Over the last couple of days, there has
been a lot of noise around the report by Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) on the evaluation of scholastic performance of students
across the World. To those of you who haven’t heard or seen the report being
widely shared on social networking sites, the study ranked India at an
abysmally low 72 out of 73 countries – just ahead of Kyrgyzstan. To say that I
am totally offended by the conclusion of the report would amount to giving
merit to the report and by extension, to the study. So, I’ll just say that I’m
amused at what the report has to say. I have my reasons – for totally
disagreeing with not just the conclusions of the report, but with the entire
attempt to compare the educational system of as many as 73 different countries
on a common denominator - as I shall try to explain to you in the remainder of
this post.
To start with, let’s just take a look at
the methodology followed in the entire study. 73 countries participated in this
study, an addition of 10 over 65 member countries which participated in the
previous edition. Over 5000 students from 30 different schools were
evaluated from every participating state – Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh in
India (Randomly picked, with little logical validation) – for performance in
tests conducted in three fundamental subjects – Reading, Math and Science. The
results of the study were processed over nearly 2 years (the study was conducted
in late 2009-early 2010) and an elaborate picture of educational practices
across the World was painted.
Ambitious, and very meticulous, we all would
agree, but fundamentally, the logic behind the whole study is erroneous. Such a
study, can never ever produce results that can have an iota of sense in it.
Take a small example. I take the 10 brightest
students from the Government School in Thoraipakkam, and I take the 10
brightest students from DAV Gopalapuram. Apart from the obvious difference in
the boards that they study in (State Board and Central Board), there’ll be a
huge difference in their IQ levels because their access to knowledge and
information is highly skewed. While the students from upmarket schools generally
have a strong educational background in their families, fine teachers to tutor
them, access to greater intellectual material, their government school
counterparts have to rely solely on textbooks for information, apart from the
fact that the standards of teaching are pretty low. Either school cannot be
taken to represent the Indian education system – doing so would provide insane
results. Add schools in the rural areas to the equation and you will appreciate
how different each school is from the other. In such a scenario, choosing 30 schools to represent the complete education scene across the state is absurd!
All this is only within Tamil Nadu.
Himachal Pradesh will have completely different issues. On the whole, India has
over 35 different secondary school boards, each with different issues and focus
areas. If India alone has so many different parameters that need to be
considered, imagine how complex it would get if we were studying 73 countries!
This is not all. Skimming through the
“Sample Design” of the study, I found a statement that I quote here,
The
desired PISA target population in each country consisted of 15-year old
students attending educational institutions in grades 7 or higher.
In India, a 15 year old student is normally
in his 10th Grade. From what the statement conveys, I assume that
somewhere in the World, 15 year olds are in their seventh Grade. The question
this raises is simple. Is the level of education at 10th Grade in a
country equivalent to the level of education at 7th Grade in a
different country? The study assumes so, but common sense suggests that it is
not. Lets again take the benefit of being in India and hence, being able to
observe the diversity in education across States and Boards. A 10th
Grade CBSE student has a math syllabus far different from a 10th
Grade student in the Tamil Nadu State Board or AP State Board. Over a period of
three or four years, this difference may be neutralised, for what a student
from CBSE learns in 10th may be a part of the 11th Std
syllabus for State Board students and vice versa, but the study does not take
that into consideration. Across countries, this factor is bound to have a more
pronounced impact on the results.
These systemic errors apart, there were
some really absurd requirements for the test – like Indians having to read English
text for the test due to lack of materials in local languages. German students
read German, Americans read English, Chinese read Chinese, Finnish read
Finnish, but Tamilians read English. Also, look at the rankings and you will
see that tests were conducted in China at Shangai, their largest urban
population, while in India it was conducted in Himachal Pradesh and different
parts of Tamil Nadu. It requires common sense of the lowest degree to understand
that the results would have certainly been far different if the study had been
conducted in Delhi or Mumbai or Bangalore or just Chennai. It’s indeed baffling
that even a study with such far-reaching consequences could have glaring flaws
of this magnitude.
The biggest glitch in the whole concept of
this study is that, in an era when we are looking at moving away from the
textbook and examination form of study, and focussing on method that will
improve the application oriented outputs of students, the PISA experiments put
the spotlight back on studying rather than applying. That is unfortunate, and rooted in outdated principles.
It is really sad that without going through
all these facts, there is a lot being written about how India must be ashamed
of the results of the study. I agree that we cannot boast about our educational
system. Far from perfect, there are serious flaws that need to be set right.
But I have always believed, and continue to do so, that in a country so
diverse, with such a wide range of cultural, social and economic differences,
it is remarkable that we have an educational system that at the end of 18 years
of studies in schools across nearly 40 different boards, produces students who
have received nearly the same amount of knowledge from school. We may not have the best Education in the World, but we still succeed in producing among the best engineers, doctors, managers and economists in the World. While, we shall always strive towards improving the quality of education that students here get, I am certainly not ashamed of the education that I have received in this country, and there is no reason anyone else should be, either.
Overall, from the land that made 3 Idiots,
it would be incredibly stupid to take a “rating” very seriously. If anything,
the report tells us that it is time we took steps towards improving the
intellectual outputs of our students, reduced rote learning, increased learning
by understanding, etc.
Didn’t we know all that already?
References:
