The Problems

1. The quality of education in India is very low. The majority of students who have technically
completed primary school are neither literate nor numerate.

2. Within a single school class, students can be of vastly different levels of achievement - and
this inequality increases as you move through school. This makes teaching very difficult - and
the least accomplished students effectively learn nothing.

3. An emphasis on 'passing exams' has meant that students focus on memorization rather than
on picking up useful skills and concepts. Vocational training is not considered important.

4. The Right to Education has expanded access - but at the cost of forcing many private schools
to shut down.

Reforming the Indian School Education System"

Karthik Muralidharan

A fundamental source of tension in the design of an education system comes from the fact that,
historically, education systems have served two very different purposes. First, they have sought
to impart knowledge, skills and shared concepts of identity and citizenship. We can broadly refer
to these as the human development' role of education. However, education systems have also
served a second purpose, which is to assess and classify students on the basis of educational
ability and achievement and to select higher achieving students for higher education and
occupations that aim to attract the most meritorious students. We can refer to this as the
'sorting' function of education.

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Reforming the Indian School Education System"

Karthik Muralidharan

A fundamental source of tension in the design of an education system comes from the fact that,
historically, education systems have served two very different purposes. First, they have sought
to impart knowledge, skills and shared concepts of identity and citizenship. We can broadly refer
to these as the human development' role of education. However, education systems have also
served a second purpose, which is to assess and classify students on the basis of educational
ability and achievement and to select higher achieving students for higher education and
occupations that aim to attract the most meritorious students. We can refer to this as the
'sorting' function of education.

development. Indeed, the Indian education system in its current form is perhaps best
understood as a 'filtration system rather than an 'education system'.

Using this framework helps make sense of several deep structural challenges of the Indian
education system that have been widely remarked upon.

1. There are massive inequalities in the overall education system which on the one hand
routinely produces students who go on to achieve global excellence in their fields and on the
other hand produces the world's largest number of primary-school-completing students who are
not functionally literate and numerate at even a second- or third-grade level.

a. A major reason for this is that the syllabus and textbooks have not changed from a time when
a much smaller fraction of students were in the education system. Since the focus of the system
continues to be on 'passing' exams linked to the syllabus, children who fall behind the
curriculum often end up learning close to nothing despite attending school.¹

b. This is because teachers, parents and students are not rewarded for improving learning at
levels below the current grade level, because it will not help in passing the grade-level exam -
and so students who fall behind early are left behind in perpetuity.

2. An obsessive focus on exams and marks has led to an education system characterized by
rote learning to pass exams (often through cramming of past exam papers) as opposed to
conceptual understanding that can be applied and used in practical situations.

a. This is also in part a consequence of point (1), because

the only viable strategy for students who fall behind

is to cram for exams and hope to pass them by having

memorized questions that may appear in the exam. b. Conceptual understanding is not
prioritized as it is not rewarded by the exam system.

3. Very low levels of practical skills even among students who have notionally 'passed' various
exams and possess various levels of paper qualifications.

Note that there is nothing wrong with sorting per se. Every society around the world aims to
identify its most talented citizens and match them into leadership roles and occupations that
affect society as a whole. It is also completely rational both for institutions of higher learning and
employers to seek credible signals about the level of learning in preparation of students and for
students to seek to credibly provide the signals.2

Further, sorting-based education systems may well have been efficient for agrarian societies
where the fraction of knowledge-based jobs was small and where the economic and social
returns to education were limited for those in agrarian and manual labour. However, the modern
knowledge-based economy requires every citizen to be educated to the point where they are
empowered to build their skills and capabilities continuously, and on their own initiative.

However, the problem with the sorting paradigm of education is that children who fall behind
(overambitious) grade-level standards do not get a meaningful education Because there is no
provision for 'teaching at the right level This has led to a massive waste of both time and money.
Money is spent on building schools and hiring teachers, and effort is focused on keeping
children in school (to prevent 'dropout'), but very little actual learning is taking place (see
evidence reviewed in Muralidharan [2013] for details).

The central design challenge for the Indian education system is that it was designed for sorting
and not for human development. Almost every structural weakness of the Indian education
system can be explained by this framework.

