Student Math and Reading Skills in India and Pakistan

Recent World Bank report on student learning in South Asia is depressing. Sri Lanka is the sole exception to the overall low levels of achievement for primary and secondary school kids in the region.  The report documents with ample data from various assessments to conclude that "learning outcomes and the average level of skill acquisition in the region are low in both absolute and relative terms". The report covers education from primary through upper secondary schools.

Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014


Children Who Can Not Read by Age 10. Source: World Bank via Economist



Buried inside the bad news is a glimmer of what could be considered hope for Pakistan's grade 5 and 8 students outperforming their counterparts in India. While 72% of Pakistan's 8th graders can do simple division, the comparable figure for Indian 8th graders is just 57%. Among 5th graders, 63% of Pakistanis and 73% of Indians CAN NOT divide a 3 digit number by a single digit number, according to the World Bank report titled "Student Learning in South Asia: Challenges, Opportunities, and Policy Priorities".  The performance edge of Pakistani kids  over their Indian counterparts is particularly noticeable in rural areas. The report also shows that Pakistani children do better than Indian children in reading ability.

Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014


Here are some excepts from the World Bank report:

Unfortunately, although more children are in school, the region still has a major learning challenge in that the children are not acquiring basic skills. For example, only 50 percent of grade 3 students in Punjab, Pakistan, have a complete grasp of grade 1 mathematics (Andrabi et al. 2007). In India, on a test of reading comprehension administered to grade 5 students across the country, only 46 percent were able to correctly identify the cause of an event, and only a third of the students could compute the difference between two decimal numbers (NCERT 2011). Another recent study found that about 43 percent of grade 8 students could not solve a simple division problem. Even recognition of two-digit numbers, supposed to be taught in grade 2, is often not achieved until grade 4 or 5 (Pratham 2011). In Bangladesh, only 25 percent of fifth-grade students have mastered Bangla and 33 percent have mastered the mathematics competencies specified in the national curriculum (World Bank 2013). In the current environment, there is little evidence that learning outcomes will improve by simply increasing school inputs in a business-as-usual manner (Muralidharan and Zieleniak 2012).


Source: The Hindu

In rural Pakistan, the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) 2011 assessment suggests, arithmetic competency is very low in absolute terms. For instance, only 37 percent of grade 5 students can divide three-digit numbers by a single-digit number (and only 27 percent in India); and 28 percent of grade 8 students cannot perform simple division. Unlike in rural India, however, in rural Pakistan recognition of two-digit numbers is widespread by grade 3 (SAFED 2012). The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) survey—a 2003 assessment of 12,000 children in grade 3 in the province—also found that children were performing significantly below curricular standards (Andrabi et al. 2007). Most could not answer simple math questions, and many children finished grade 3 unable to perform mathematical operations covered in the grade 1 curriculum. A 2009 assessment of 40,000 grade 4 students in the province of Sindh similarly found that while 74 percent of students could add two numbers, only 49 percent could subtract two numbers (PEACE 2010).

Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014



The report relies upon numerous sources of data, among them key government data (such as Bangladesh’s Directorate of Primary Education; India’s National Sample Survey, District Information System of Education, and National Council of Education Research and Training Assessment; and Pakistan’s National Education Assessment System); data from nongovernmental entities (such as Pakistan’s Annual Status of Education Report, India’s Student Learning Study, and its Annual Status of Education Report); international agencies (such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2009+ for India; the World Bank Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement Project in Bangladesh); and qualitative studies undertaken for the report (such as examining decentralization reforms in Sri Lanka and Pakistan). The study also uses the World Bank Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) framework to examine issues related to ECD, education finance, assessment systems, and teacher policies.

I hope that this report serves as a wake-up call for political leaders and policymakers in Pakistan to redouble their efforts with significant additional resource allocations for nutrition, education and healthcare.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Who's Better for Pakistan Human Development?

History of Literacy in Pakistan

Myths and Facts About Out-of-School Children in Pakistan

PISA, TIMSS Results Confirm Low Quality of Indian Education

India Shining, Bharat Drowning

Learning Levels and Gaps in Pakistan by Jishnu Das and Priyanka Pandey

Pasi Sahlberg on why Finland leads the world in education

CNN's Fixing Education in America-Fareed Zakaria

PISA's Scores 2011

Poor Quality of Education in South Asia

Infections Cause Low IQs in South Asia, Africa?

Peepli Live Destroys Western Myths About India

PISA 2009Plus Results Report

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Why Indian education sucks:
10. Changes way too often.
changes way to often
The school system of SSC board has changed so very often. Starting with total suspension of exams till 8th grade, moving to grading system from marking system, changing the mid-term exams from twice a year to eight times a year, introducing orals and internals in the boards, the changes are frequent and unpredictable. ...

9. Just eat it and puke.
just eat and puke
The entire Indian educated student will agree that the ‘learning’ is different from its definition. When we were told to learn it does not understand the content it is mugging it, memorizing it and writing it down verbatim. The prowess of the learned content is fearsome for the poems and stories of past are still embedded in our minds forever. The horror of forgetting one word in the answer, the danger of deviating from the answers was life-threatening. ...
8. no practical experiences
The actual implementation of techniques learned right from school through grad school is practically absent. The techniques we learn are bookish knowledge. The charts we make as projects have little or no significant relation with the education process. The Grad school experience of engineering starts with diagrammatic representation of gramophone and ends with advanced technical drawings. We are too rigid to enter into the real world. And the substantial time we waste into the drawings is something we need to divert into practicality. Life will be easier then.
7. Pit us against each other.
pit us against each other
From an early age, we are taught that there is only one and one winner alone. We fight for that top slot in class, the trophy, the race, the position of the leader, best sportsman and everything. We befriend people based on the ranks and grades. This instinct continues into our college days, our bachelor’s degree and further into our lives. Sportsmanship is not a strong suit taught in the education institutes for we are only taught to run the race to bet others not to win.
6. No unity in this diversity.
No unity in diversity

