REMEDYING EDUCATION. MIT India Reading Group 10 th August Presented by Anna Agarwal

Transcription

1 REMEDYING EDUCATION MIT India Reading Group 10 th August 2006 Presented by Anna Agarwal

2 Reference The source of all the information in this presentation is: NBER Working Paper Series, Remedying Education: Evidence from two randomized experiments in India, by Abhijit Banerjee et al. Working Paper

3 Introduction The paper talks about two experiments conducted to evaluate ways to improve Quality of Education in urban slums. 1) The Balsakhi* Program: A remedial education program hiring young woman to teach the children lagging behind. 2) Computer Assisted Learning program: Aimed at increasing Math scores of forth graders through educational games. Sampling Cities: Mumbai and Vadodara *Balsakhi means child's friend

4 The Problem: as we have looked at in previous meetings Universalisation of Primary Education Teacher Absenteeism Student Drop-out Discussions on possible reasons (Infrastructure, social class), state wise discrepancies, policies and potential solutions (Mid-day meals, Upgrading Infrastructure)...

5 The Problem: posed by this paper State of Education: Only 19.5% of third grade children in Vadodara pass the grade one competencies in Math and 33.7% do so in Mumbai. Such low levels of learning occur despite the fact that: Relatively well-run government school systems by Indian standards. Teacher absentee not a big problem. Most children come to school regularly.

6 Promoting school participation ( providing meals )does not necessarily improve test scores for the average student. Ironically this could be one of the reasons for poor quality of education! Spending more on resources (textbooks, more teachers) has no impact on test scores. Neither more inputs nor an extra day makes much of a difference, because what is being taught in class is too hard for the avg. student. Suggests, inputs specifically targeted to helping weaker students learn may potentially have large effects.

7 Potential Solution: The Balsakhi Program Specifically targeted to the weakest children. Governments schools are provided with a teacher (balsakhi) who works on basic skills with children who have reached grade three or four without having mastered them. It was started in Mumbai in 1994, and expanded to Vadodara in Since then has been implemented in 20 Indian cities. Balsakhi : Recruited from the local community Has finished secondary school Two weeks of training at the beginning of the year and ongoing reinforcement while school is in session.

8 These children (group of ~15-20) are taken out of the regular classroom to work with this young woman for 2 hours per day (the school day is about 4 hours).

9 Pros Provides individualized, non- threatening attention to children. Children may feel more comfortable with women from their own communities. As the balsakhi works with a relatively small class, she may tailor the curriculum to the children s specific needs. Indirect Effect: Reduced student teacher ratio, higher quality peers.

10 Pros Balsakhis serve as intermediary b/w parents and the school, easier for parents to play a role in their children s education. Low Cost: The program relies on local personnel, trained for a short period of time (each teacher is paid rupees, or dollars, per month). Low overhead and capital costs The balsakhis use whatever space is available (free classrooms, playground..).

11 Evaluation (Vadodara): time line PILOT YEAR (earthquake) Started in Nov 2000 YEAR YEAR Pretest in Nov 2000 Posttest in March 2001 Pretest in Aug 01 Mid test in Oct 01 Posttest in March 02 Pretest in Aug 02 Mid test in Nov 02 Posttest in March 03 Exam had a math and language section. Math Exam: basic number recognition, counting, and ordering of single digit numbers to ordering of two digit numbers, addition of single and two digit numbers, and basic word problems.

12 Effects: Attendance With increased role of parents, one would expect the program to affect attendance. In no city and no grade do we see any impact on attendance. May be due to the relatively high attendance levels of children before the program. the results are entirely attributable to what happens in the school when children are already attending.

13 Effects: Test Scores (Vadodara) PRETEST

14 Effects: Test Scores (2)

15 Effects: Test Scores (3)

16 Effects: Test Scores (4) * Represents CDF of pretest & posttest scores (sum of math and verbal) for year 2 from Vadodara

17 Effects: Test Scores (5) Avg. test scores of all children in the treatment schools increased by 0.14 standard deviations in the first year, and 0.28 in the second year. (both Mumbai and Vadodara) In the second year, children in the bottom third of the initial distribution gained over 0.40 SD.

18 Effects: Long Term Final test was administered in March ** * * * average effect becomes insignificant * Effect for the bottom third of the children, who were most likely to have visited the balsakhi, remains significant, 0.10 SD for both for math and for language. ** difference is b/w Aug'02 Pretest and March'04 test

19 Effects: Long Term (2) One year after leaving the program, initially low scoring students who were in balsakhi schools still do better than their untreated counterparts, though the difference is smaller!! It is may be important to provide interventions over long horizons.

20 Effects: Indirect impact The results suggest that the remedial education program benefited only the children who went to the balsakhi and that the effect on those students is very high. BUT.. Since this was a pull-out program, the children who remained in class could have also benefited from a reduced student teacher ratio.

21 Effects: Indirect impact No effect on children who stayed in the regular class. Inputs are not sufficient. It is not the number of teachers that seems to matter but how they are deployed, and what they do. Class reductions would be much more effective if done through a balsakhi type program, i.e. separating children of different levels, than by simply dividing a large class into two smaller classes.

22 Potential Solution: CAL ( Brief overview ) Children in grade four were offered two hours of shared computer time per week. (2 children shared a computer) - one hour during class time and one hour either immediately before or after school. Children played a variety of educational computer games, emphasizing basic competencies in the VMC math curriculum. Instructional software in the local language, Gujarati. Independent Learning No instruction in Mathematics

23 Pros Supplement to regular instruction, that is, as a way to improve the quality of education. Particularly attractive in areas where the number of qualified teachers is limited and the quality of existing teachers is poor. Well-designed educational games can sustain interest and curiosity in an otherwise dull school environment Increase Attendance. Good educational software can be reproduced at nominal cost.

24 Cons Most computers could just remain in their boxes Very little rigorous evidence on the impact of computers on educational outcomes and no reliable evidence for India or other developing countries. Moreover, the little evidence available is not encouraging.

25 Effects Equally effective for all students. Increased math scores by 0.35 standard deviations the first year, and 0.47 the second year. Software targeted exclusively math skills It has no discernible impact on language scores. Although spillover effects on language skills was expected (through increased attendance, the practice of reading instructions, or if the teachers had reallocated time away from math to reading).

26 Conclusion Results from both the programs, show to improve the quality of education, resources must target students needs, rather than be used to just provide more of what the schools already have.

27 Discussion