Achievement and its correlates:
About indicators of quality, there may be a debate. Whether process indicators should be emphasised, outcome or output? Improving the attendance and graduation rates of children is only part of the educational process. The ultimate goal – to impart children with knowledge- is not easy to measure and quantify. School instruction is important in determining the learning outcome. School and teacher characteristics correlate with test scores. The teacher – pupil ratio, an extra teacher, and the teacher activity variable is positively and significantly correlated to test scores in all grades.
Children also learn from their families. Children from wealthier families and of literate mothers are more likely to have higher scores. The effect of family characteristics has been found stronger in UP than other states. In addition to the above, other proximate indicators to assess how well the teaching process is working, have also come out from various special purpose survey and include (i) teacher attendance or absenteeism rates (ii) the amount of time that teacher actually spend teaching and (iii) children’s scores in various proficiencies. While discussing about the learning achievement of students, teacher performance and teacher accountability has been a matter of concern. PROBE report[15] has identified many shortcomings leading to lower student motivation and poor learning quality. It was found that schools were able to function only about 150 days in a year and teaching effectively took place for about 2 hours a day. The low level of teaching activity is the fundamental flaw in the schooling system[16]. In single teacher schools, the teacher’s main preoccupation was to maintain a semblance of order in the classes. The extent of teacher attendance is summarily presented in the following table:
Table-6.1
The extent of teacher attendance/ absenteeism, India, UP and selected states
India / AP / MP / UPTeacher Attendance Rate
World Bank (2002) / - / 75 / 84 / 75
Annual Status of Education in India(ASER) 2005 / 75 / 77 / 76 / 79
ASER 2007 / 92
Independent Study commissioned by MHRD, (2006) / - / 79 / 67 / 78
Teacher’s Time-on-Task Study (2006-07) / - / 83 / 82 / 85
Percent of schools with all teachers present
Annual Status of Education in India(ASER) 2005 / 51 / 47 / 58 / 56
ASER 2007 / 75
Teacher’s Time-on-Task Study (2006-07) / - / 53 / 62 / 58
Source:The World Bank (2002), ASER by PRATHAM, MHRD(2006) adopted from D. Sankar “Unraveling Teacher’s Time on Task: Evidence from three Indian States”