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Events & Issues
New Delhi, 30 January 2012
Poor Student Show
INDIA SHINING OR DROWNING?
By Syed Ali Mujtaba
India celebrated its 63rd Republic
Day, like every other year. This time round too it was a grand show at the
historic Rajpath in the Capital, Delhi.
The pomp and gaiety that marked the occasion showcased the country’s
laurels in many spheres of activities. Almost all TV channels gave a
chronological description to this date, India’s progress from January 26,
1950 when it adopted its Constitution and became a Republic.
However,
the positive blushes may pale into a big smirk when we hear that our 15-year-old
students, who were put for the first time on a global stage and tested for
their reading, mathematics and science abilities, stood second to last, only
beating Kyrgyzstan. The recent results of the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) Secretariat's Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA), ranked India 72nd out of 73 countries!
The PISA results are based on
data collected from some 5,00,000 students undergoing two hour tests conducted
annually that evaluates the education system worldwide. These are meant to
conduct comparative analyses, across vast international contexts, of
15-year-old students for "reading, mathematical and scientific literacy.”
The 2011
survey reports that China’s Shanghai province scored
the highest in reading and also topped the charts in mathematics and science. In
fact, this Asian power has been on the top for the past several years and it
seems the country's youngsters are unbeatable and are far ahead than their
counterparts.
The survey
noted that more than one-quarter of Shanghai's
15-year-olds demonstrated advance mathematical thinking skills to solve complex
problems, compared to an OECD average of just three per cent. In contrast, India’s
participants from Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh that showcased the country’s education
and development fared miserably at the test. The OECD report notes that this average
Indian is over 200 points behind the global topper!
Comparing
scores, it’s estimated that an Indian eighth grader is at the level of a South
Korean third grader in mathematics abilities or a second-year student from Shanghai when it comes to
reading skills. In the case of scientific literacy levels Tamil Nadu students
had a very mean score that was below the means of all OECD countries, but
better only than Himachal Pradesh.
As per the
report in Himachal Pradesh, 11 per cent of students are estimated to have a
proficiency in reading literacy i.e. at or above the baseline level needed to
participate effectively and productively in life. Obviously, it follows that 89
per cent of students in Himachal are estimated to be below that baseline level.
The
question amongst experts doing the rounds is whether it was a good idea to
select these two States to represent India
in the PISA
programme. Apparently, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh rank high on human
development indicators among the States. The India Human Development Report
2011, prepared by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR),
categorized them as “median” States, putting them significantly ahead of the
national average.
The fact
is that the US, the UK, France
or say any other developed country from Europe do not top the PISA list in consecutive years. Instead it is
the Asian countries that mostly are on top of this standard education
test. And, China, South Korea, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Japan and UAE are far better than India.
This provides
and interesting insight that the image of a world divided neatly into rich and
well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is clearly a
myth. The fact is that economic development and education are not congruent to
each other and the two have little in common.
Additionally,
there is another fallacy in this story. While national income and educational
achievement are still related; the PISA result show that the two countries,
India and China with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different
results when it comes to the educational assessment of its school children.
This
brings about another presupposition: can India
aspire to compete with neighbor China
for Asian supremacy, when the stark reality is that its educational standard falls
far below the expectation to even meet the Chinese standards.
According
to the census 2011, India
has 74.04 per cent total literacy (82.12 % males and 65.46 % females). It's a
proud moment for a country which had started from 20 per cent national literacy
rate in 1950 and is now racing towards 100 per cent target. However, when we
put our proud achievement to the global test the fact that comes to hunt us like
a bad dream is the country’s poor educational standard.
Prior to
this participation, in 2003 students from Orissa and Rajasthan took a similar standardized
international test called “Trends in International Mathematics and Science
Study (TIMSS)” and produced comparable results. It ranked India at 46
among 51 nations. The Indian students' score was 392 versus an average of 467
for the group brought to the fore in a Harvard University
report "India Shining and Bharat Drowning".
Given the
above picture, it can safely be acknowledged that in the second most populous
nation on the planet, with the second biggest educational system in the world,
the preferred way to bring clarity to a massive, murky educational landscape
would be to let statistics paint the picture cleanly and efficiently.
However,
to keep the subject in perspective the Indian context is so complex, so
multi-dimensional, that trying to understand its depth merely through a
numbered tale is not just silly, but detrimental to our ability to work on
fixing the wrong.
The
two-hour tests cutting across vast socio-economic, linguistic, and ethnic
divides tell us little of the context-specific literacy practices from those
areas. There are many discrepancies in the test itself that were disadvantageous
to the Indian students. In many ways it actually does not truly comprehend the
actual knowledge of our students.
What we
end up with are then overbroad characterizations of how poorly the Indian
education system is doing, on the basis of large-scale data collection that
doesn't tell what's actually going on in the classrooms. This isn't to say that
PISA is useless
and the data is sheer garbage. The statistics definitely tell us some hard
facts about our own educational system.
The Human
Development Ministry has reason to be concerned. It has asked the National
Council of Education Research & Training (NCERT), to find answers as to why
the students fared so poorly. Its Department of Evaluation and Measurement,
which was the nodal authority for helping conduct PISA for the students, would
obviously need to do a thorough homework and can ill afford to fudge reasons. Clearly,
India
will have to ramp up its efforts and get serious about what goes on in its
schools as better educational outcomes are a strong predictor for future
economic growth. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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