The Indian scenario plays an important role in our education culture. Few districts and states are notoriously famous for their tolerance of the cheating, proxies and free degrees. The system is degraded and this leads too many feeling cheated of fair competition. The paper checking method is laughable. The environments of private schools and colleges are closed to government watches giving them excess liberty. We learn politics right from school just by experience, ignorance protects us.
4. Sports are absent.
sports are absent
Apart from few schools where sports actually mean something, majority of schools uses the P.E lecture to conduct few games. The seriousness of this slot in school timetable is negligible....
3. Technology deficient.
technology deficient
We are taught the computer in 3rd grade around. We learn basic languages which are practically off the market. The syllabus of computers was something we barely made through. The course included techniques so old that it is practically obsolete in this day and time. The comparison with western country will put us to shame. The kids there are in sync with technology from age of 3. We need to step up our games. We still write every single word and submit the papers . At-least the Grad and PG level demands the use of computers and laptops in the everyday classes. We need to start refusing papers and start going digital.The world is going digital and we are being left behind. Indian Education system needs to incorporate these changes in its system and fast!
2. English Please.
English please
Studies show that even the engineers can’t spell out properly. They are weak in Basic English and this is after clearing four year grad school in the same language.

1. Just study

How many of us have given up on arts and crafts and dance and sports due to education and board exams.

http://listcrown.com/10-reasons-indian-education-system-sucks/
Riaz Haq said…
#Vietnam's high PISA scores cause a stir. #Vietnames kids rank near top; #India kids at bottom on PISA tests http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/753840/vietnam-high-pisa-scores-cause-a-stir …

Vietnam's performance in the latest round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) has created a stir among education experts and policymakers around the world. The country's 15-year...

When compared to student performance in India, a country with similar per capita GDP, 47% of grade 5 pupils were unable to subtract even two-digit numbers.

Please credit and share this article with others using this link:http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/753840/vietnam-high-pisa-scores-cause-a-stir. View our policies at http://goo.gl/9HgTd and http://goo.gl/ou6Ip. © Post Publishing PCL. All rights reserved.
Riaz Haq said…
#Pakistan's 2nd, 4th & 5th grade girls much more #literate than #India's. #Nepal's girls do best in #literacy tests http://www.thehindu.com/data/article9259221.ece …

Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal have stolen a march over India in quality of school education.

Data from new research on female literacy show that India’s school education system is under-performing in terms of quality when compared to its neighbours, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The research studies changes in female literacy over a number of schooling years.

The proportion of women who completed five years of primary schooling in India and were literate was 48 per cent, much less than 92 percent in Nepal, 74 per cent in Pakistan and 54 per cent in Bangladesh.

These findings, which are part of a forthcoming background paper, were released in a blog-post by New York-based International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (or Education Commission) last week. Justin Sandefur, one of the authors of the paper, said, “This is a simple but powerful signal that India’s education system is under-performing.”

The data also revealed that, female literacy rates went up by one to 15 per cent after completing two years of schooling. Corresponding numbers for Pakistan and Nepal were three to 31 per cent and 11 to 47 per cent respectively. “This implies that schooling is roughly twice as productive at generating literacy for women during the early grades in Pakistan when compared to India. Or, it could also mean that Indian schools are much more lenient about promoting students who cannot read,” Mr. Sandefur said.

DHS data

For this research, the authors devised a way to measure the quality of education around the world, with a specific focus on girls, using data from nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) — one of the most comparable data sources on living standards in the developing world. “We used data from all countries with DHS data that included the literacy measure,” Mr. Sandefur said. Around the world, female literacy rates are improving. However, it is not clear if that is because of improvement in school quality, the study says. India ranks low in global indices of female literacy as well. If countries are ranked by the earliest grade at which at least half of the women are literate — a proxy for quality of learning — India ranks 38th among the 51 developing countries for which comparable data is available. Indonesia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania — all rank higher than India. Ghana is placed at the bottom. According to this study, just seven per cent of female students in Ghana can read after attaining their sixth grade.

Over the years, most countries studied made improvements in the number of girls finishing primary school, which should lead to more literate women. But for girls who don’t finish primary school, the trend is not encouraging: researchers found that little to no progress has been made in increasing basic literacy for the girls who drop out. The report notes, “Millions of women have spent multiple years in school and emerged unable to read a simple sentence” and “it’s not getting much better over time.”
Riaz Haq said…
US Charter School Model Goes Global In Pakistan
Several education nonprofits have started to adopt public schools in Pakistan, introducing new books, hiring new teachers and upgrading facilities.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/2016/11/29/178120/us-charter-school-model-goes-global-in-pakistan/


Three years ago, Bushra Nasim left her public school in Karachi and switched to a private school with low tuition.
She didn’t like how teachers treated her and classmates.
“There was a physical and verbal abuse and now it doesn’t happen here anymore,” she said through a translator.
That’s because new managers run her campus, called the Pakistani Railway School.
A nonprofit known as The Citizens Foundation, or TCF, took it over from the government last year. Now dozens of students are coming back, like Bushra. She’s ready for eighth grade, dressed in her sky-blue uniform with a cream shawl across her shoulders.
Bushra said that she was excited to return because of new course books and polite teachers. Her father was so excited about the new management from TCF that he also enrolled three of her six siblings.

