HOW SCHOOLS NEED TO CHANGE...ON THE WAY TO OBSOLESCENCE
Is India at last going to witness an educational sea-change? There is certainly more discussion than before of educational reform at the primary and secondary school levels. Kapil Sibal, the Minister of Human Resources in the current central government, has been engaging in discussions with the public and with experts about his educational reform proposals in primary and secondary schools. Nandan Nilekani and other business luminaries have spoken about the need for improving the quality of our huge human resources. Reflected in all these unprecedented discussions is widespread dissatisfaction with the current system of education. Given that there was hardly any discussion before (say, ten years ago) outside of educational circles, it is encouraging to witness this awakening. What could possibly be wrong with it?
One reason for this awakening might be that the reforms being considered will affect middle class children and not just those who normally go to state run or state aided schools. The discussions, reflecting middle class and elite concerns, are mostly about the quality of education, understood in terms of making it more 'child-centred', whatever this term is taken to mean). They largely seem to assume that education is synonymous with schooling, that what we need is more schools, equipped with more resources like ICT and richer libraries, and with a 'better' curriculum, delivered by 'better' trained teachers, capable of administering a wider range of instruments than just quizzes and exams to assess the 'performance' of their students. (Each of the words in italics poses questions as to their meaning.) Not enough of the discussion is about the relevance of the curriculum and the assessment to the world that students will live in as adults. Nor is it about educational infrastructure, especially about innovative models that could improve access to those who till now have either had to abandon their education or who have never even started it. The only discussion relating to infrastructure has been whether more schools should be provided through the public sector or the private, and the relative effectiveness of state and private schools.
Too much of the discussion seems to be about reform rather than transformation. Too many of the changes are being conceived simply as improvements to existing arrangements. But what if these arrangements are themselves structurally flawed or inadequate? Then introducing the new reforms may only benefit children who can go to the kinds of schools - and there are just a few in India, relative to the demand for education - which are already open to these "new" educational practices. There are even fewer schools that already have the new resources, standards and practices in place for their teachers, students and parents. But both these kinds of schools - the ones that are ready to change, and the ones that already embody the new standards and practices - are overwhelmingly in the private sector, and therefore endowed with the resources to carry out the changes necessary to ensure that their students by and large fulfill the aspirations of their parents for upward social mobility through professional careers after an education in one of the technical or managerial disciplines. The vast majority of schools in the private sector will very likely benefit from these reforms only by raising fees, because their promoters will want to recover the additional investment required to implement the reforms speedily enough to cater for most of the students who currently attend them. Deep pockets will matter for the school's promoters if they are to gain a place in the competition among private schools for market share. Deep pockets will also matter for parents as they compete for increasingly scarce places in these schools. As for the public sector schools, one needs to keep an eye on the state's educational budget, and to see how the money is being spent, to make a judgment about the efficacy of the reforms. If past precedent is anything to go by, the reforms are more likely to be slowed down by bureaucratic friction, and the impact is likely to be uneven, depending on the policies of individual states. In states where changes in primary and secondary education have been few and (as in the case of West Bengal) actually regressive, the reforms will probably remain mostly on paper and provide yet another occasion for doling out favours to political favourites in time honoured fashion.
I don't object to the reforms as such, as much as to the assumption that they will fulfill their purpose through the existing modes of delivery of educational services, viz., schools. Unless schools themselves are also transformed, the impact of the reforms is likely to remain limited, and cause confusion and anxiety among teachers, students as well as parents. So what is transformation, why is it needed, and how is it different from reform?
