QUALITY ISSUES IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION  

PEDAGOGY, TEACHER TRAINING AND CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT FOR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT  

GANDHIJEE ON EDUCATION  

Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated. This can never be done by packing ill-assorted and unwanted information into the heads of the students. It becomes a dead weight crushing all originality in them and turning them into mere automata Mahatma Gandhi (Harijan 1 December, 1933)

THE NATIONAL POLICY RESOLVE  

The National Policy on Education, as revised in 1992, had emphasized the need for a substantial improvement in quality of education to achieve essential levels of learning.  The Programme of Action, 1992, stressed the need to lay down Minimum Levels of Learning at Primary and Upper Primary stage. This need emerged from the basic concern that irrespective of caste, creed, location or sex, all children must be given access to education of comparable standards. The MLL strategy for improving the quality of elementary education was seen as an attempt to combine quality with equity.

The main indicator of the quality of elementary education can be visualized in terms of its product – the learners’ achievement both in scholastic and co-scholastic areas i.e. the performance in various subjects of study and habits, attitudes, values and life skills necessary for becoming a good citizen.  The factors associated with success in these areas, which relate to conditions of learning and learning environment, are also sometimes considered as indicators of quality of elementary education.  Thus ensuring quality in the inputs and processes becomes necessary of quality achievement is aimed at.

MAIN STEPS FOR OPERATIONALIZATION OF MLLs AS LAID DOWN IN THE PROGRAMME OF ACTION 1992  

• primary assessment of the existing levels of learning achievement;

• modification of the MLLs to suit local situation if needed;

• initial and recurrent orientation of teachers to competency based teaching;

• preparation of teacher training handbooks for MLL based teaching;

• introduction of continuous and comprehensive evaluation of students and using evaluation results for remedial action;

• preparation of unit test and other evaluation materials and putting them in an item pool for using as and when required;

• using MLL norms as and when textbooks are revised;

• provision of competency based teaching learning materials to make the educational process activity based and joyful.

Quality issues in elementary education will therefore, revolve around the quality of infrastructure and support services, opportunity time, teacher characteristics and teacher motivation, pre-service and in-service education of teachers, curriculum and teaching-learning materials, classroom processes, pupil evaluation, monitoring and supervision etc. Indeed improvement of quality in these parameters and its sustenance is a matter of grave concern for the whole system of education.  Some issues are mentioned below:           

                                 i.            Providing for reasonably good school building and equipment to all schools and

                        centers for alternative schooling;

                               ii.            Providing quality ECCE to all children until 6 years of age;

                              iii.            Ensuring a minimum of 4 to 5 hours per day of meaningful stay of each child in

                        school;

                             iv.            Providing trained and committed teachers in all schools and really interested and

                        oriented instructors for all non-formal education centers (EGS & AIE);

                               v.            Improving the quality of existing pre-service teacher education;

                             vi.            Organizing quality in-service teacher education to all teachers on a periodical basis

                        and with a follow up mechanism;

                            vii.            Creating and sustaining teacher motivation;

                          viii.            Revitalizing supervision system for quality elementary education;

                             ix.            Re-organization of curriculum to imbibe local needs and in-corporating the concerns

                        of the National Curriculum Framework 2000;

                               x.            Development of competency based and contextual teaching-learning material;

                             xi.            Improving teaching-learning processes to make them child centered, activity based,

                        mastery learning oriented;

                            xii.            Providing for remedial teaching and enrichment programmes at due occasions in all

                        classrooms;

                          xiii.            Introduction of formative evaluation and grading system to make it stress free for

                        children;

                          xiv.            Reduction of curriculum load; and

                           xv.            Introducing participatory management of elementary education with community

                        support.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will make efforts to take a holistic and comprehensive approach to the issue of quality. Efforts to decentralize the whole process of curriculum development down (grassroot level) to the district level will be made. Reducing the load of non-comprehension by facilitating child-centered and activity-based learning will be attempted. Learning by doing, learning by observation, work experience, art, music, sports and value education shall be made fully integral to the learning process. Appropriate changes will be made in the evaluation system to make it more continuous and less threatening. Performance of children will be constantly monitored in consultation with parents but shall not be restricted only to cognitive areas. Teachers’ role in preparation of textbooks and secondary learning materials will be enhanced. School timings will be made contextual. Based on a broad curriculum framework, districts would be free to define their content areas in their local contexts. State and national level institutions will facilitate this process of decentralized arrangements for development of curriculum and evaluation systems. Some guiding principles in curriculum and evaluation reform will be as follows:  

• Teacher/ community participation in material preparation and in developing a school vision;

• Focus on good quality printing, illustrations for books along side improvement in content; freedom from ‘cheapest syndrome’ in matters of children’s books;  

• Use of local dialects as language' in classes one and two;  

• Community-based and school-based projects for work experience;  

• Association of local artisans/workmen in school activities;  

• Primacy to cultural activities, art, sports, etc.;  

• Content based and motivational training for teachers;  

• Continuous assessment of  students for all round development;  

• Facilitating child-to-child learning;  

• Looking upon quality improvement as integral to a holistic School Improvement Programme.  

Norms approved under the scheme of Restructuring of Teacher Education will apply. Block Resource Centres and Cluster Resource Centres will be set up as per the norms mentioned earlier. They will function under the guidance of DIETs.  

Efforts to identify teachers as resource persons will be attempted through adoption of objective criteria. Teachers as resource persons could then interact with pedagogy experts and other teacher educators to develop useful learning approaches for children. Efforts to recognize the unique learning needs of children must be made. The diversity of learning environments and learning approaches should be encouraged and teachers should have the freedom to experiment on a much larger scale.  