This is part of a larger experiment in Pakistan to reform education. Several nonprofits like The Citizens Foundation, Developments in Literacy and CARE have adopted hundreds of public schools in all.
Some of the nonprofits also operate their own schools and collect donations around the world – including more than $1 million a year from Houston.
But with the government schools, they take over management and often replace or retrain teachers. Some have long waiting lists or lotteries to win a seat.
If this sounds like charter schools in the United States — where independent management groups operate public schools — it’s because it’s fairly similar. One difference is that U.S. charters are free. The Pakistani groups can charge a nominal tuition, such as a couple of dollars or less per month.
“They have more experience,” said Fazlullah Pechucho, the Education Secretary in the Sindh province. He said he’s eager to partner.
“A lot of elements are being executed with the EMOS, education management organizers, who are the private partners,” he said.
Groups like TCF are also excited because they see a faster route to improve both the quality and access to education in Pakistan, a country with a booming population and a dismal public education system. TCF’s strategic director said that adopting a public school and revamping the building saves them time and money, instead of building a new brick-and-mortar campus from scratch.

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That’s why there’s another strategy at play at the Fatimah Jinnah Government School in Karachi. Here seventh grade girls compete in dodge ball in the courtyard.
The Zindagi Trust adopted the girls-only school nine years ago. It offers chess, soccer, a library and art classes. The trust has invested almost 100 million Pakistani rupees in the school, including upgrades to the campus so drinking water didn’t mix with sewage lines.
The trust’s director Shehzad Roy calls it a success for other reasons.
“The most important thing why we’re turning around government schools is (to) change the system,” he said.
Roy is a Pakistani pop singer turned activist. He said that the campus acts as a model to change education laws. So far, he counts half a dozen reforms. They include a ban on corporal punishment and allowing non-government textbooks in the classroom.
“And as an institution yes, the school is doing really well. But more importantly, are we impacting the system or not,” Roy said.
Riaz Haq said…
A number of programs have explored using vouchers or other government subsidies to enable more children to attend private schools.

There is good evidence that these interventions are effective. For instance, a recent randomized trial in India found that children provided with vouchers made greater progress in literacy and math than other children. A similar evaluation of a randomized voucher program in Sindh, Pakistan, found that enrolment rates in villages targeted by the program increased by 30%, along with increases in learning, gender equity, and school facilities.

More importantly, vouchers can be taken to scale. With 1.4 million children, the Punjab Education Foundation already funds the education of more children than the world’s 30 smallest countries combined (and more children than Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Mongolia and New Zealand). As is the case with most low-cost private schools, it does so at a lower cost per student than the government system. In Chile, vouchers fund more than 50% of children in school. Hong Kong, one of the world’s best performing (and most equitable) school systems, effectively uses a voucher style model to fund around 90% of children to attend privately owned schools (like the Punjab Education Foundation, parents in generally cannot top-up the value of the voucher). Voucher models have also been taken to scale in India, the Philippines and Uganda.

Vouchers therefore appear to be an intervention which:

Raises learning levels
Reduces the cost of schooling
Is scalable to reach large numbers of children
Despite that, vouchers have some serious limitations, which, at a minimum, mean that they need to be implemented carefully to have impact.

First, while learning levels in low-cost private schools are generally higher than those in government schools, they are not that much higher. Many voucher systems in the developing world (and low-cost private schools more broadly) still leave large numbers of children not learning. With good training, assessment and other interventions, this learning challenge can be addressed. This means that a voucher system has to be one part of a broader reform agenda, not a substitute for it.

Second, there is a risk of duplication of resources. In many cases, the government ends up funding competing schools, or continuing to fund empty government schools while at the same time paying for a private school next door. Proponents argue that this is a better situation than children being in government schools and not learning. Nonetheless, it raises serious questions about resources in otherwise resource constrained systems. The best voucher systems attempt to target the most vulnerable or underserved areas, but this is difficult to affect in practice.

Third, vouchers, and market-based schooling models in general, have a tendency towards inequality. In Chile, vouchers have benefited students from better-off families more than those from less-well-off families. Good design of the vouchers can ensure that they benefit those who need them most, but this is not guaranteed from the outset.

Fourth, as long as public schools are the dominant provider, a voucher program may prove a distraction from the main task of improving the public school system. Many opponents of vouchers argue that political and financial capital would be better deployed improving the public school system. The best reforms combine both approaches, though were financial and political capital are limited, this can be difficult.

Finally, as voucher systems scale, they begin to become subject to the same political economy challenges which are often the source of problems in the public school system. Good governance structures can mitigate this, but ultimately, as voucher programs scale, they will become further enmeshed in the political and bureaucratic structures which dominate the school system.


http://www.acasus.com/vouchers-and-low-cost-private-schools/
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan Launched Annual Status Of Education Report (ASER)

https://www.researchsnipers.com/pakistan-launched-annual-status-education-report-aser/


The United Kingdom strongly supports ASER, this is the only citizen-led independent assessment of Education and it is also an important tool for citizen’s accountability. We as DFID have been supporting ASER since its launch years ago, and we will continue to support the cause for better of the society, said Joanna Reid while addressing the panelists.

The number of out-of-the-school children has dropped significantly from 25 million to 22 million according to the government data. However, it’s still not enough, there is a lot more to be done. We should not compromise on access to schools, our main focus should be on improving quality, the education budget was increased this year which is a good sign towards development but still short in achieving targets, from 2.83% of GDP the budget allocation this year was 3.02%, Joanna added.

Education and economic development are correlated with each other, economic growth in Pakistan heavily relies on education, Pakistan has a larger segment of population which is aged between 10 to 24 years according to population Council, 61 million young people can really make a difference if they are equipped with required education and skills, if half of them are not, Pakistan will not be able to meet its workforce needs in the future to continue economic growth, she said.

