A ciitzens' audit of education

How well can Indian children read and write? It is well known that although raising literacy levels has been a goal endorsed by virtually every government, hundreds of millions of citizens remain outside the reach of this promise even today. It is also no secret that the quality of public education across the country is inadequate; enrolment in school alone is not enough to ensure that today's children too will not fall prey to the same forces that kept their parents illiterate. These generalities, however, are too sweeping, and do not provide meaningful indicators to the state of public education in India. An important first step to creating measurable change in the future, therefore, is to properly understand the current state.

This assessment has now been attempted. Hundreds of prominent NGOs, institutions, people's organisations, and individuals joined hands to conduct a district-by-district survey of the country recently, in a national effort led by the NGO, Pratham. Between Nov 11 and Dec 18, volunteers visited randomly picked villages in each district of India and surveyed 20 randomly chosen households in each village. In each household, children in the age group of 6-14 years were interviewed and tested for basic reading, writing, and arithmetic on a one-on-one basis. In all, Pratham and its partners surveyed nearly 6 lakh children in 2.4 lakh households from 12,000 villages in 525 rural districts; the result is the First Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), released recently. Click to view summary of national data (63 Kbytes, PDF).

ASER asked simple questions, designed to provide a good first look at the state of education. Do children have a school? Can children read? Can they write? Can they do basic arithmetic? Are there teachers in schools? Are enrolled children attending school? Based on the answers, ASER has ranked the states and districts, and plans to do this every year until 2010 - the deadline for achieving quality universal elementary education. Following the 2005 report, the district and state level groups will interact with state and district governments. ASER 2005 is expected to become a tool in the hands of people so that they can monitor, and help in improving in the status of education around them.

	Out of school children: Proportion of boys and girls
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Some findings

• Nearly 1.4 crore children are out of school; this situation is especially worse in Bihar, Rajashtan and Jharkand, where 10% or more of school-age children are not enrolled.

• The gender gap in the percentage of children out of school, however, has dropped. In 2001, it was estimated that 2 out of 3 dropouts were girls, but this study finds that only a little more than half (52-55%) of the children out of school are gilrs.

• In three out of four schools visited by volunteers collecting data, the teachers were present, as they are expected to be. In several states, all the teachers assigned to surveyed schools were present. Unexpectedly, however, teacher absenteeism was high in Kerala, where 3 out of 10 schools visited did not have any teacher present.

• The really worrisome findings from ASER relate not to attendance and demographics, but to learning. The tests of reading ability were quite simple (a short paragraph at the grade 2 level), but even then 35% of children aged 7-14 could not pass this test, and 60% of the children could not read a simple story, also at grade 2 level. This situation was in fact worse in states like Tamilnadu and Gujarat, where the usual indicators (school availability, enrolment, teachers, etc.) are all good. Students in Bihar and Chhatisgarh fared better, despite really poor education infrastructure indicators for their states.

ASER has generated a wealth of data, and in the coming months there is sure to be much detailed analysis of this data. In particular, the reasons why some of the data are the way they are must be understood, different levels of self-selection and motivation across states can lead to variances in the indicators in any uniform survey, and these must be sifted out. Some of the indicators from ASER are heartening, but others are clearly worrying. It is especially of concern that the usual measurements of public education may in fact not reveal anything about the true state of learning across the country. ASER has shown conclusively that classrooms, teachers and mid-day meal schemes do not necessarily translate into outcomes in learning, even if they facilitate the first steps needed to provide universal education. States that have in the past boasted of their achievements in the indicators now find their self-congratulation challenged by these findings.

Just as important as the findings, however, is the establishment of an independent citizen-led assessment process. Participants in ASER hope that in future years even more organisations and individuals will participate in the data collection, and the findings will be that much more informative as a result.