Re: [Assam] Assam's school education article- summary

umesh sharma
Fri, 22 Apr 2005 19:23:52 -0700
Rajen-da,

You must have read the article I sent out - the full text in 4 parts I mean. As is evident it is just a prelimnary analysis of the issue. For more details , more data is needed.

For effective education reform (as in anything else) Professor Ernesto Schiefelbein, a former education minister of Chile and Former Director of UNESCO for Latin America and Carribean likes to say - i read on of his readings - a quote from Sherlock Holmes " it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has the facts."

That said, there are definitely some general ways in which competitveness of top students of Assam can be improved (for those of lower income neighborhood or rural schools I gave the suggestions of the Wrold Bank in the article). First step is to bench mark against the best.

Agha Khan Foundation, Geneva (www.akdn.org) shows the way for poor countries - it has top quality schools in many Asian and African nations, whose teachers come to training even in top US High schools - like Philips Academy, Andover near Boston and have linkages with places like Harvard and Oxford.

Given that we are operating on an international grid on AssamNet I thought this could be an option, though a strenuous one. On the other hand,we could learn from Kota (Rajasthan) based engineering entrance institutes, who have created a center of excellence out of nothing but desert sand-successfully sending Hindi medium village kids even - to IITs. Two years back the IIT All India topper took the exam in Hindi medium an was from a village school. Kota sends the largest contingent to IITs from any center in India.

Qualified Assamese could take up the task by revising their high school knowledge to teach the tricks to new kids in Assam to make them competitive in IIT-JEE etc.

At a more micro level, more study is needed.

Umesh

PS: one problem I forsee, from the various posts that the govt is not effective in disbursal of funds for the various projects - could be a problem of excessive centralization of decison making - at the state level - and might need to go in for effective decentrlization - at local level with community involvement.

There is no need to copy what other states have done. i just attened a talk on Colombia's SAT program for rural adolscent women - which makes them empowered and skilled through a scripted curriculum etc . Honduras applied the program to its own rural areas with succes.
http://www.bcca.org/ief/drich02c.htm
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/International/Databanks/Dossiers/icolombi.htm
These countries are no bigger than Assam. We could try out such innovations as well.


Barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Thus the multi pronged strategy should be:

>A) to focus on improving the competitiveness of its top students - so that they start scoring in the national >competitive entrance exams. A highly skilled Assamese group is needed to properly govern and improve the >economy of the region.

>B) to improve quality of schools in rural areas and for poor income students. A World Bank study(book: >Primary Education in India; World Bank publication , 1997) showed that training of Assam’s school principals, >female teachers in rural areas, distribution of free textbooks, improving the monitoring of schools as well as >better physical infrastructure of schools - would be cost effective strategies for school improvement in such >areas. Another study (mentioned in the same book as above) predicted that improvement of 0.5% in primary >school student’s achievement rates in Assam would lead to a 4.5% increase in Assam’s economic growth.


>Conclusion

>Assam is neither at the bottom of the spectrum on Indian states in school education but neither is it at the top. However, its >top quality schools lag behind a large number of those of many other states (like Delhi or Rajasthan). Further, states like >Kerala or Himachal Pradesh are far ahead of Assam, in their efforts to provide universal and good quality schools to all. >Thus, Assam needs to improve the quality of its top quality schools as well as that of its lower rung schools-at the same time >improving the reach to remote areas –to aim for sustainable econ! omic development of ! the region.



Umesh:

That is great reporting. Now is it possible to quantify the action items who should do what to achieve your recommendations?. How much of of the actions/ responsibilities lies with the Assamese public and GOA? . What exactly for instance we the NRAs can or need to do to impriove the situation? Is GOI responsible in any way for the present state of affairs in education in Assam? What they are doing differently in Kerela or Rajsthan to achieve a higher standard? etc etc.

Can you briefly summarize for the benefit of the netters?

Thanks

Rajenda

----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: assam@pikespeak.uccs.edu
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:10 PM
Subject: [Assam] Assam's school education article- summary

Hi,

This is the end part of the article i wrote for Assam Newsletter.

-------------------
graphs (not here) can be seen at

http://www.worldbank.org/research/projects/edattain/profiles/ind4/ind4reg/at1_a.htm



----------------------

My recommendations (not just to the government):

As seen in case of other states like Delhi or Kerala or Rajasthan, whose students are the toppers in the national engineering or medical exams lately – there is a greater focus on providing top quality educational environment to its most skilled students (generally from urban, rich families) even at the cost of extremely low grade education to its rural, poor and girl students.



Most likely, the policymakers’ (and bureaucrats) own children are the ones who benefit the most from this arrangement. However, without body of highly skilled and globally competitive manpower, it is unlikely that the state can ever make progress. On the other hand, Assam has been negligent in providing good quality education to its top strata of society as well (unlike Kerala, Delhi or Rajasthan) as well as in lagging behind providing good education to its rural, poor and girl students (compared to Kerala or Himachal Pradesh).



Thus the multi pronged strategy should be:

A) to focus on improving the competitiveness of its top students - so that they start scoring in the national competitive entrance exams. A highly skilled Assamese group is needed to properly govern and improve the economy of the region.

B) to improve quality of schools in rural areas and for poor income students. A World Bank study(book: Primary Education in India; World Bank publication , 1997) showed that training of Assam’s school principals, female teachers in rural areas, distribution of free textbooks, improving the monitoring of schools as well as better physical infrastructure of schools - would be cost effective strategies for school improvement in such areas. Another study (mentioned in the same book as above) predicted that improvement of 0.5% in primary school student’s achievement rates in Assam would lead to a 4.5% increase in Assam’s economic growth.


Conclusion

Assam is neither at the bottom of the spectrum on Indian states in school education but neither is it at the top. However, its top quality schools lag behind a large number of those of many other states (like Delhi or Rajasthan). Further, states like Kerala or Himachal Pradesh are far ahead of Assam, in their efforts to provide universal and good quality schools to all. Thus, Assam needs to improve the quality of its top quality schools as well as that of its lower rung schools-at the same time improving the reach to remote areas –to aim for sustainable economic development of ! ! the region.





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