The ASER meeting was organized by Idra-e-Taleem-o-Agahi with other partners of ASER in Serena Hotel. Key personalities from Federal government Education department, National Assembly, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and Human Rights Activists were among the Panelists.

Riaz Haq said…
Punjab and Sindh provinces in Pakistan are public-ising their private schools (and they’re also privatising their public schools)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/punjab-and-sindh-provinces-in-pakistan-are-public-ising_us_59e474eee4b02e99c5835804

Back in 2015 the Economist published an article called “Learning Unleashed”, which breathlessly declared Punjab, Pakistan to be the “new standard bearer for market-based education reform”. No matter there isn’t really any evidence that learning has been improved, never mind unleashed, what the article described is just about the opposite of a market-based reform. Through voucher and subsidy schemes, Punjab’s government injects public finance into private schools. Similarly, in the southern province of Sindh, the state is fully financing the education of hundreds of thousands of kids enrolled in private schools. And in both provinces it is the state, not the market, that sets the rules of the game.

Kids in Pakistan’s schools aren’t learning. And they’re the lucky ones who are actually in school
Test scores suggest that children in Pakistan are performing well below curricular standards. Although, unlike in India, their test scores have not worsened over time, like almost every other developing country they are not improving. Data from ASER makes for grim reading: less than a third of grade five children from the wealthiest quintile have the numeracy and literacy skills that are expected of a child in grade two. Just 17 percent of grade five kids from the poorest quintile can read a single sentence. Remember, these are the kids who managed to make it to grade five – in other words, they’ve sat through at least five years of schooling and 83 percent of them still can’t read a sentence.

As for those who aren’t in school, Pakistan’s Bureau of Statistics estimates that there are 5.6 million primary age out-of-school kids (note that this figure is based on the 1998 census, and so the true number could well be substantially higher or lower).

The twin ”crises”of low and static test scores, combined with millions of kids not in school, has led to a proliferation of education reforms. These include policies that aim to harness the vibrant and growing private education sector.

With education in crisis, government turned to the private sector for help
Provincial leaders in Punjab and Sindh are taking bold steps to reform their failing education systems. They’ve moved fast, particularly in Punjab where the Economist’s Learning Unleashed article is framed and proudly mounted on several government office walls.

Together, the PPPs in Punjab and Sindh make up one of the largest and fastest-growing public private partnerships in the world. More than three million kids in the two provinces are enrolled in around ten thousand private primary schools, with the cost of their education fully financed by the state. They’re managed by semi-autonomous entities, the Sindh Education Foundation and the Punjab Education Foundation, whose funding is almost entirely provided by their provincial governments.
Riaz Haq said…
UNESCO and World Bank data from 2012 shows Pakistan spends 6% of GDP on education---2% public and 4% private spending as percentage of GDP, according to the Economist Magazine.


UNESCO and Word Bank data from 2013 shows that 46% of Pakistani kids and 32% of Indian kids reached expected standard of reading after 4 years of school, according to the Economist Magazine.

https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21660063-where-governments-are-failing-provide-youngsters-decent-education-private-sector
Riaz Haq said…
What’s Really Keeping Pakistan’s Children Out of School?
By NADIA NAVIWALA OCT. 18, 2017


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/opinion/pakistan-education-schools.html

Since 2010, Pakistan has more than doubled what it budgets for education, from $3.5 billion to $8.6 billion a year. The budget for education now rivals the official $8.7 billion military budget. The teaching force is as big as the armed forces.

But Pakistan has a learning crisis that afflicts its schoolchildren despite much debate and increase in funding for education because policy interventions by the government and foreign donors misdiagnosed what is keeping children out of school.

...... the demand for education is already high, evidenced by the mushrooming of low-cost private schools that now enroll 40 percent of students in the country and charge as little as $2 a month.

Foreign donors also want Pakistanis to send their girls to schools, but a 2014 Pew survey found that 86 percent of Pakistanis believe that education is equally important for boys and girls, while another 5 percent said it was more important for girls. Even in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — where Malala Yousafzai is from — government high schools for girls are enrolled beyond their capacity.


Pakistan’s education crisis is a supply-side problem. Enrollment rates are used as the measure for progress because Pakistan has the second-largest population of out-of-school children in the world. But the proportion of 5- to 9-year-olds in school is the same as it was in 2010: 57 percent. With teachers chronically absent from school at a rate of 20 to 30 percent and most of the education budget going into their above-market salaries ($150 to $1,000 a month), doubling the budget was never the solution to Pakistan’s education crisis.


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Eighteen million of the 23 million out-of-school children in Pakistan are between 10 and 16 years old. Efforts to reach them have been negligible. These children opted out of a failing education system and now they have aged. They will not now go to school if it means starting in kindergarten. They need accelerated programs, or short crash courses in literacy and math to help them enroll with their age group.

Even if these children do not go back to school — international evidence suggests they won’t — they will, at least, become literate adults.

Riaz Haq said…
#Pakistan ASER 2019: Learning levels in #language and #arithmetic have shown improvement from 13% to 17% for grade 5 students. But children continue to struggle at lower levels to grasp foundational skills in basic #literacy and #numeracy. #education https://tribune.com.pk/story/2154226/1-pakistan-primary-students-struggle-literacy-numeracy-aser/#

At least 59% of children from grade-V can read a grade-II story text in their respective medium of education such as Urdu, Sindhi and Pashto. However, in English, only 55% of the surveyed grade-V students could read sentences meant for students of second grade.

Arithmetic learning levels have also improved since 2018, the report said, adding, now 57% of students of grade-V can do a two-digit division, pegged at second-grade curriculum. New questions on time recognition along with word problems on addition and multiplication were also added for the first time in the survey.

At least 60% of children in grade-V can recognise time correctly, 60% can solve addition word problems and 53% can solve a multiplication word problem, the ASER survey said.

Private sector schools report better learning outcomes and boys outperform girls. In comparison, the learning levels in urban areas were considerably higher than rural areas across all three competencies.

However, the report said, that only 55% of the surveyed grade-V students can read sentences from a grade-II English textbook.

Despite the recent focus of the federal and provincial governments on enrolment drives to implement Article 25-A of the Constitution — which requires the provision of universal elementary education — 17% of children between the ages of six and 16 remain out-of-school, the survey said.

In contrast, a survey in 20 urban centres across Pakistan reveals that only 6% of children were out-of-school. With 40% of the population residing in urban areas, this presents an important opportunity to accelerate universal access for the urban five-16-year-olds, whilst simultaneously focusing on rural areas, the report suggested

Education targets can be met through extraordinary resolve and actions by the state to guarantee a constitutionally fundamental right, it said.

Teacher competencies

The ASER report highlights teachers’ attendance in government and private schools stood the same at 89% closing the gap, on the day of the survey. Whilst private school teachers were reported to have better qualifications at graduate levels — 40% compared to 33% in government schools.

However, for MA, MSc and other post-graduate qualifications, a larger percentage of public sector teachers had higher qualification than their private school counterparts.

Multi-grade classrooms highlight teacher shortages, it said.

ASER 2019, rural findings reveal that 46% of government and 26% of private schools impart multi-grade teaching at grade two. In grade-VIII, multi-grade teaching stood at 18% in both government and private schools. A teacher taking classes of multiple grades in government middle schools has risen from 5% in 2018 to 18% in 2019.

Private schools lose students

The ASER rural results over the years highlight a decline in the number of children going to private sector schools. Around 23% of children up to 16-years-of-age were enrolled in the private sector in 2019, compared with 30% in 2014. The shift to government schools has increased the enrolment share from 70% in 2014, to 77% in 2019.

This edge must be maintained with persistent state actions for quality facilities, the report stated.

Early Childhood Education (ECE) has been historically tracked by ASER Pakistan. From 2014 when ECE enrolment stood at 39%, it has not registered significant improvement (39% in 2019), although ECE was critical for foundational learning readiness in literacy and numeracy.

Riaz Haq said…
#WorldBank to aid #Pakistan in creating new model for non-formal #education that combines #literacy, #labor #market skills, life #skills development for uneducated and illiterate children, youth and young adults in selected districts of #Punjab and #Sindh https://www.dawn.com/news/1555172


The government has been developing the new roadmap for the country’s education system under the new leadership since the summer of 2018. The education ministry at federal level and education departments at provincial levels have unanimously said that out-of-school children is one of the critical issues that needs to be addressed.

The proposed project will be built on the existing initiatives on out-of-school children, supported by development partners including Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), USAID, and Unicef, and it will be implemented in collaborative efforts with these agencies.

Despite the urgency of the issues, the federal and provincial governments’ interventions on non-formal education is limited. Due to the daunting challenges in the public education, the government’ emphasis of educational development is on improving the public education systems.

While the governments mainly aim to address out-of-school children by increasing access to and retention in public education, there are still service delivery gaps which results in out-of-school children. The proposed interventions are to fill in the gaps.

The project is also aligned with the international agenda including the Susta­inable Development Goals (SDGs).

The government’s priority on addressing out-of-school children has been aligned with the SDG targets and is supported by the development partners.

The project will offer Accelerated Learning Programmes (ALPs) to out-of-school children at primary school age (age eight to 10 years) and secondary school age (age 10-16 years) through a non-formal education model with the aim to facilitate mainstreaming of those children to the formal school system.

In Pakistan, primary schools accept new students at age five to seven years, and children at age eight and above typically find it difficult to enter formal primary schools.

To support those who miss the entry to primary schools, the ALP primary (ALP-P) has been developed including curricula, corresponding teaching and learning materials, and systems for training and assessment.

The programme has been approved in Punjab and Sindh provinces under Literacy Department (LD) and School Education and Literacy Department (SELD) respectively.

The project will conduct a rapid survey of out-of-school children and conduct enrollment and awareness campaigns in the villages.

The programme allows children to complete five years of the primary education with approximate 1,250 hours of learning, which usually take 24 to 36 months depending on the set up of Non-Formal Education (NFE) service delivery. Students will be able to sit in the class fifth School Leaving Examination upon the completion of the program and officially obtain a class fifth certificate.
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan Reading Project declared int’l literacy program of year


https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/11/pakistan-reading-project-declared-intl-literacy-program-of-year/

The United States Library of Congress Friday announced the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) literacy programme, “Pakistan Reading Project,” as the 2020 recipient of the International Literacy Programme of the Year.

According to a press statement issued here by the US Embassy, over the past seven years, and working in tandem with Pakistani education officials, USAID’s Pakistan Reading Project has improved the reading skills of 1.7 million Pakistani students by delivering reading instructional materials to classrooms, training teachers in new instruction techniques, and encouraging schools to dedicate more classroom time for reading.

This early grade literacy project has also worked closely with the government of Pakistan to improve policies and systems for early grade reading across national, provincial, and local levels, said the statement.

“We’re very honoured and pleased that the Pakistan Reading Project is this year’s Library of Congress recipient of this International Literacy Award,” said USAID/Pakistan Mission Director Julie Koenen.

“The programme has proved to be a cornerstone of our partnership with Pakistan in education by increasing the literacy rates across the country and improving the reading of so many Pakistani students,” said Koenen.