Firstly, I believe that schools are structurally unsuited in their present form for the tasks of preparing today's students for the world they will live in as adults. I have argued this elsewhere in this blog, and will do so again in different ways, so I don't want to repeat the arguments here. Secondly, in the absence of countervailing regulatory or social pressure, schooling in an unequal society often works as a mechanism for reinforcing rather than mitigating existing inequalities. Transformation addresses both the structural inadequacies of schools and those of their social environment, because these inadequacies come in the way of students benefiting from the education that schools are supposed to have provided . If reform means updating the content of the syllabus, allowing more projects and portfolios as part of the assessments, and encouraging teachers to keep updating themselves with changes in pedagogical as well as subject knowledge, and engage regularly in collaborative partnerships rather than work in isolation, then transformation of schools means the re-structuring of time and space in schools to allow for closer contact with the real world outside their walls, the design of increasingly personalized learning experiences in schools, and the development of what John Abbott has called cognitive apprenticeship through new learners collaborating with more experienced learners and experts. Transformation must also enable a wider social diversity of students to have access to schools and other learning opportunities. Moreover, it should also improve the ways universities and employers influence and absorb students leaving schools. In the absence of these transformations, reforms alone will have generated more unfulfilled expectations and resultant frustration for the future.
To conclude, I do believe that curriculums need to reflect the challenges children will experience as adults, together with the way teachers teach, and the way students are judged to be competent for the world they are being prepared for. I also recognize that it is unrealistic to expect that schools will simply be abandoned and replaced entirely with other mechanisms for promoting learning. So I see no harm in the state spending more money on delivering the changes under discussion through the existing mechanisms of schools, with appropriate mechanisms for public auditing at sufficiently localized levels for the beneficiaries (i.e., students and parents) to ensure that the changes are being implemented as planned. This will benefit at least those who are going to school, even if the benefits remain partial and incomplete. The benefits are likely to be more lasting if schools themselves are transformed at the same time, in the manner outlined above. At the same time, I believe there is room for innovating new models for delivery of educational and learning opportunities to those who either do not or cannot go to school. Such models could enable people who are sufficiently motivated to initiate and continue their learning, including those who are currently excluded from schools by virtue of their economic or social status. There is little reason to believe that the children in slums and villages who currently don't go to school will not benefit from alternatives that could enable them to continue their learning through other means, if the current barriers that prevent their reaching these alternative can be overcome. That is why I wish to propose that as much attention needs to be paid to the infrastructure by which education can be delivered as to its quality. Furthermore, this infrastructure should be designed especially to create alternatives to schools, and to provide access to those who wish to continue with their education outside school, whenever and wherever they are able to do so.
Of course, this proposal raises a number of questions: what are these new infrastructural models, who will develop them, and how will they be implemented? I shall try to address these questions in future postings on these blogs.
One reason for this awakening might be that the reforms being considered will affect middle class children and not just those who normally go to state run or state aided schools. The discussions, reflecting middle class and elite concerns, are mostly about the quality of education, understood in terms of making it more 'child-centred', whatever this term is taken to mean). They largely seem to assume that education is synonymous with schooling, that what we need is more schools, equipped with more resources like ICT and richer libraries, and with a 'better' curriculum, delivered by 'better' trained teachers, capable of administering a wider range of instruments than just quizzes and exams to assess the 'performance' of their students. (Each of the words in italics poses questions as to their meaning.) Not enough of the discussion is about the relevance of the curriculum and the assessment to the world that students will live in as adults. Nor is it about educational infrastructure, especially about innovative models that could improve access to those who till now have either had to abandon their education or who have never even started it. The only discussion relating to infrastructure has been whether more schools should be provided through the public sector or the private, and the relative effectiveness of state and private schools.