Turn to Appendix A for an illustration of the scale of this challenge. Indeed, perhaps the most
important graphs to understand school education in India are provided in Appendix A based on
data from Delhi and Rajasthan.

Thus, a fundamental goal for Indian education policy has to be to move the education system
from a sorting and selection paradigm to a human development paradigm, one that will
empower every citizen to be educated enough to have the foundation needed for a lifetime of
continuous learning in whichever area of skill he or she may seek to learn.

The core building blocks for achieving this goal include:

1. Curriculum reform to reduce content and emphasize understanding.

2. Exam reform to provide both 'absolute' and 'relative' credentials.

3. A national mission to achieve universal functional literacy and numeracy by grade three.

4. Universal preschool education to support school readiness before grade one.

5. Reform of teacher training to emphasize pedagogy over theory.

6. Having greater clarity on the role of the state and the market in providing education in India -
and both leveraging the private sector to achieve India's education goals and regulating it
adequately as needed (this requires reforms to the RTE Act).

7. Creating high-quality vocational education streams in school and integrating these with
practicum-based training programmes for vocational education (in grades seven to twelve).

It is also essential for the education policy to emphasize certain key cross-cutting themes that
have been neglected for the most part in education policy discourse in India which so far has
focused more on 'what' to do rather than on 'how' to do it in a manner that is compatible with
fiscal and capacity constraints. These include:

1. Using evidence and research to better inform policy choices.

2. Cost-effectiveness.

3. Governance.

The cross-cutting themes are discussed first, followed by a more elaborate discussion of the
seven building blocks identified above:

Themes

1. Using evidence and research to better inform policy choices: The last fifteen years have seen
a sharp increase in the quality of evidence available on the effectiveness of various policies at
improving education outcomes. Yet, this evidence is typically not reflected in the "business as
usual' policy choices that are made by the Union and state governments. Thus, while education
policy makers should definitely conduct extensive consultations, it is essential to put more
weight on recommendations backed by high-quality evidence.

2. Cost-effectiveness: A second key theme is that of cost- effectiveness of policy

recommendations. Prior education policy exercises have been strong in articulating visions for
education, but have usually paid less attention to the details of how this vision can be achieved
keeping in consideration the financial and administrative constraints within which policies have
to be framed and implemented. Given the combination of fiscal constraints and strong needs for
spending in several sectors, a responsible policy exercise has to consider the cost-effectiveness
of various policy options to achieve a given set of goals.
In particular, the evidence from high-quality studies above suggests that it may be possible to
achieve sharp improvements in education outcomes even without increasing spending - by
reallocating expenditure from less to more cost-effective interventions and policies. Since it is
often politically difficult to cut any kind of existing spending, at the very least it is important to

allocate new spending for education in cost-effective ways.

It is worth paying special attention to the issue of teacher salaries, which comprise the largest
component of education spending. Several studies have shown that there is no correlation
between the level of teacher salaries and their effectiveness at improving learning outcomes.
Yet, it is likely that many states will implement the Seventh Pay Commission award, which will
absorb the major part of any increase in education spending in the coming decade, while being
highly unlikely to improve learning outcomes.¹

Thus, it is essential for the Union government to strongly urge state governments to innovate,
evaluate cost-effective options for improving education outcomes, and use the fiscal and policy
space provided by the Fourteenth Finance Commission award to try to pivot education
expenditure from less to more cost- effective policies.

3. Governance: A last cross-cutting theme that is central to achieving the goals of the new
education policy is governance. Studies in the past decade have identified shocking
weaknesses in the education governance in the country. Thus, India has, for example, high
rates of teacher absenteeism, as well as high rates of vacancies in key supervisory positions
including block and district

education officers. These officials are also transferred frequently (their average tenure is less
than a year), which makes effective governance very difficult.

Here we recommend that the national education policy follow the guidelines established by the
NITI Aayog under its School Education Quality Index initiative.

The goal of the state-level SEQI is to institutionalize a focus on improving education outcomes
(learning, access, equity) as the principal aim of school education policy in India. It also
recognizes that school education is primarily a state subject and aims to encourage state-level
leadership in improving outcomes in cost-effective ways.

