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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 |
Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014 |
Source: The Hindu |
Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014 |
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-...
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.
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/e52f55322528903b27f1b7e61238e4...
Bilal I Gilani
@bilalgilani
Literacy rate by age
Alhamdulilah the younger generation is significantly more literate than older generation
Our literacy rate ( which is calculated on 15+ age group) is going to rise slowly as it has older cohorts in large numbers
Literacy is not end all but it's a start
https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1679408985613676545?s=20
(Bar graph shows literacy rate is 75% for 10-14 age group, 73% for 15-19 and 69% for 20-24....going down to 51% for 40-44 and 34% for 60-64 age group)
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