Learning equity gets a short shrift in funding: A perspective from India

• In Event: Towards learning equity: What should (and shouldn’t) be scaled up?

Proposal

Over the past decade, funding for foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) programs has focused, almost entirely, on improving mean scores of children. In India, this has been the pattern for large grants from multiple agencies, as well as from the big corporations. In addition, funding for FLN programs has diversified in the past few years through the instruments of 'outcome or results-based funding' and 'impact bonds'. However, while these projects have helped bring much-needed funding for foundational learning, they nonetheless give a short shrift to the equity dimension. These programs tend to include just one kind of final outcome or learning targets, viz. difference in mean learning gains between treatment and control samples over a baseline. This creates a strong incentive for implementing organizations to design strategies that focus on improving learning at scale for children mainly at the middle and upper ends of the class. This approach does not help provide the extra attention and support to the most marginalized children who are lag behind.

Our (anonymous) NGO is a non-profit that works in India for improving foundational learning at scale. But we also advocate for a modified model of funding and implementation of early learning programs that emphasize learning at the bottom of the pyramid. Our NGO implemented a Development Impact Bond from 2019-2022 (including over 18 months of school closure) where learning outcome gains were almost 4.5 times the outcome targets fixed for the project. Most importantly, children who were in the lowest quintile achieved the highest leaning gains over the three-year period. Our academic design and professional development programs promote change in mindsets and classroom strategies that support learning for all children, especially for the most disadvantaged. It is imperative that practitioners as well as policymakers who are involved in promoting foundational learning at scale work towards modification of the framing of learning outcomes and funding priorities to privilege equitable learning. Learning equity will depend on this critical change in emphasis.

Author

• Dhir Jhingran, Language and Learning Foundation