It is hoped that the annual calculation and dissemination of the SEQI, with a focus on measuring
and highlighting the annual improvement of states, will:

a. Shift the policy focus to outcomes rather than inputs and programmes.

b. Encourage state-led innovation in cost-effective policy approaches to improve outcomes.

c. Facilitate documentation and sharing of best practices across states.

The SEQI has developed a series of governance indicators that states will be measured and
ranked on, and against which progress will be tracked over time. These indicators reflect a high-
level consensus on key governance indicators, and we urge the Ministry of Human Resource
Development and the NITI Aayog to monitor progress on these.
We now turn to discussing the substantive topics.

1. Curriculum reform to reduce content and emphasize understanding: There is already a lot of
good content and ideas in the Yash Pal Committee report on the New Curricular Framework
that has not been acted on. So this section will be brief.

The current curriculum has way too much content, which in turn pushes the education system to
deliver rote learning as opposed to conceptual understanding. A content-heavy approach is
again consistent with a sorting system since the sheer volume of material to be covered makes
it more likely that students with better natural academic aptitude (as opposed to better
'educated' students) will score better on exams.4

In an age when factual information is easily available on the Internet (which in turn is
increasingly widely available through smartphones), the premium on memorization and
regurgitation of facts is falling sharply relative to the ability to be able to ask and answer relevant
questions by finding facts and opinions from different sources, assessing their relative merit and
being able to effectively synthesize such content for better understanding and decision-making.

Thus, a core goal of education policy should be to simplify and narrow down the volume of
topics covered and emphasize instead the ability to understand concepts, connect concepts
across topics and apply them creatively in solving newer problems.

2. Exam reform to provide both 'absolute' and 'relative' redentials: It is important for education
reformers to recognize that despite the best intentions of educationiste and national leaders to
have education systems reflect a broader set of goals, the single most important determinant of
what teachers, parents and students work towards is the content and structure of the exam
system. Indeed, the examination system is the proverbial tail that wags the dog of the entire
education system.

Thus, reorienting the education system towards a human development paradigm as opposed to
a sorting paradigm will require a fundamental rethinking of the examination system in India,
which in its present form is almost completely oriented towards the sorting function. As
explained above, it is not viable in practice to wish away the sorting function of an education
system. The problem with the status quo, however, is that:

a. Improvements in learning that are at levels significantly below the examination threshold are
completely undervalued by all stakeholders (parents, students and teachers) because such
improvements will not be seen in the current exam system."
b. Thus, the default of instruction in the classroom pretty much follows the textbook and syllabus
- regardless of the fact that the vast majority of students (at least in government schools) are
way behind the curricular standards of the syllabus (see Appendix A).

c. As a result, students who fall behind grade-level standards before completing eighth grade
typically learn very little in class. Their only hope of managing with the expectations of school is
to attend coaching classes, cram from past test papers and hope to somehow pass exams
(typically with very little understanding of the content).

d. While the labour market cares about actual skills, there is no credible way of learning about a
student's 'absolute' level of understanding/mastery of a concept. This is because the marks on a
grade-level exam mainly serve to 'rank' students for admission to higher levels of education and
do not convey any information

to parents, students or employers about the absolute level of mastery of any relevant skills.

Thus, part of key reforms must be a national testing agency that can prescribe standards for
'absolute' levels of proficiency at topics, which are broken down at a much more granular level
by subject and grade (similar to how software-based learning applications like Khan Academy
and Mindspark are structured).

The availability of modular assessments that are organized in ascending order of skills will
provide a critical source of feedback to parents, teachers, students and employers about the
absolute competence that a student has attained and about the progress made at regular
intervals (say, every month to three months).

While exams will continue to serve a sorting function based on student rank, the goal is for the
education system to focus on absolute progress made by each student relative to his/her own
prior level (regardless of the rank of the student in class and the extent to which he/she is
behind the grade-level standards).

Thus, the nature of assessments will need to shift from saying 'Student X scored Y per cent in
the class five exam' to saying 'Student X has demonstrated the following levels of absolute
competence in various topics/ domains'. The levels can range from 'not demonstrated' to
'mastered' and would aim to provide feedback to parents and students (and eventually
employers) about functional competencies as opposed to arbitrary marks.