The effective interface of teachers and teacher educators is critical for developing a context specific intervention. Study tours of teachers will be encouraged. NGOs with experience in pedagogy will be associated in developing capacity among teachers for innovative practices.  

The distance education mode will continue to be an important input in the in-service education of teachers and other personnel in the area of elementary education. It will supplement the face-to-face training by using multimedia packages like audio-video programmes, radio broadcast, teleconferencing, etc. This will also facilitate dissemination of innovative practices of one region to others. DIETs would be the centre of activity at the district level. The state coordination would be done by SIETs/SCERTs. These state level organizations would take up capacity building activities of DIET personnel.

 TEACHER RECRUITMENT, RATIONALIZATION AND MANAGEMENT  

States have their own norms for recruitment of teachers and a lot of diversity exists in payments being made to new recruits. In many cases the appointing authority is the local Panchayat. The States will be free to follow their own norms as long as these consistent with the norms established by NCTE. There will be no compromise on standards even though payments of less than the State pay scale as an interim measure may be adopted in states with large-scale vacancies.  Rationalization of existing teacher units will be a priority. The presence of the non-governmental sector has to be taken note of before working out vacancies.

The programme will provide for Primary and Upper Primary school teachers to ensure that there are no single teacher school. Overall, the effort will be to provide at least 1: 40 teacher pupil ratio. Qualifications of Upper primary teachers will be as per state specific norms and the number of Upper Primary schools will be broadly as per the national policy norm. The practice of at least 50 % women teachers will be strictly followed.

The support for newly appointed teachers salaries (on a reducing basis) under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will be for a ten-year period. The sharing arrangement will be 85-15 in the IX Plan, 75-25 in the X Plan and 50-50 in the XI Plan period and thereafter. Long term sustainable financing of teachers' salaries is likely to enthuse states to fill up teacher vacancies as per requirement. Assistance will not be available for filling up existing vacancies that have arisen on account of attrition. States that did not utilise the support under Operation Blackboard for a third teacher in Primary or an additional teacher in Upper Primary will be eligible for assistance for new posts created to meet the rising enrolment of pupils.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will encourage decentralised management of teacher cadres.  The local government should recruit and the community should have a say in the selection process. The Gujarat model of recruiting fully trained teachers on fixed pay as an interim strategy could be adopted in states with large-scale teacher vacancies. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan would like to improve the accountability of the teacher vis-à-vis local community without diluting the standards for selection of teachers, as laid down from time to time by the National Council of Teacher Education.

Opportunities for the professional development of teachers have to be encouraged and all efforts to provide effective In-service training and orientation have to be made. The Budget for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan provides for effective In-service teacher training.

Arrangements for class room observation after training programmes, by the Resource Persons will be encouraged.

QUALITY ISSUES AT UPPER PRIMARY STAGE  

Since Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan covers the Upper Primary stage also, the focus in quality interventions would have to be on meeting the complex needs of this stage in terms of teacher qualification, competency, subject specific deployment in schools, academic support through BRCs/CRCs, training needs of teachers, classroom based support and supervision issues. Since SSA will be one of the first major programme interventions at Upper Primary stage (OBB, LJP, BEP, EFAUP had Upper Primary components), greater clarity with regard to the specific needs of this stage will emerge in the course of programme implementation.

USEFUL AND RELEVANT EDUCATION AND EDUCATION FOR LIFE  

One of the goals of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is to promote education and for life. The debate on learning skills and life skills is an old one in India. There is a lot to learn from the Basic education system advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and the 'Nayee Taleem' advocated by Dr. Zakir Husain. The whole issue of relevance of education has been raised in the context of education for life. A lot of experts feel that education is not just the process of imparting literacy and numeracy. It is actually a process of socialization that helps children cope with the natural and the social environment. They have therefore, emphasised the need to develop a school system that builds on the solidarities in societies and tries to learn from the natural environment. The pursuit of useful and relevant education would imply a much greater focus on integrating physical and mental development.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan would encourage States to focus on total development of children. Encouragement to sports, cultural activities, Project work involving interaction with social and natural surrounding, activity based learning, exposure to life skills with regard to health, nutrition, professions, etc. Such a focus will entail looking upon a school as a social institution that is the hub of community activities. Encouragement to work experience would require the attachment of children with professionals, farmers, artisans, in order to master the social and natural context.

The shift in focus should result in a greater involvement of a number of extension workers in schools. Agriculture Extension Workers, Health Workers, Aanganwadi Workers, extension workers in artisan based programmes, activities of the Khadi and Village Industries Corporation, learning from traditional wisdom by interaction with the respected senior citizens in an area, etc. should form an integral part of the strategies of education for life. Children should be encouraged to think and observe independently and the classroom should be a forum for interaction.

RESEARCH, MONITORING AND EVALUATION  

As Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan emphasizes quality education, it is necessary to periodically monitor and evaluate all aspects of pedagogical inputs like curriculum and textbook development, teacher training packages and class room processes, amongst others. In this effort the role of community assumes paramount significance. The community leaders and groups need to be sensitized on issues related to monitoring of children's progress and other quality related school activities. Existing VECs, PTAs, SECs, MTAs, SMCs, etc., should be involved in this process by organizing fortnightly/monthly meetings in the schools.  

In order to assess enhancement in children's learning achievement and progress, after the launch of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, a periodic assessment every three years should be done at the primary and upper primary stages, using the BAS findings as a reference point.  

Research groups at the state, district and sub-district levels would be constituted to facilitate quality improvement in teaching-learning. State, district, block and cluster resource groups would function in collaboration with the SCERTs, DIETs, BEOs/BRCs and CRCs respectively. Information regarding the constitution and functioning of these groups would be incorporated into the Project Management Information System.