Resumen: La Comisión de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (CE) promueve la audiencia pública el miércoles (22), a partir de las 10h, sobre la violencia en las escuelas públicas.
La audiencia fue sugerida por el senador Cristovam Buarque (PPS-DF). Según él, más de la mitad de los educadores de escuelas públicas afirman haber presenciado agresiones físicas o verbales de alumnos a funcionarios y profesores en el ambiente escolar. Además, el 11% de los directores y el 9% de los profesores dijeron haber sufrido amenazas de algún alumno. Con base en la encuesta Prueba Brasil 2015, Cristovam informa aún que el 76% de los directores y el 71% de los profesores ya relataron tener conocimiento de agresión verbal o física entre los propios alumnos.
Entre los invitados al debate, están el coordinador general de Educación Ambiental y Temas Transversales del Ministerio de Educación, Felipe Felisbino, y la coordinadora del Área de Estudios sobre Juventud de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Miriam Abramovay.
A Comissão de Educação, Cultura e Esporte (CE) promove audiência pública na quarta-feira (22), a partir das10h, sobre a violência nas escolas públicas.
A audiência foi sugerida pelo senador Cristovam Buarque (PPS-DF). Segundo ele, mais da metade dos educadores de escolas públicas afirmam ter presenciado agressões físicas ou verbais de alunos a funcionários e professores no ambiente escolar. Além disso, 11% dos diretores e 9% dos professores disseram ter sofrido ameaças de algum aluno. Com base na pesquisa Prova Brasil 2015, Cristovam informa ainda que 76% dos diretores e 71% dos professores já relataram ter conhecimento de agressão verbal ou física entre os próprios alunos.
Entre os convidados para o debate, estão o coordenador-geral de Educação Ambiental e Temas Transversais do Ministério da Educação, Felipe Felisbino, e a coordenadora da Área de Estudos sobre Juventude da Faculdade Latino-Americana de Ciências Sociais, Miriam Abramovay.
A diretora de Área Programática da Unesco-Brasil, Marlova Jovchelovitch Noleto, e o desembargador do Tribunal de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro (TJ-RJ) Siro Darlan de Oliveira também estão entre os convidados. A Secretaria de Educação do Distrito Federal deve enviar um representante para a audiência pública, que ainda contará com a participação da deputada federal Pollyana Gama (PPS-SP).
O debate está marcado para a sala 15 da Ala Senador Alexandre Costa e será realizado de forma interativa, com a possibilidade de participação popular. Dúvidas, críticas e sugestões poderão ser enviadas pelo portal e-Cidadania ou pelo Alô Senado (0800 612211).
Resumen: Los adolescentes conocedores de Internet de hoy en día son más aventureros sexualmente que aquellos hace 20 años, según una encuesta británica sobre las actitudes sexuales cambiantes.
Los Millenials británicos directos no están teniendo relaciones sexuales antes que sus contrapartes en la década de 1990, pero están experimentando con diferentes tipos de sexo.
Today’s internet savvy teenagers are more sexually adventurous than those 20 years ago, a British survey of changing sexual attitudes found.
Straight British Millennials are not having sex earlier than their counterparts in the 1990s but are experimenting with different kinds of sex.
But the proportion of sexually active 16 to 24 year olds who said they have had vaginal, oral and anal sex during the last year has risen, from approximately one in ten women and men in 1990 to 1991, to one in four men and one in five women in 2010 to 2012.
And some of the largest increases in the prevalence of oral and anal sex over the past decade were observed among those aged 16 to 18.
Yet the median age of 14 for the first heterosexual experience such as kissing and the median age of 16 at first intercourse whether oral, vaginal or anal has not changed much in recent decades.
The readily availability of internet porn , greater promiscuity, and bisexual experiences among girls could be part of the reason why these types of sex have risen.
The findings mean sex education may need to be updated to ensure safe sex and teenagers are not coerced into doing things they may not want to, scientists said.
The study explores the changes in young people’s sexual practices using nationally-representative data from the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), the largest scientific studies of sexual health and lifestyles in Britain.
These three studies, Natsal 1, 2 and 3, have been carried out every 10 years since 1990, and have involved interviews with more than 45,000 people to date.