Too much of the discussion seems to be about reform rather than transformation. Too many of the changes are being conceived simply as improvements to existing arrangements. But what if these arrangements are themselves structurally flawed or inadequate? Then introducing the new reforms may only benefit children who can go to the kinds of schools - and there are just a few in India, relative to the demand for education - which are already open to these "new" educational practices. There are even fewer schools that already have the new resources, standards and practices in place for their teachers, students and parents. But both these kinds of schools - the ones that are ready to change, and the ones that already embody the new standards and practices - are overwhelmingly in the private sector, and therefore endowed with the resources to carry out the changes necessary to ensure that their students by and large fulfill the aspirations of their parents for upward social mobility through professional careers after an education in one of the technical or managerial disciplines. The vast majority of schools in the private sector will very likely benefit from these reforms only by raising fees, because their promoters will want to recover the additional investment required to implement the reforms speedily enough to cater for most of the students who currently attend them. Deep pockets will matter for the school's promoters if they are to gain a place in the competition among private schools for market share. Deep pockets will also matter for parents as they compete for increasingly scarce places in these schools. As for the public sector schools, one needs to keep an eye on the state's educational budget, and to see how the money is being spent, to make a judgment about the efficacy of the reforms. If past precedent is anything to go by, the reforms are more likely to be slowed down by bureaucratic friction, and the impact is likely to be uneven, depending on the policies of individual states. In states where changes in primary and secondary education have been few and (as in the case of West Bengal) actually regressive, the reforms will probably remain mostly on paper and provide yet another occasion for doling out favours to political favourites in time honoured fashion.
I don't object to the reforms as such, as much as to the assumption that they will fulfill their purpose through the existing modes of delivery of educational services, viz., schools. Unless schools themselves are also transformed, the impact of the reforms is likely to remain limited, and cause confusion and anxiety among teachers, students as well as parents. So what is transformation, why is it needed, and how is it different from reform?
Firstly, I believe that schools are structurally unsuited in their present form for the tasks of preparing today's students for the world they will live in as adults. I have argued this elsewhere in this blog, and will do so again in different ways, so I don't want to repeat the arguments here. Secondly, in the absence of countervailing regulatory or social pressure, schooling in an unequal society often works as a mechanism for reinforcing rather than mitigating existing inequalities. Transformation addresses both the structural inadequacies of schools and those of their social environment, because these inadequacies come in the way of students benefiting from the education that schools are supposed to have provided . If reform means updating the content of the syllabus, allowing more projects and portfolios as part of the assessments, and encouraging teachers to keep updating themselves with changes in pedagogical as well as subject knowledge, and engage regularly in collaborative partnerships rather than work in isolation, then transformation of schools means the re-structuring of time and space in schools to allow for closer contact with the real world outside their walls, the design of increasingly personalized learning experiences in schools, and the development of what John Abbott has called cognitive apprenticeship through new learners collaborating with more experienced learners and experts. Transformation must also enable a wider social diversity of students to have access to schools and other learning opportunities. Moreover, it should also improve the ways universities and employers influence and absorb students leaving schools. In the absence of these transformations, reforms alone will have generated more unfulfilled expectations and resultant frustration for the future.
To conclude, I do believe that curriculums need to reflect the challenges children will experience as adults, together with the way teachers teach, and the way students are judged to be competent for the world they are being prepared for. I also recognize that it is unrealistic to expect that schools will simply be abandoned and replaced entirely with other mechanisms for promoting learning. So I see no harm in the state spending more money on delivering the changes under discussion through the existing mechanisms of schools, with appropriate mechanisms for public auditing at sufficiently localized levels for the beneficiaries (i.e., students and parents) to ensure that the changes are being implemented as planned. This will benefit at least those who are going to school, even if the benefits remain partial and incomplete. The benefits are likely to be more lasting if schools themselves are transformed at the same time, in the manner outlined above. At the same time, I believe there is room for innovating new models for delivery of educational and learning opportunities to those who either do not or cannot go to school. Such models could enable people who are sufficiently motivated to initiate and continue their learning, including those who are currently excluded from schools by virtue of their economic or social status. There is little reason to believe that the children in slums and villages who currently don't go to school will not benefit from alternatives that could enable them to continue their learning through other means, if the current barriers that prevent their reaching these alternative can be overcome. That is why I wish to propose that as much attention needs to be paid to the infrastructure by which education can be delivered as to its quality. Furthermore, this infrastructure should be designed especially to create alternatives to schools, and to provide access to those who wish to continue with their education outside school, whenever and wherever they are able to do so.
Of course, this proposal raises a number of questions: what are these new infrastructural models, who will develop them, and how will they be implemented? I shall try to address these questions in future postings on these blogs.
posted by EDUVISIONARY at
3:54 AM
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