How can learning improvements trigger school systems transformation?

• In Event: Assessment, performativity, and improvements

Proposal

Quality of an education system is measured by the quality of its outcomes. Typically learning levels are considered as the most significant and often only outcome. In several countries focus on achieving class appropriate learning as the key outcome has led to emphasis on periodic examinations rather than assessment for learning and other student-linked outcomes such as transition, wellbeing or development of 21st century skills. This approach may have a negative impact on students of India’s government school system which caters to students from poor and marginalised sections and are sadly but correctly viewed as poor performers via-a-vis students in private schools.

Studies find learning outcomes to be strong predictors of learning continuity and gains. This is more so in secondary, where a study found that students who dropped out were found to have much lower learning levels than students who transitioned and remained in school (Ramanujan & Deshpande, 2018). In another study more than 65% of children surveyed in rural India were fearful of dropping out due to learning loss (Agarwal, 2021). Hence improving learning outcomes is critical to prevent dropouts and more so amongst girls. 5.7% of girls between the ages of 6-16 are not enrolled in school; and of the girls who remain in school, only 59.3% are studying in age-appropriate grades (Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) Wave 1, 2020). Low learning outcomes trigger twin problems of dropout and low transition to secondary. Students enrolled in secondary grades are forced to grapple with negative and gendered social norms when making life decisions on education, career and marriage, unfortunately.

In order to achieve high learning outcomes for all students, boys and girls and poorest of the poor, governments must ensure availability of high quality inputs for all. This includes quality of teaching, quality of leadership in the school, district and State, and ensuring availability of infrastructure, teaching learning resources, and equitable access. Focus on ensuring availability and improving quality of inputs can lead to system level change.

In India, Education is part of the concurrent list entrusting powers to both Government of India (GoI) and State governments however implementation, allocation of resources are States’ prerogative. Therefore both national and state governments are key stakeholders to effect system level change. Thus partnering with the government requires aligning with national level policies and State priorities.
With a systemic view to improve learning outcomes at secondary schools in India, Transform Schools works with a whole school approach with a range of scalable offerings to impact outcomes. Results from pilot and direct implementation of Transform Schools’ proven Transform Learning (TL) programme (a targeted instruction programme to bridge pre-requisite competencies and build class level competencies) indicated that learning level improvement can garner focus and support of the government. This paper will delve deeper into the evolution of the Learning Enhancement Programmes (LEP) in India, commitment by various States and explore how our Transform Learning programme aligns with the rationale and approach of LEP or supplements it.

Over the past five years (pre and post Covid) of working in partnership with multiple State governments in the country, Transform Schools supported implementation of the Transform Learning programme in four states in India - Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh (HP). All the four states demonstrated considerable scope to improve their key education parameters (National Achievement Survey, 2017; School Education Quality Index, 2019). The implementation methodology and results were both considerably different during the pre-COVID years. The programme was designed for offline delivery using printed resources for teaching, learning and assessment aided by classroom based targeted instruction by the trained teachers. This approach was deeply rooted in the realities of limited technology and infrastructure in government schools and homes of the students. Both our programme data and an evaluation study conducted by J-PAL proved the effectiveness of the programme (Beg et al., 2020). Success of the intervention can be attributed to competency based approach to bridge learning gaps, high quality of training on effective teaching practices leading to improved classroom transactions, rigorous quality assurance processes, engaging parents and School Management and Development Committees (SMDCs) via Head Teachers to ensure high student attendance and participation and lastly but most importantly ownership by government at all levels including State, district and block reflected by allocation of resources and budgetary provisions.

The paper would deep dive into our learnings from implementing Transform Learning in State partnership and how it nudged the government to put concerted efforts into systemic improvements.

Although TL yielded the desired results both in terms of immediate programme outcomes and informing policies focusing on systemic improvements at the macro level; we realised that limited use of technology was restricting us to develop nuanced understanding of quality of implementation, results and enable real-time actionable insights through Data for Decisions (DFD) tool. COVID-19 led us on that journey while education systems battled with school closures and consequent learning losses in India (UNICEF, 2021) and globally (Bryant et al., 2021). We supported our partner States to pivot the TL programme with urgency as 1.2 million children in these schools were completely devoid of any learning support due to school closures.

The paper would present pivots made by our government partners and analyse the feasibility as well as effectiveness of those pivots to catalyse system level changes. An attempt will be made to understand if targeted instruction or learning enhancement programmes at scale have achieved desired results globally and how have these initiatives pivoted in the post COVID era. Further an attempt will be made to outline and determine areas wherein technology can be leveraged to enhance and sustain impact at scale.

Authors

• Shraddha Jha, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Neetu Sahu, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Richa Goswami, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Pankaja Balaji, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Pankaj Vinayak Sharma, Transform Schools, People For Action