In 2013, the Library of Congress created the Literacy Awards to honour organizations working to promote literacy and reading in the United States and internationally. The project’s implementing partner, the International Relief Committee, will receive $50,000 from the Library of Congress for winning this.

--------


Pakistan Reading Project’s strategy is threefold: improve learning environments for reading in the classroom, advance policies and systems for reading instruction and rally community-based support for reading. In doing so, the project intends to reach 1.3 million students in grades one and two with reading interventions, not to mention training more than 23,000 teachers in reading instruction and developing reading curricula for more than 100 collegiate teaching programs.

From scholarships and grants for students pursuing teaching degrees to mobile bus libraries that bring books directly to children and their communities, the Pakistan Reading Program aims to comprehensively integrate reading into the lives of Pakistani children. The holistic approach of incorporating reading into both the institutional and communal lives of Pakistanis ensures the sustainability of the project’s efforts. In this way, children in Pakistan will be developmentally prepared for educational challenges they will face throughout their lives and consequently better able to pursue their goals and break from the cycle of poverty.


https://borgenproject.org/tag/pakistan-reading-project/

Riaz Haq said…
#Russian #engineering students outperform #Indian students while performing lower than #Chinese students on Supertest that evaluates performance of engineering students. #US students outperform students from all of these countries. #STEM https://phys.org/news/2021-03-supertest-students-russia-india-china.html via @physorg_com

The Supertest showed that at the start of their studies, Russian students perform lower than Chinese students in mathematics and physics, but higher than students from India in mathematics. After two years of study, the gap between Russian and Chinese students narrows, while Indian students catch up with Russian students in mathematics.

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The Supertest was initiated by Stanford University, HSE University Moscow, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and partner universities in China and India. The study authors include Prashant Loyalka, an associate professor at Stanford University and a leading researcher at the HSE International Laboratory for Evaluating Practices and Innovations in Education; Igor Chirikov a senior researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley and an affiliated researcher of the HSE Institute of Education; and Elena Kardanova and Denis Federyakin , leading researchers at the Centre for Psychometrics and Measurements in Education at the HSE.

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A group of researchers representing four countries summed up the results of a large-scale study of the academic performance of engineering students in Russia, China, India, and the United States. Supertest is the first study to track the progress of students in computer science and electrical engineering over the course of their studies with regard to their abilities in physics, mathematics and critical thinking and compare the results among four countries. The article about study in Nature Human Behavior.

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More than 30,000 undergraduate students participated in the study. The researchers collected a sample of students from elite and large universities, roughly equal in number for each country. In Russia, the sample included students from six Project 5-100 universities and 28 other universities. Their skill development was measured three times: upon entering university, at the end of their second year, and at the end of their studies.

The task of the specialists of the HSE Centre for Psychometrics and Measurements in Education was to develop tests that had questions that would be neutral for students of different countries and would yield adequately comparable results across different countries. "Over the course of analyzing the test results, we have proven that we were able to achieve both tasks," said Centre Director Elena Kardanova. "Testing in different countries was conducted in accordance with the same rules, with the assistance of specially trained examiners. All students were offered the same incentives to participate. We additionally tested the sensitivity of the results to possible differences in student motivation."
Riaz Haq said…
The Analytical Angle: Do children really learn in schools in Pakistan?
A narrative that suggests children dropout because they are not learning is not supported by the data.

Natalie Bau | Jishnu Das


https://www.dawn.com/news/1634880/the-analytical-angle-do-children-really-learn-in-schools-in-pakistan

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059321000833


https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0738059321000833?token=570252BD65B084D3FB1D2F5096FC89139A57B46F2AEA4235CEC197D704932205DA74065D5D6E078111715220187A59B8&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20210717000043


Our paper , jointly written with Andres Yi Chang, uses the LEAPS data to finally benchmark what normal means for a country like Pakistan.

Here is what we learned.

First, not surprisingly, children do learn in school. For instance, 58 per cent of children could correctly multiply “4 x 5” in grade 3, and this fraction increases to 60pc after a year, 73pc after two years, and 79pc after three years.

We see similar patterns across every question and subject and, on average, a child in grade 6 knows more than 77pc of children tested in grade 3. This rate of learning is similar to what we find in Vietnam, Peru, India and Ethiopia and also to the US state of Florida.

In all these school systems, the top 30pc of children in grade 3 score (roughly) the same as the bottom 30pc of children in grade 6. This, however, does not imply that they learn the same amount since the tests and initial learning levels are different across countries; the data to answer that question simply do not exist.

Second, policymakers in Pakistan have been deeply concerned about out-of-school children. To understand the link between learning and dropping out of school, the LEAPS data tracked and tested children who dropped out between grades 5 and 6.

Surprisingly, we found that children who eventually dropped out in the transition to middle school were learning just as much as those who had continued (even though in every year, their test scores were slightly lower).

Further, once children dropped out, their learning stalled, while for those who remained in school, it continued along the same trend (Figure 1). So, a narrative that suggests that children drop out because they are not learning is not supported by the data.

Third, we examined whether children who were performing worse in grade 3 fall farther behind. Figure 2 shows that this is not the case by grouping children by how much they learnt between grades 3 and 6 (from low to high) and showing their average test score in grade 3.

