Accountability and the Undermining of the Right to Education in India

• In Event: 75.011 - The Intended and Side Effects of Accountability Reforms in Education: International Perspectives

Abstract

Objective
This paper seeks to demonstrate how test-based accountability in India is generating unexpected effects and, paradoxically, threatening the ‘Right to Education’ that it seeks to promote. The aim is to develop a nuanced understanding of the limits and dangers of test-based and data-driven accountability practices which are being promoted by global networks at considerable cost without regard to their suitability to local contexts.
Theoretical Framework
This research draws on concepts from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and sociology of measurement (Gorur, 2015) to trace how regulatory practices attempt to impose order, and how these efforts may be resisted or translated with unexpected effects. Taking test-based accountability to be a ‘fluid technology’ (de Laet & Mol, 2000), the study explores how test-based accountability comes to be seen as ‘appropriate technology’ by those who are able to appropriate it.

Methods and Data Sources
This ethnographic case study uses interviews with government officials, teachers, headmasters, and academics, and documentary analysis of media reports, policy documents.
Results
In the world’s largest democracy, fewer than 50% of Grade 5 students can read a Grade 2 text (ASER, 2017). India is struggling to improve its education system. The 2009 landmark Right to Education Act guaranteed access to education for all children between 6 and 14 years. India also legislated the No Detention Policy – students could not be held back in the same grade if they failed their end-of-year examinations. This was critical to curtail dropout rates in secondary school. The policy of Continuous Comprehensive Assessments (CCE) was introduced to serve as formative assessment, to enable teachers to meet students’ needs at their levels of proficiency through child-centred approaches. These decisions were hailed by those seeking social justice.
However, the infrastructure and data-driven accountability practices did not support these policies. Teachers did not have the training to promote child-centred learning or use CCE meaningfully. They were made accountable for ‘covering the syllabus’ rather than meeting student needs. Large class sizes compounded the problem, as did constant demands to feed a data-hungry management information system.
As a result, learning outcomes have hardly shifted in India. The Right to Education Act inadvertently created the largest voucher system in the world. Government schools are closing down and private schools are thriving.
In response, instead of supporting better implementation of CCE and improving the structures of schooling, in July 2018 the government reintroduced state-level examinations in Grades 5 and 8, reversing the No Detention Policy. This can undo the rights-based approach that was being developed and adversely affect the most disadvantaged students.
Significance
The impetus for data-driven and test-based accountability has received a significant boost with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, and considerable resources are being deployed by the global community to promote test-based accountability in the global south. The Indian case can serve as a cautionary tale to show that such policy formulas as test-based accountability and child-centred learning cannot imported and expected to work smoothly in every context, without support from other parts of the system.

Author

• Radhika Gorur, Deakin University