India’s Learning Poverty

In News

• The World Bank’s Global Director for Education made concerns over learning losses for children due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for concerted efforts to bridge these gaps.

Key Findings

• Education was one of the many sectors that took a hit during COVID-19.
• The pandemic highlighted class irregularities as its effects did not bode well on people who were already oppressed and marginalized in the pre-pandemic world.
• India’s ‘learning poverty’ has shot up to 70%, worsening the post-pandemic effects on the country’s education infrastructure.
  • Despite them not being official numbers, they are the results of initial observations and analysis of where the country stands in this sector.
• According to Pratham’s ASER survey, in rural Karnataka the share of grade 3 students in government schools able to perform simple subtraction fell from 24% in 2018 to 16% in 2020.
• In Sao Paulo, one year after the pandemic there was a reduction in the scores in both learning and mathematics that took the kids of the State back to the level they were in 2011.
  • That’s a learning loss of 10 years.

What Is Learning Poverty?

• Learning Poverty means being unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text by age 10.
• All foundational skills are important, but we focus on reading because:
  • Reading proficiency is an easily understood measure of learning
  • Reading is a student’s gateway to learning in every other area
  • Reading proficiency can serve as a proxy for foundational learning in other subjects, in the same way that the absence of child stunting is a marker of healthy early childhood development.

Gender Gap Compared Globally

• As in most countries, Learning Poverty is higher for boys than for girls in India.
• This result is a composition of two effects:
  • First the share of Out-of-School children is higher for boys (2.9%) than for girls (1.6%).
  • Second, boys are less likely to achieve minimum proficiency at the end of primary school (55%) than girls (53%) in India.

Worrying Increase in ‘Learning Poverty’/ Challenges

• Many countries including India had to close down schools and colleges and encouraged online classes.
• School systems are not well-organized: When the child cannot read, it’s usually a clear indication that the school systems are not well-organized to help children learn in other areas such as math, science and humanities.
• The study quotes that many children globally cannot read proficiently.
  • Over 260 million children do not go to school, further deepening the crisis.
• Learning Poverty is mainly found in developing countries, including India.
• According to a report by the World Bank in 2019, 55% of children in the country at late primary age are not able to read correctly.
  • The problem worsened during COVID-19 as observations suggest a 20% increase.
• Surveys have shown that many students have been forced to withdraw from private schools and enroll in government schools because of decline in household incomes. But there are vast quality gaps in private and public schools.

Implications

• If we don’t do something now, this generation will have lower productivity, lower earnings, lower well-being in the future and that is what we need to avoid.

Way forward

• Reopening of schools: One of the current needs of the hour is the reopening of schools around the country.
  • Most countries by now have done so, but still, some have opened partially.
  • However, the reopening of schools does not automatically mean students are coming back.
• Convince them to re-enrol: The sudden school closure in 2020 proved to be a significant hurdle in a child’s learning progress.
  • So much so that many of them had to drop out as the closures were prolonged.
  • Therefore, it can be challenging to convince them to re-enrol and start afresh.
• Focus should be on ramping up catch-up learning and brushing up on the fundamentals so that the children can revise them.
• The teachers will require a lot of support to group students within the classroom not according to the grade or age, but according to where they are.
• Investment in education technology: Impact of school closures in India, the need for re-enrolment campaigns, and reassessment of learning levels as schools reopen after a gap of two years and calls for investment in education technology to complement classroom teaching.
• Digital literacy: The fact that education television and radio came back after being abandoned for many years is a good development. We need such resilient systems because we don’t know what the next natural disaster is going to be.
• Budgetary allocations: the first line of action is spending the money you have and being impactful and efficient in spending that.

Source: TH