In fact, children whose test scores were in the bottom 10pc in grade 3 learned significantly more by grade 6 than children ranked in the top 10pc learners. The same happens across the other groups which suggests that schooling reduces inequality in learning.
Riaz Haq said…
New evidence on learning trajectories in a low-income setting Natalie Bau a, Jishnu Das b,*, Andres Yi Chang c a UCLA, United States. b Georgetown University, United States c World Bank, United States1

https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0738059321000833?token=570252BD65B084D3FB1D2F5096FC89139A57B46F2AEA4235CEC197D704932205DA74065D5D6E078111715220187A59B8&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20210717000043


The fact that parental education matters but wealth does not is puzzling given an emphasis on the role of credit constraints in education, particularly in LICs. Suppose a parent is not educated but wealthy. Why can’t they “buy” the inputs provided by an educated parent on a tutoring market (for instance)? Given this potential puzzle and its implications, we were concerned that the weak correlation between (longer) 4-year test-score gains and two important characteristics —gender and family wealth— are a facet of the specific item weights generated by the Item Response procedure. This is an issue that has been raised in the literature on test score gains in school when Blacks are compared to Whites in the United States, where Bond and Lang (2013) have pointed out that the all three tested subjects, there are basic tasks that children cannot perform correctly by the time they are in Grade 6. In English, 54 % cannot write the word "girl"; 80 % cannot construct a sentence with the word "play." In Mathematics, 49 % cannot subtract 238 129, and 74 % cannot multiply 417 and 27. Children find it hard to form plurals from singular forms in Urdu, and 55 % cannot form a grammatically correct sentence with the word "karigar" (which means “workman”).22 For the 22 % of children in our household sample who will not continue their schooling past Grade 6, these are the skills they will have to bring to their work environment.23 The challenge is how to rationalize this poor level of performance across subjects by Grade 6 with the facts that (a) the fraction of children answering questions correctly increases with every grade (attributable to being in school, rather than ‘learning by aging’), and (b) test score gains are consistently higher among those with the lowest scores in Grade 3. That, in turn, raises difficult questions about test score measurement and what the literature has euphemistically termed "mean reversion."
Riaz Haq said…
Role of socioeconomic and parental involvement factors on children foundational learning skills based on MICS (2017–2018) data Punjab, Pakistan
Asifa Kamal, Naila Amjad, Uzma Yaqoob, Naz Saud, Muhammad Ijaz, Ilyas Khan & Mulugeta Andualem


https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-13540-3


From Fig. 1 it has been observed that 67.7% children of ages 7–14 years can read 90% of words in a story. The percentage of children who had correctly answered three literal comprehension questions is 41.9%. The percentage of children who had correctly answered two inferential comprehension questions is found 41.2%.

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It can be seen from Fig. 2 that the percentage of children of ages 7–14 years who had accurately read numbers is 58%. It has also been observed from the graph that 55% of children had number discrimination skills and 12.2% of children had addition skills. Only 6.8% of children were successful in pattern recognition and completion skill.

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Overall, only 4.5 and 32.8% of children had demonstrated foundational numeracy skills and foundational reading skills respectively in Punjab (Fig. 3).

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All background characteristics of children except gender have shown significant association with numeracy skills and reading skills (Table 1). It has been observed from Table 1 that there is little difference in the percentage of male and female children regarding adequate numeracy skills and reading skills. An increasing pattern in the percentage of children is evident for both adequate numeracy skills (yes) and adequate reading skills (yes) with an increase in the age of children at the beginning of school till age 11 years. After age 11 years, there is a negligible decline in the percentage for numeracy skills, accompanied by a sudden increase in the percentage for children aged 14 years. This shows that learning skills improved with age increase in age at the beginning of the school of the child. But after 11 or 12 years, the increase turned into a decrease. Surprisingly, the percentage of children having sufficient numeracy skills is higher for those children who had any functional disability (4.72%) as compared to those children that had not any functional disability (3.53%). The percentage of children with satisfactory reading skills is higher for those who had no functional disability (37%) as compared to those who had a functional disability (30.1%). A similarly rising trend in the percentage of children who had ample numeracy skills and reading skills is found with an increase in the level of maternal education. The improvement in reading skills or numeracy skills went consistently higher with rising in maternal education level. The percentage of children who had adequate reading skills is higher for children for whom reading books is available in the appropriate language (37.4%). The percentage of children who had necessary reading skills is almost the same irrespective of care taker’s disability
Riaz Haq said…
Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy says IITs have become victims to rote learning due to coaching classes


https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/companies/infosys-founder-nr-narayana-murthy-says-iits-have-become-victims-to-rote-learning-due-to-coaching-classes-article-95545869

As more and more students leave India for higher studies, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy proposed that governments and corporates should “incentivise” researchers with grants and provide facilities to work here. “The 10,000 crore per year grants for universities under the New Education Policy will help institutions become competitive", he said.


https://youtu.be/2vzSwExIoNg

Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy on Tuesday expressed concern over India’s education system saying that even the IITs are becoming a victim of learning by rote due to the “tyranny of coaching classes.” Murthy suggested that our education system needs a reorientation directed towards Socratic questioning.
The Infosys founder, who himself is an IIT alumnus, batted for Socratic questioning in the classroom in order to arrive at solutions to real-world issues. “Many experts feel that (in) our country, (there is an) inability to use research to solve our immediate pressing problems around us… (this) is due to lack of inculcating curiosity at an early age, disconnect between pure or applied research," he said.

As to what could be done to solve this, the 76-year-old suggested that the first component is to reorient teaching in schools and colleges towards Socratic questioning in the classroom to solve real-world problems rather than passing the examinations by rote learning. Socrates was a fifth century (BCE) Greek philosopher credited as the founder of Western philosophy.
Speaking at the 14th edition of the Infosys Prize event in Bengaluru, Murthy said that the nation’s progress on the economic and social front depends on the quality of scientific and technological research. Research thrives in an environment of honour and respect for intellectuals, meritocracy and the support and approbation of such intellectuals from society, he noted.