Lead author Research Associate Dr Ruth Lewis conducted the work while at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine but is now based at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
«At a time when much sex and relationships education is being updated, keeping pace with current trends in sexual practices is crucial so that curricula are tailored to the realities of young people’s experiences,» she said.
«By shedding light on when some young people are having sex and what kinds of sex they are having, our study highlights the need for accurate sex and relationships education that provides opportunities to discuss consent and safety in relation to a range of sexual practices.
Senior author Professor Kaye Wellings at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, added: «The changes in practices we see here are consistent with the widening of other aspects of young people’s sexual experience, and are perhaps not surprising given the rapidly changing social context and the ever-increasing number of influences on sexual behaviour.
«It is important to keep up to date with trends in sexual lifestyles to help young people safeguard their health and increase their well being.»
The study which also involved researchers from University College London and NatCen Social Research was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health .
Resumen: Alrededor de 52 estudiantes indios obtendrán becas y becas Australia Awards-Endeavor para 2018. Los premiados estudiarán en las principales universidades de investigación de Australia en campos que incluyen ciencias médicas, derecho y salud pública, ingeniería mecánica y criminología, alto comisionado australiano en la India Harinder Sidhu dijo el viernes.
Tres australianos también emprenderán oportunidades de aprendizaje en la India como parte de estos premios.
Las Becas y Becas Australia Awards-Endeavor ofrecen apoyo a los internacionales para llevar a cabo estudios, investigaciones o desarrollo profesional en Australia. Para postular, debe ser de un país y / o región participante.
About 52 Indian students will get the Australia Awards-Endeavour scholarships and Fellowships for 2018. The awardees will study at Australia’s top research universities in fields that include medical science, law and public health, mechanical engineering and criminology, Australian high commissioner to India Harinder Sidhu said on Friday.
Three Australians will also undertake learning opportunities in India as part of these awards.
The Australia Awards–Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships offer support to internationals to undertake study, research or professional development in Australia. To apply, you must be from a participating country and/or region.
Recipients will receive:
•travel allowance: $3,000 (Rs 1,45,950 ), with provision to pay up to $4,500 under special circumstances
•establishment allowance: $2,000 ( Rs97,300 ) for fellowships or $4,000 (scholarships)
•monthly stipend: $3,000 (Rs1,45,950), to be paid up to the maximum category duration on a pro-rata basis)
Health and travel insurance is also included for select categories.
Endeavour scholarship recipients will also receive tuition fees paid up to the maximum study/research duration on a pro-rata basis. Tuition includes student service and amenities fees.
Congratulating the winners, Sidhu said the awardees were selected on the basis of their potential to build educational, research and professional links between Australia and India. She hoped they would over time become the new generation of global leaders.
“The Australia Awards-Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships will forge understanding and strong networks between Indian and Australian scholars. These links will continue long after the scholars have returned to India,” Sidhu said.
The scholarships and fellowships are awarded every year to high achieving students, researchers and professionals from around the world to study in Australia’s world-class education institutions or undertake a professional development programme.
Implemented by the Australian government’s department of education and training, the scholarships are internationally-competitive and merit-based.
Applications for the 2019 round open in April 2018. For more information on the Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships and Endeavour Mobility Grants, check out the International Education website.
Resumen: El presidente de China, Xi Jinping, recientemente presentó una visión audaz para transformar a su país en una economía completamente desarrollada para 2050, con un énfasis particular en estimular la innovación y la tecnología. Dado el actual nivel de capital humano de China, y algunos cambios inminentes en la economía mundial, eso puede ser más difícil de lo que espera.
Una opinión ampliamente aceptada en Occidente es que las escuelas de China están repletas de mafiosos de las matemáticas y las ciencias, justo el tipo de estudiantes que necesitarán las empresas del futuro. Pero esto es engañoso: durante años, los estudios titulares que muestran la destreza de China en las pruebas estandarizadas evaluaron solo a los niños en áreas ricas y no representativas. Cuando se incluyó a su población más amplia, la clasificación de China cayó en todas las áreas temáticas.
Chinese President Xi Jinping recently laid out a bold vision for transforming his country into a fully developed economy by 2050, with a particular emphasis on spurring innovation and technology. Given China’s current level of human capital — and some looming changes in the world economy — that may be harder than he expects.
A widely held view in the West is that China’s schools are brimming with math and science whizzes, just the kind of students that companies of the future will need. But this is misleading: For years, headline-grabbing studies showing China’s prowess on standardized tests evaluated only kids in rich and unrepresentative areas. When its broader population was included, China’s ranking dropped across all subject areas.
Official data bears out this dynamic. According to the 2010 census, less than 9 percent of Chinese had attended school beyond the secondary level. More than 65 percent had gone no further than junior high. From 2008 to 2016, China’s total number of graduate students actually decreased by 1 percent. Outside the richest areas, much of China’s population lacks even the basic skills required in a high-income economy.
Making matters worse are the millions of children in rural areas who are being raised by their extended families. With their parents working in faraway cities, these children tend to fare much worse in school and on IQ tests. Stanford economist Scott Rozelle has referred to this as an «invisible crisis» in the making: In the coming decades, he estimates, some 400 million underprepared Chinese could be looking for work. His research has touched such a nerve that even state media has given it serious coverage.
At the moment, it’s easy to overlook these problems. Official unemployment remains low and stable. Wages are rising and the middle class is expanding. China’s factories still rank among the world’s best, and its workers broadly have the skills they need to support themselves.
Yet with demographic and technological changes accelerating, the education gap will soon loom large. As wages rise, Chinese manufacturers will face growing competition from less-developed countries. As automation improves, factories will need workers with more and better education. And as older industries are disrupted, employers will demand new skill sets.
China — like many countries — isn’t prepared for these changes. Sustaining an advanced, service-based economy isn’t possible when only 25 percent of the working-age population has a high-school degree. In every country that made the jump from middle-income to high-income over the past 70 years, Rozelle found, at least 75 percent of the working-age population had a high school degree before the transition began. Even China’s elite schools can’t drive economic development for 1.4 billion people.
Raising the level of education more broadly will require both investment and reform.
Most countries would benefit from investing more in education. But in China, the need is especially acute: Even in prosperous urban centers, classrooms are commonly crammed with 50 students apiece, forcing much of the actual work of education onto frustrated parents. That’s a recipe for failure.
Another priority should be overhauling the so-called hukou system of household registration. The reason so many children are being raised by their grandparents in rural areas is because they’re restricted from accessing public services — including schools — in the cities where their parents work. Yet it’s significantly easier to offer a quality education in urban centers than in far-flung villages. And with apartment vacancy rates above 20 percent in many cities, it would be both a humane and economically sound policy to end these restrictions.
A final goal should be reforming curriculums. China is famous for requiring rote memorization of its students. But schools are also increasing classwork on communist ideology, Confucian thought and even Traditional Chinese Medicine. The emphasis should instead be on skills — such as creativity and unstructured problem-solving — that will help drive entrepreneurship and innovation, and ensure that students can compete in a world of robots and drones.
Although other countries will face many of these problems in the years ahead, China is starting with some especially severe handicaps. Xi may be right that China’s people are resilient and creative enough to achieve his goals. But the journey will be a rocky one.
Resumen: «¡Siempre indigeniza!» Fue el grito de guerra de un artículo escrito por el académico canadiense Len Findlay hace casi 20 años. Fue visto por muchos en ese momento como un paso adelante radical pero indescriptiblemente positivo, una forma de hacer que las universidades sean más justas y diversas.
Este esfuerzo por autorigenizar a las universidades continúa siendo respaldado por muchos administradores y académicos bien intencionados. Tras el lanzamiento del informe final de la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación, este impulso de indigenizar ha adquirido un sentido de urgencia.
Always indigenize!” was the rallying cry of an article written by Canadian academic Len Findlay nearly 20 years ago. It was seen by many at the time as a radical but unassailably positive step forward — a way to make universities more just and more diverse.
This effort to indigenize universities continues to be supported by many well-meaning administrators and scholars. Following the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, this push to indigenize has gained a sense of urgency.
Just this month, the University of Calgary was the latest higher education institution to unveil its new Indigenous Strategy, ii’ taa’ poh’ to’ p. In September, the University of Saskatchewan hit the headlines when some professors questioned a radical plan to indigenize the curriculum for 21,000 students.
Part of the reason for this quick adoption is, I believe, because it feels good. Many Canadians want to do something about our shameful history and “fix” our colonial past to make Canada more just, more equitable.
We’re doing it, we’re ‘indigenizing’
At the end of October, I attended the Society for Ethnomusicology’s annual conference in Denver. The conference included a day-long symposium on Indigenous musics, and many roundtables and papers on indigeneity and decolonization.
My own research focuses on Métis cultural festivals as sites of resurgence. I have also written about settler appropriation of Métis music, and the ways in which acts of inclusion function to control and contain Métis music. As such, I was interested in how calls to indigenize were being met or otherwise addressed by scholars in my discipline.
As one of a small group of Canadian music scholars in attendance, I found the differences between Canada and the United States to be palpable: Canadians, unlike Americans, have made territorial acknowledgements common and even expected at public gatherings. Americans, I found, seemed more hesitant to embrace this practice.
Canadian educators are starting to discuss and include Indigenous histories, methodologies and worldviews in their teaching practice. And Canadian universities are trying to address the lack of Indigenous faculty members through open calls for applications from Indigenous scholars.
Seeing these differences, it was hard not to get caught up in the excitement and feel a sense of pride in our achievements as Canadians. We’re doing it. We’re “indigenizing.”
Wait, isn’t this just good teaching?
And we should feel proud — at least a little. These small initiatives are positive. We should be constantly reminding ourselves and others of whose lands we are occupying. We should be making sure Indigenous scholars are a valued part of universities, and that students see themselves in their instructors. We should be teaching Indigenous histories. We should be valuing Indigenous worldviews.
We should make sure that Indigenous students receive the supports — financial and other — needed to finish their programs of study. We should be adopting methods of teaching that are more hands on and experiential. We should be doing research with Indigenous communities. We should be restructuring the tenure system so that community work is better supported and acknowledged. We need to unearth the systemic racism that exists on campus. And I could go on.
Kati George-Jim, an Indigenous student member of Dalhousie University´s board of governors has accused the university of systemic racism.(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan)
Also, the initiatives brought forward under the rhetoric of indigenizing the academy are not new — educators and researchers have been raising these issues for decades as evident in the work of Marie Battiste. The “initiatives” are actually just best practices for teaching and research.
Many educators have long-called for more equity and diversity in professorship, teaching practices, curriculum content, and learning and assessment . These calls aim to make educational systems better serve a diverse group of students, whether Indigenous students, racialized ones or students with disabilities.
Furthermore, ethics boards at universities work diligently to guide researchers so that possible harms to communities are reduced and research benefits optimized, something that, whenever applicable, includes community consultations and partnerships. None of this is new.
Dangerous opportunities
Why are we calling this “indigenizing” when really we’re just trying to do what’s right? In other words, isn’t teaching about Indigenous histories simply teaching a more complete history? Isn’t making sure that we use examples that Indigenous students can relate to just good teaching?
I’m also struck by the general lack of discussion about what it means to indigenize the academy. The effort to indigenize universities is, as such, being done with little critical engagement with what “indigenization” might involve, especially if it is to benefit Indigenous nations.
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Some University of Saskatchewan members are raising questions about the school’s efforts to «indigenize,»… http://fb.me/5JzaQ7lwr
‘It’s not just add Indigenous and stir’: U of S’s indigenization approach raising questions
In two years from now, the University of Saskatchewan is planning to make Indigenous education mandatory for all 21,000 students.
Drawing on the Oxford definition of indigenize, one scholar, Elina Hill, has suggested that to indigenize might mean bringing something (in this case the university) “under the control, dominance, or influence of Indigenous or local people.” Alternately, it might mean to “make indigenous.” These possibilities, she notes, are “miraculous at best or dangerous at worst.”
The miraculous possibility is unlikely to say the least. The dangerous possibility — to make indigenous — is eerily similar to a growing trend of “settler self-indigenization” whereby settlers with no prior connection to an Indigenous community become Indigenous. If universities claim to be indigenizing, how might this affect our understanding of Indigenous nations as separate from the Canadian state?
Universities as colonizers
Hill most poignantly asks, “Could there be instances in the end where…Indigenous people are not even necessary for indigenizing?”
This question might seem, at first glance, to be pushing the argument to the absurd. However, given that advocates for indigenization constantly reiterate that doing so is good for universities, it might be exactly on point.
Ultimately, much of what has happened around indigenizing the academy has been aimed at making the university — a settler institution — a better system. As Hill says, this creates “a better kind of university, with knowledge toward a better kind of still colonial Canada.” That the term indigenous — and indeed the verb to indigenize — does not need to refer to Indigenous peoples (that is, distinct nations) should not be forgotten.
Indigenizing as it is now practiced is largely good — for settlers, and perhaps for individual Indigenous students.
But it comes with a profound risk: Will Indigenous nations lose control over their intellectual property? Over how their traditions are taught and written? Will universities continue to facilitate colonization, reinforcing the belief that all that is worth knowing, all intellectual traditions, are, or should be, centred within the university?
Instead of working in their communities, will elders be asked to put their time and energy into supporting settler faculty as they attempt to “indigenize”?
True reparation will be painful
It should be clear by now that I don’t think “indigenizing” is the right approach to addressing Canada’s colonialism within universities. But if not indigenizing, what should we be doing as academics, as university administrators, as Canadians?
The question we need to consider is: In what ways have the university system and academic traditions harmed Indigenous nations, and how can we begin the process of reparation?
The first step is to start listening, listening to Indigenous scholars and to Indigenous nations on whose lands our universities stand. As such, I don’t have answers. I can’t tell you, or tell academic institutions across Canada, what needs to happen because knowing will require long-term, on-going engagement with Indigenous communities.
But I do know that reparation can’t be centred on universities, or on the needs of settler-colonizers. In fact, reparation will likely be painful for settlers because it will be profoundly unsettling.
If it feels good, if it feels easy, if it feels comfortable, we’re not doing it right.
Resumen: Esta es una pregunta que muchos padres se preguntan: ¿cómo desarrollar en sus hijos una relación saludable con la sexualidad en la era de la proliferación de contenido pornográfico en Internet? El defensor de los derechos, Jacques Toubon, publica el lunes su informe anual sobre los derechos del niño. Y parte de su informe está dedicado a la educación sexual de los niños.
Primera observación, Francia tiene «un enfoque demasiado higiénico» sobre este tema. Como tal, el papel de la escuela es primordial. Ciertamente, es esencial capacitar a los más pequeños en los temas relacionados con la anticoncepción y prevenirlos de los riesgos (SIDA, infecciones de transmisión sexual). Especialmente porque las ITS aumentaron en un 10% entre los jóvenes de 15-24 años entre 2012 y 2014.
Aborder le sujet de la sexualité avec les plus jeunes pour mieux lutter contre les stéréotypes et les préjugés sexistes et homophobes n’est pas une sinécure. Le défenseur des Droits publie ce lundi un rapport sur les droits de l’enfant et consacre un volet à cette épineuse question. Décryptage.
La rédaction de LCI
C’est une question que de nombreux parents se posent : comment développer chez leurs enfants un rapport sain à la sexualité à l’heure de la prolifération de contenus pornographiques sur Internet ? Le Défenseur des droits, Jacques Toubon, publie ce lundi son rapport annuel sur les droits de l’enfant. Et une partie de son rapport est consacrée à l’éducation à la sexualité des enfants.
Premier constat, la France a «une approche encore trop sanitaire» sur ce sujet. A ce titre, le rôle de l’école est primordial. Certes, il est essentiel de former les plus jeunes aux enjeux liés à la contraception et les prévenir des risques encourus (Sida, infections sexuellement transmissibles). D’autant que les IST ont augmenté de 10% chez les 15-24 ans entre 2012 et 2014.
Mais «l’apprentissage de l’égalité des sexualités, du respect des orientations sexuelles et des identités de genre et la lutte contre les préjugés sexistes ou homophobes» devraient également être des sujets de préoccupation selon le Défenseur des droits. Or, cette tendance à aborder la sexualité par la prévention crée «un décalage avec les attentes des bénéficiaires» et cela participe à «la consolidation d’une sorte de tabou» autour du sujet, pointe le rapport.
Questionner les normes sociales
Pourtant, l’éducation à la sexualité doit justement permettre de questionner les normes sociales, ajoute-t-il. Comme l’avait déjà indiqué le Haut Conseil à l’Égalité entre les femmes et les hommes (HCE), les jeunes filles se trouvent souvent confrontées à une «double injonction de se montrer désirables mais respectables» et les garçons sont soumis à une «norme de virilité».
Le Défenseur des droits souhaite que le sujet des violences faites aux femmes soit davantage aborder dans les séances dédiées à l’éducation à la sexualité, au nombre de trois par an du CP à la terminale.
Enfin, l’impact de l’accès précoce à la pornographie doit faire l’objet d’un débat, suggère le Défenseur des droits, car celle-ci véhicule «des représentations inégalitaires de la sexualité». A cet égard, l’éducation à la sexualité peut s’avérer particulièrement utile car elle peut permettre de «développer une perspective critique sur l’écart entre représentations pornographiques et expériences vécues du sexe et du genre», selon les mots de la sociologue, Claire Balleys, auteur de Socialisation adolescente et usages du numérique, citée dans ce rapport.
Mieux former les enseignants
Pour aider le personnel de l’Education nationale (les enseignants mais aussi les chefs d’établissements, les CPE, les surveillants, les infirmières scolaires), le Défenseur des droits recommande notamment de renforcer leur formation «aux techniques d’animation permettant de favoriser les échanges entre et avec les jeunes».
Des outils pédagogiques adaptés ne seraient pas non plus un luxe. Dans un rapport réalisé l’an dernier, le HCE avait dénoncé la vision «hétéronormée» et «biologisante» du guide du formateurqui définit la sexualité d’abord un mode de reproduction ainsi qu’une absence de réflexion sur l’égalité des sexes et des sexualités. Selon la direction générale de l’enseignement scolaire, ce guide, édité il y a presque 20 ans, est en cours de réécriture.
Le tabou de la prostitution des enfants
Naturellement, les parents ont également leur rôle à jouer même si ce sujet reste sensible dans de nombreuses familles. Selon une enquête réalisée en 2015 auprès d’élèves de 4e et de 3e, 59% des élèves n’ont jamais parlé de sexualité avec leur mère et 80 % avec leur père. Pour faciliter le dialogue, le Défenseur des droits préconise «d’associer les parents au projet d’éducation à la sexualité au sein des établissements afin de s’assurer de leur compréhension des enjeux et, dans la mesure du possible, de favoriser leur bonne appropriation de la démarche». Bien conscient du caractère intime du sujet, le rapport rappelle toutefois le droit des enfants à se taire s’ils ne souhaitent pas échanger avec leurs parents sur la question.
Alertée par des associations sur ce phénomène jusqu’ici inconnu, le Défenseur des droits veut enfin porter «une attention particulière sur la prostitution occasionnelle qui semblent augmenter chez les jeunes». D’après l’association Agir contre la prostitution des enfants, des collégiennes et des lycéennes «consentent à exécuter des prestations sexuelles tarifées à leurs camarades d’établissement scolaire». Sans plus de précision, le rapport préconise de «mettre en place les actions adaptées» et d’améliorer «la protection et l’accompagnement des jeunes concernés».
India/Noviembre de 2017/Autora: Natasha Joshi/Fuente: Quartz
Resumen: Todos coinciden en que la educación pública de la India está en un estado lamentable. La culpa de esto suele ser una mala infraestructura, ausentismo docente, asistencia estudiantil deficiente, monitoreo basado en insumos y programas inadecuados de preparación docente. Si bien estos problemas son válidos, todos juntos no explican por completo la crisis de aprendizaje que se observa en nuestras aulas.
Everyone agrees India’s public education is in a dire state. The blame for this is typically heaped upon bad infrastructure, teacher absenteeism, poor student attendance, inputs-based monitoring, and inadequate teacher preparation programmes. While these issues are valid, all of them taken together do not fully explain the learning crisis apparent in our classrooms.
Let’s start with infrastructure. In the wake of the Right to Education Act 2010, school infrastructure has improved tremendously. While usability is still being addressed, much progress has been made in terms of school access and availability of drinking water and toilets. Most children are enrolled in some school and 70% attend school regularly.
Yes, teacher absenteeism continues to plague the system, but it is precisely that—a systemic issue instead of something specific to government-school teachers as a people. A recent six-state study by the Azim Premji Foundation reported that, while 20% of teachers were not found in school on average, most teachers were not “absent”; they were away on training or official work, sitting in the state headquarters, or on casual leave.
Actual truancy rates were 2.5% which is close to absenteeism rates at any large organisation. Even this small amount of absenteeism needs correction, but clearly absenteeism is not the obstacle to student growth.
So, if broadly teachers are showing up, and students are turning up, and classrooms and textbooks are available, what is preventing lakhs of children from acquiring basic literacy and numeracy?
Current policy discourse suggests that one of the issues is a lack of student and curriculum assessment. The Ministry for Human Resource and Development (MHRD) is pushing for greater student assessmentand states have been conducting “State Learning Achievement Surveys” (SLAS).
Standardised assessments are a lot of work and will require a good amount of resources. One must ask, therefore, what are the chances of this “solution” working?
To start with, let’s briefly understand large-scale standardised assessments. In the 20th century, standardised tests were institutionalised in almost all domains, especially in fields related to education and employment. A standardised test is an assessment that is rigid, has a pre-determined marking scheme, and is administered to a large base of students. Such tests emerged in the post-industrial era when factories and large business units required many labourers but few thinkers.
As a result, a test that told you a little about everyone was preferred to an alternative that told you a lot about one person. This was especially so because the former was more cost-effective. In other words, standardised assessments were designed to suit a system instead of an individual.
Today, the economy is markedly shifting in favour of the individual. The gig and contract economy in the West has grown tremendously in the past decade and nine-to-five jobs are shrinking. In India too, as automation increases, individual adaptability will become the most salient skill. Therefore, policy measures today must not return to old world assessment approaches—one test to rule them all, one test to find them.
Earlier, customising a test to suit 200 million children was infeasible but that is no longer true. Today, adaptive tests allow students to solve problems at their own pace, and item-wise analysis provides data on gaps in understanding, which in-turn enables teachers to provide remediation real-time.
Programmes like Mindspark are doing this in their centres. Instead of getting all schools to administer paper pencil tests, pushing digital infrastructure at the school level for better testing is a more worthwhile pursuit. The current government has a strong appetite for implementation and getting schools connected to good software can be done.
However, the main obstacle is not technology or implementation. Instead, the issue is one of mindset. Educational reform remains top down, and the state/national level conversation is always around aggregate data that hides more than it shows.
Teachers also mark off test papers with the purpose of sending data upwards rather than using it inside the classroom. If you ask most teachers why this data is being collected, they will tell you it is for the higher ups, or that tests make students take school seriously. Seldom will a teacher articulate how test results can be used to improve teaching. And that is the Achilles heel of test-based reform.
Unless teachers change their teaching practices, nothing will change. The real drivers of change at the school level are the teachers and school principals, and the culture of learning they bring into schools. But culture is difficult to engineer so it is relegated to the “oh and also, culture” statement at the end of meetings. This is worrying since heaps of evidence suggest culture impacts student outcomes.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) finds that students who report higher confidence in their abilities perform better and students whose parents or teachers have higher expectations of them perform better. Academia is flowing with research on social-emotional learning and now, perhaps, even music, and their links to academic performance.
If one takes a system approach, these findings seem irrelevant since there is no practical way to apply this to a system. But if one is on the side of children, suddenly these findings become important. One feels compelled to address school culture and for that teachers and principals are the main levers.
Therefore, if student learning needs to be improved, the policy prescription is as follows:
Scrap old style tests and put in place technology for personalised assessment.
Focus on data analysis and use at the classroom level.
Decentralise the reform process such that it empowers school principals and teachers to bring about these changes.
All three measures target the individual student and the classroom. If classrooms change, schools will change. If schools change, the system will.
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