PED 401: Applications and Cases in International Development

Sriram Kalyanaraman

Education Reform in India Terms of Reference

1. Project Background and Context India has one of the largest education systems in the world, enrolling over 150 million children at the primary level significantly higher than its 1951 figure of ~22 million1. This rapid expansion has however, come at the cost of quality. Over 50% of children in Grade 5 cannot read a Grade 2 text 2 and literacy in the country stands at ~65%. With the phenomenal increase in scale, the training, monitoring and enforcement of teaching in schools have become a major challenge. As a result of a heavily financed system that has failed to incentivize and motivate its frontline, schools today are filled with teachers who are paid very well independent of their performance and lack the motivation or, indeed, often the ability to teach their students at grade level. Project Location Project Name Project reference number Project budget Donor(s)/ funding sources Project duration lmplementing agency and partners Project executant India Proposal for Decentralization of Education in India PED401 To be estimated Government of India 1 year Harvard Kennedy School Sriram Kalyanaraman

2. Purpose and Objective of the Evaluation In a democracy as large as India, there are several levels of government, each with its own set of powers and responsibilities. Roles of government within the education system are spread across the Center, State, District and Gram Panchayat level. Decentralization of the current system is seen as a potentially viable solution to address the challenges of scale. This project seeks to evaluate the broad options available for decentralization. The proposal from the project will be submitted to the Planning Commission for its XIth Annual Five Year Plan meeting.

3. Evaluation Issues An effective proposal for decentralization needs an understanding of the various functions of government within the education system. We categorize
1

Universalisation of Elementary Education, http://www.education.nic.in/cd50years/r/2R/7Q/2R7Q0101.htm 2 Annual Status of Education Report, ASER 2009

PED 401: Applications and Cases in International Development

Sriram Kalyanaraman

these into 5 broad functions as below and present a status quo picture of who does what current: a. Planning: Consists of estimating the long-term demand for education and scaling the system to meet this demand. Further consists of allocating finances for this scale-up. b. Content Creation: Consists of setting the syllabus for each grade and preparing learning materials (such as textbooks). Also consists of setting the assessment schedule and tests. c. Teacher Recruitment and Training: Consists of recruiting teachers and training them in the content and pedagogy as per grade. d. Monitoring & Evaluation: Consists of monitoring and evaluating the performance of each node up until teachers in schools. Also consists of student evaluations to assess the final outcomes of the education system. e. Enforcement: Consists of enforcing performance (through incentives, dismissals, demotions) based on the feedback provided by the monitoring and evaluation. Function Planning Center State National Responsible for policies for planning and expansion of providing education education system within the state District GP District-level annual planning to implement training, teaching & monitoring

Content Creation

Syllabus setting central schools

Syllabus setting for for state-level schools

Recruitment & Training

Hire and train teachers for all state schools Monitoring & Central exam State-level Evaluation setting exam setting Enforcement Power to reincentivize, dismiss teachers As can be seen, majority of the functions are concentrated at the state level. A decentralized mechanism would require more powers devolved to the district government as these are closer to the ground and have a smaller scale to manage. However, we need to be careful in deciding what functions we decentralize. Since some uniformity is required in the overall planning, syllabus and material followed by schools, function like planning and content

PED 401: Applications and Cases in International Development

Sriram Kalyanaraman

creation need to be at the highest levels of government. This avoids a situation where each of the ~600 districts has its own text books and its own long-term plan. This leads us to the three key evaluation questions for the purposes of our analysis: 1. Should teacher hiring and training be at the state or district or GP level? Teacher training is one of the most crucial elements in the overall solution. While the NCERT (National Council for Educational Research & Training) sets down the guidelines for trainings at a national level, individual states further modify methods based on their needs and implement teacher training throughout the state, through district-level training programs. There is an opportunity therefore to assess whether the state or the district-level governments should be responsible for organizing these trainings. 2. Should monitoring & evaluation be done by state, district or village governments, and to what extent can citizens participate? Similarly, states are charged with conducting regular monitoring & evaluation. However, there are several gaps in the current system which need to be addressed. Monitoring is one dimension which can be split across all three levels, with citizens being pulled in at the grassroots to monitor the school in their village. Therefore, an analysis is needed to arrive at the most efficient and effective means of monitoring across the three different levels. 3. Should enforcement be done by state or district governments, and to what extent can citizens participate? Finally, enforcement is vested 4.