Riaz Haq said…
Education system leading India down the hole - The Hans India
https://www.thehansindia.com/hans/opinion/news-analysis/education-system-leading-india-down-the-hole-692943
Jun 28, 2021 — India was placed at 59th rank among 64 countries in education. They have also said that youth unemployment increased from 10.4 percent to 23.0 ...


Learning poverty: Education crisis in India - Sentinelassam
https://www.sentinelassam.com/editorial/learning-poverty-education-crisis-in-india-569438


Revamp of Indian learning needed, says Narayana Murthy
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/information-tech/infosys-founder-narayana-murthy-bats-for-revamp-of-indian-education-system/articleshow/95528265.cms
Nov 15, 2022 — A reorientation of the Indian education system is needed which is more directed towards Socratic questioning other than just rote learning, according to Infosys Founder NR Narayana Murthy.

"The first component is to reorient our teaching in schools and colleges towards Socratic questioning, in the classroom to solve real world problems around them rather than passing the examinations by rote learning," said Murthy while speaking at the Infosys Prize announcement event in Bengaluru.

"Even our top institutions have become victims of this syndrome. Thanks to the tyranny of coaching classes," he said.
Riaz Haq said…
India expects all primary & lower-secondary school kids to be educated by 2030: UNESCO report

https://theprint.in/india/india-expects-all-primary-lower-secondary-school-kids-to-be-educated-by-2030-unesco-report/811148/


The report indicates that these numbers are significantly higher than 2015. That year, 36.5 per cent and 38.8 per cent of students achieved minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics at the end of primary education. However, this number is expected to grow to 90 per cent and 85 per cent in 2025.

Lower secondary levels of mathematics proficiency, at 12.3 per cent in 2015, were lower than Bangladesh (31 per cent), Nepal (53.8 per cent), Pakistan (68 per cent) and Sri Lanka (50.6 per cent). But for India, the number is expected to grow over six times to 75 per cent by 2030.
Riaz Haq said…
Over 50% of #India's children can not read by age 10. Can India educate its vast workforce? #Education for most Indians is still at best unskilled. #Unemployed youngsters risk bringing India’s #economic development to a premature stop. #Modi #BJP https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/29/can-india-educate-its-vast-workforce

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1674441854136512513?s=20

As the rich world and China grow older, India’s huge youth bulge—some 500m of its people are under 20—should be an additional propellant. Yet as we report, although India’s brainy elite hoovers up qualifications, education for most Indians is still a bustUnskilled, jobless youngsters risk bringing India’s economic development to a premature stop.

India has made some strides in improving the provision of services to poor people. Government digital schemes have simplified access to banking and the distribution of welfare payments. Regarding education, there has been a splurge on infrastructure. A decade ago only a third of government schools had handwashing facilities and only about half had electricity; now around 90% have both. Since 2014 India has opened nearly 400 universities. Enrolment in higher education has risen by a fifth.

Yet improving school buildings and expanding places only gets you so far. India is still doing a terrible job of making sure that the youngsters who throng its classrooms pick up essential skills. Before the pandemic less than half of India’s ten-year-olds could read a simple story, even though most of them had spent years sitting obediently behind school desks (the share in America was 96%). School closures that lasted more than two years have since made this worse.

There are lots of explanations. Jam-packed curriculums afford too little time for basic lessons in maths and literacy. Children who fail to grasp these never learn much else. Teachers are poorly trained and badly supervised: one big survey of rural schools found a quarter of staff were absent. Officials sometimes hand teachers unrelated duties, from administering elections to policing social-distancing rules during the pandemic.

Such problems have led many families to send their children to private schools instead. These educate about 50% of all India’s children. They are impressively frugal, but do not often produce better results. Recently, there have been hopes that the country’s technology industry might revolutionise education. Yet relying on it alone is risky. In recent weeks India’s biggest ed-tech firm, Byju’s, which says it educates over 150m people worldwide and was once worth $22bn, has seen its valuation slashed because of financial troubles.

All this makes fixing government schools even more urgent. India should spend more on education. Last year the outlays were just 2.9% of gdp, low by international standards. But it also needs to reform how the system works by taking inspiration from models elsewhere in developing Asia.

As we report, in international tests pupils in Vietnam have been trouncing youngsters from much richer countries for a decade. Vietnam’s children spend less time in lessons than Indian ones, even when you count homework and other cramming. They also put up with larger classes. The difference is that Vietnam’s teachers are better prepared, more experienced and more likely to be held accountable if their pupils flunk.

With the right leadership, India could follow. It should start by collecting better information about how much pupils are actually learning. That would require politicians to stop disputing data that do not show their policies in a good light. And the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party should also stop trying to strip textbooks of ideas such as evolution, or of history that irks Hindu nativists. That is a poisonous distraction from the real problems. India is busy constructing roads, tech campuses, airports and factories. It needs to build up its human capital, too.
Riaz Haq said…
The State of Global
Learning Poverty:
2022 Update


CONFERENCE EDITION
June 23, 2022

Annex 5: Detailed 2019 country learning poverty data

Country Name Learning Poverty Learning Deprivation Schooling Deprivation Year Assessment Assessment


Iceland 9.3 6.8 2.7 2006 PIRLS
India 56.1 53.7 5.1 2017 NLA
Indonesia 52.8 49.4 6.8 2015 TIMSS
Iran, Islamic Rep 35.2 35.1 0.2 2016 PIRLS


Norway 6.0 5.8 0.2 2016 PIRLS
Oman 41.8 40.9 1.4 2016 PIRLS
Pakistan 77.0 65.0 34.2 2014 NLA

https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/e52f55322528903b27f1b7e61238e416-0200022022/original/Learning-poverty-report-2022-06-21-final-V7-0-conferenceEdition.pdf

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