In the long term, such assessments can be administered through technology-based platforms -
which would enable dynamic adaptive tests and also ensure integrity of measurement through
large item banks. But, in the short term, such assessments can be carried out through pre-
printed worksheets for various topics.
This is an incredibly important reform to ensure that the millions of children who are behind
grade level and at risk of being left behind permanently are encouraged to make 'absolute'
progress regardless of their level. It is also a critical enabler of skilling and vocational education
for students who may not take an academic track.

A key challenge for the skilling sector in India today is that the students who enter skilling or job-
training programmes have very poor literacy and numeracy and are thus often not equipped
even to handle the curriculum of the skilling programmes. This is because by the time students
are earmarked for vocational tracks in school and directed to such programmes, they have
already fallen far behind the curriculum and have weak foundational skills.

Having credible signals of absolute credentials of learning will help students, parents, teachers,
providers of higher education (including vocational and skill-based education), as well as
employers.

3. A national mission to achieve universal functional literacy and numeracy: The single biggest
failing of the Indian education system is the fact that seventy years after Independence, the
majority of children completing primary education are still not functionally literate and numerate.
This is both an economic and a moral failure. The lack of such foundational literacy and
numeracy

both inhibits the skill formation needed for economic growth and also robs millions of children
and youth of the opportunity to participate in the broader economie growth of the country - and
to become empowered citizens who are able to navigate a fast-changing world.

We believe therefore that the single most important outcome that education policy needs to
deliver on for the future of the country is to ensure, by 2022, universal functional literacy and
numeracy of all schoolchildren by the end of grade three. Indeed, the history of Indian education
policy suggests that trying to do too much may have prevented it from achieving even the
basics.

Thus, even if the entire education system is able to achieve just this one goal in the next few
years in mission mode and establish processes to make sure that every cohort entering school
starting in the academic year 2019-20 has achieved universal functional literacy and numeracy
by the end of third grade, that will be an enormous success.

Achieving this goal will be enabled by three key sets of investments. The first is universal
preschool education to ensure better school readiness by the start of first grade (described in
further detail below). The second is providing supplemental instructional support to children who
are falling behind in the early grades itself to ensure that every child is functionally literate and
numerate by the end of grade three (this is especially important for the children currently in
school). The third is investing in independent measurement and monitoring of the achievement
of these goals (at least at the district level) and motivating the entire district education
machinery to achieve these goals through a suitable combination of recognition and rewards.
The most essential immediate (and easily actionable)

step to enable this is supplemental instructional supple in the early grades. This support will be
for small-group instruction that is pitched appropriately at the level of the student. Consultations
with teachers clearly indicate that they are aware of this need - but are not able to
simultaneously complete the curriculum in the textbook while also providing such supplemental
instruction for children falling behind. At the same time, a large body of high-quality evidence
(based on randomized controlled trials) from multiple states in India has shown that it is possible
to achieve rapid progress in foundational literacy and numeracy within a few months provided
children are taught in small groups at the right level - even if this instruction is delivered by
modestly educated (secondary or higher secondary school level) youth from the same area
(Banerjee, et al. 2007; Banerjee, et al. 2017).

We therefore recommend a budget be provided to every school for the hiring of part-time tutors
(who could even be students in secondary or higher secondary school from the same
village/area) to be able to provide such supplemental instruction. Such tutors can work under
the guidance of regular teachers and provide one to two hours of supplemental instruction every
day to students grouped by their learning level. Combined with independent monitoring of
learning outcomes, such an approach is likely to be successful in a cost-effective way. Note that
we do not recommend the return to a para-teacher or shiksha karmi model (which has
weaknesses on multiple fronts including professional, legal and political). Rather, the extra
budget to hire part-time tutors can be seen as a way of supporting a five-year national mission
to ensure universal foundational literacy in numeracy.

In the medium to long term, as part of a systematic reform of teacher training and preparation,
we recommend a new approach to pre-service teacher training that emphasizes substantial
amounts of practical teaching as part of the training/credentialing process (see details below).
Over time, we recommend that the time spent in such practical training by students training to
become teachers can be focused on providing the small- group supplemental instruction
needed to achieve this goal.

4. Universal preschool education to support school readiness before first grade: Large gaps in
learning levels emerge even in the early years of schooling, attributable in large part to the
substantial increase in first-generation learners in the schooling system. Thus we strongly
recommend a national commitment towards universal preschool education to support school
readiness and help achieve the goal of universal functional literacy and numeracy by grade
three.

In practice, there are two different approaches to implementing this goal. The first is to add a
year of kindergarten to the school education system. The second is to strengthen the quality of
early childhood education in the anganwadi centres, by adding an extra anganwadi worker who
is dedicated to delivering early childhood education (which will allow the current worker to
continue focusing on child nutrition and health). There are advantages and disadvantages to
both approaches, as outlined below.

The main advantages of the anganwadi-based model include:

a. Greater proximity to households (this is important because attendance is highly sensitive to

distance at younger ages).

b. The curricular needs of early childhood education are substantially different from those of
school education and need to focus more on play, self-regulation, social skills and school
readiness more generally. This may require specific forms of training and may be better
delivered in an anganwadi centre. There is a risk that preschool education that is based in
schools may simply result in standard classroom instruction being conducted at a younger age
(since such a structure is likely to draw on teachers who are currently teaching primary grades).

c. Since anganwadi workers are typically hired locally in the same village, they are both more
connected to the local communities and likely to have lower rates of absenteeism (compared to
teachers who typically live in urban areas and commute to rural postings).

d. Finally, the anganwadi-worker-based model is likely to be much more cost-effective (even

after adding an extra anganwadi worker to each anganwadi centre to focus on early childhood
education) than a model based on hiring more regular teachers in government schools. Given
the fiscal constraints in expanding early childhood education, this is a very important
consideration and is likely to make it easier to scale across the country.

For instance, based on recent research in Tamil Nadu on the impact of adding an extra worker
to anganwadis to focus on early childhood education, we estimate that the present discounted
value of the policy was Rs 16,000-20,000 per month, Thus, the investment in the extra worker
would be cost-effective at a monthly salary under this range but not above.

ii. At present costs, it would be cost-effective to add an anganwadi worker to focus on early
childhood education (since average monthly anganwadi worker salaries range from Rs 4000-
10,000). But given regular teacher salaries of Rs 30,000- 60,000, the school-based model would
not be cost-effective.

However, the primary-school-based model too has some advantages. These include:

a. Greater ease of attendance for siblings when the older child is of schoolgoing age, while the
younger child is of preschool age.

b. Greater scale in terms of facilities.

c. Potentially doable at lower cost if the system has a large number of 'surplus' teachers due to
declining enrolment in government schools (but this should likely not be a reason to expand
regular teacher hiring).

d. Finally, the quality of the anganwadi system varies widely across states and it is possible that
the anganwadi system in some states is too dysfunctional to rely on for early childhood
education.

Thus, while the factors above point towards the likely superiority of the anganwadi-based model,
it is important to recognize the variation across states and not impose a specific model - as long
as states deliver on universal early childhood education.

5. Reform of teacher training to emphasize pedagogy over theory and the inclusion of extensive
practical training. Pre-service training: The teacher is the single most important determinant of
the quality of education received by the student, and it is hoped that having
qualified/credentialed teachers will help improve the quality of education - indeed, a cornerstone
of the RTE is a requirement that all teachers possess a formal teacher training credential.

Unfortunately, this requirement is not supported by the evidence. In particular, several studies
have shown that there is no correlation between a teacher possessing a formal teacher training
credential and his or her effectiveness in the classroom as measured by improvements in
learning outcomes during the period that students are with that teacher (Kingdon and Teal 2010;
Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2011; Muralidharan 2012).

Of course, this does not imply that teacher training cannot be effective. However, the evidence
is also very clear that the status quo of teacher training is broken and ineffective (this point is
also made clearly in the Justice Verma Commission report of 2012). Two of the several reasons
for this are particularly important.

The first is the poor quality of the majority of teacher training institutes, especially the ones
based on distance learning or correspondence courses (which have no practical training at all).
Second, a content analysis of even the better teacher training programmes indicates that the
curriculum mostly emphasizes the history, theory, sociology and philosophy of education and
has very little focus on pedagogy and also very little practical training. In contrast, global
evidence suggests that the most effective forms of training in professional roles involves
extensive practical training and learning on the job (Muralidharan 2016).

We therefore recommend a new paradigm for teacher training and professional development
that places much more emphasis on practical training through apprenticeship as part of the
teacher credentialing process. Specifically, we recommend that the ideal structure for pre-
service teacher training should intersperse modules of theory with extensive amounts of
practicum-based training that will lead to formal teacher training credentials that reflect this
practical experience and learning.
We recommend the setting up of a few apex teacher training institutes in each state (in highly
reputable public and non-profit private institutes) to design such a programme. We also
recommend that such practicum-based teaching degrees are four years long and admit
students after class twelve. For elementary school teachers this would result in a B.El.Ed.
(practice) degree and feature at least six months of classroom-The first is the poor quality of the
majority of teacher training institutes, especially the ones based on distance learning or
correspondence courses (which have no practical training at all). Second, a content analysis of
even the better teacher training programmes indicates that the curriculum mostly emphasizes
the history, theory, sociology and philosophy of education and has very little focus on pedagogy
and also very little practical training. In contrast, global evidence suggests that the most
effective forms of training in professional roles involves extensive practical training and learning
on the job (Muralidharan 2016).

We therefore recommend a new paradigm for teacher training and professional development
that places much more emphasis on practical training through apprenticeship as part of the
teacher credentialing process. Specifically, we recommend that the ideal structure for pre-
service teacher training should intersperse modules of theory with extensive amounts of
practicum-based training that will lead to formal teacher training credentials that reflect this
practical experience and learning.

We recommend the setting up of a few apex teacher training institutes in each state (in highly
reputable public and non-profit private institutes) to design such a programme. We also
recommend that such practicum-based teaching degrees are four years long and admit
students after class twelve. For elementary school teachers this would result in a B.El.Ed.
(practice) degree and feature at least six months of classroom-based practical training each
year so that over a period of four years at least half the time is spent on training in the
classroom. For secondary-grade teachers, such a programme could be five years long and
combine a three-year bachelor's degree in a subject with a year of education theory and a year
of practical training.

We also recommend a close integration of such training programmes with the public schooling
system, so that trainees are effectively integrated into the schools where practical training will
take place and can provide meaningful instructional support in these schools. Consistent with
RTE norms, the trainees will not be responsible for classes on their own, but will function under
the close guidance and supervision of the regular teachers and assist in instructional tasks
(especially small- group instruction to support the achievement of universal functional literacy
and numeracy for all primary school students).

During the period of practical training, we expect that the training institution will continue to
engage with the students through online and smartphone-based interactions - including viewing
videos and answering quizzes, writing reflections of their teaching experience and participating
in virtual communities of practice with other trainees. Thus, the goal is to achieve a deep
integration between theory and practice and reflection on how the two inform each other during
the course of pre-service teacher training.
We expect such a teacher training programme to be both prestigious and coveted since (a) the
number of places will be limited and admission will be restricted top scoring twelfth standard
graduates, (b) the fees will be waived/subsidized for many students because the practical
training includes an element of serving underserved areas, and (c) students will also get a
modest stipend (paid for by the education department) for their months of practical training
when they will be working in schools.

To address the challenge of spatial mismatch between where the academically strongest
students are (typically urban areas) and where the teaching needs in the government schools
are the greatest (typically rural areas), we recommend that admission to such a prestigious
integrated teacher training programme be geographically dispersed.

For instance, one approach would be to admit the highest scoring applicant from each
panchayat into the programme, with the understanding that the practical training will be based in
a government school in the same panchayat. A further advantage of such an approach is that it
enables greater female participation in rural areas by providing training/employment
opportunities in the same village. Various aspects of reservations and quotas can also be
implemented but may need to be achieved at the district or block levels.

Over time, we also recommend that the process of hiring regular teachers give extra points for
each year of actual teaching experience (with years spent as part of practical training counting
for credit). Our vision therefore is that in the long term almost all teachers hired into the regular
government teaching positions will have completed such integrated practicum-based teacher
training programmes.

Such an approach will have several advantages including:

a. Improving the quality of pre-service teacher training by requiring actual pedagogical

experience as part of the credentialing process.

b. Improving the ability of trainee teachers to absorb the significance of the theoretical content
that is present in typical programmes by observing how these issues matter in practice.

c. Ensuring that teachers entering the education system with permanent jobs (as is typical for
government teachers) would have had adequate experience in classroom management and
functioning as teachers before obtaining lifetime appointments.

d. Providing a cost-effective way of augmenting instructional resources in government schools.

In particular, this would be a more sustainable way of enabling schools to have the teaching
resources to provide small-group supplemental instruction for first-generation learners to ensure
universal foundational literacy and numeracy for all future cohorts of children in the Indian
education system.
We believe that implementing such an approach to pre-service teacher training can be
transformative in improving the long-term quality of Indian education both through its impact on
improving the pipeline of entrants into the teaching profession and through its immediate impact
on ensuring universal foundational literacy and numeracy (through the supplemental instruction
provided by the trainees as part of their practical training).

While this approach can help in improving the long- term quality of teachers, urgent attention is
also needed to be given to the problem of in-service training for the hundreds of thousands of
incumbent teachers, many of whom have entered the system with very poor pre- service
training. The biggest challenge in implementing such in-service training is the complete lack of
visibility on the quality of such training. Thus, while most states teacher policies provide for
around twenty days a year of in-service training, in practice these trainings are of extremely
variable quality and our interactions with stakeholders suggest that these are typically not
effective.

Thus, improving the quality of in-service training needs to focus on a few key principles. First,
emphasizing effective pedagogy (especially through sample demonstration lessons to illustrate
various aspects of effective pedagogy including content, engagement, inclusion and student
support). Second, it needs to curate the quality of the in-service training programmes. Third, it
needs to ensure that the training is actually done as per the regulatory norms and that teachers
are assessed on their comprehension of the training content.

We recommend that the most promising practical way of achieving these goals is to make much
more use of online teacher training content. Specifically, we recommend developing a portal for
in-service teacher training that can host thousands of videos (including translations in all major
Indian languages) and training modules for various topics that are relevant for in-service teacher
training. For instance, a training module could illustrate how to teach the class in an interactive
way that engages students, as opposed to simply reading from the textbook and writing on the
blackboard, and demonstrate this with short videos. Others could illustrate effective ways of
teaching specific concepts. Yet others could illustrate inclusive teaching practices that engage
all students and not just the academically stronger ones.

Such a portal would be able to achieve all the principles outlined above. The modules would
emphasize pedagogy and provide the training in modular bits as opposed to day-long
programmes (research strongly suggests that students are more likely to absorb new material in
capsules rather than traditional lecture-based instruction). The portal would allow teachers to
rate the quality and usefulness of different kinds of content and therefore create a crowdsourced
way of identifying high-quality content (which would reflect the wisdom of teachers around the
country). Finally, by providing each teacher with a unique ID to access the portal, it becomes
easy to track usage, absorption of materials (through short quizzes at the end of modules) and
completion of annual in-service training targets. Over time, modules can be organized into
courses, and demonstrated mastery of the content of in-service training courses can become an
input into identifying effective teachers and promoting them into roles of greater leadership and
responsibility.
The Diksha portal developed by the Ministry of Hu Then Resource Development implements
these Principles for content creation, but delivering full potential will also depend on integration
into teacher Evaluations, increments and promotions along the lines outlined above.

6. Private school regulation and RTE reforms: While Central and state departments of
government mostly focus on government-run schools (for which they have implementation
responsibility), it is imperative that education policy accounts for the large prevalence of private
school providers. Recent estimates suggest that over 40 per cent of school enrolment in India is
in private schools, with the share being over 70 per cent in several large cities (FICCI and Ernst
& Young Report 2014). The total share of private school enrolment in the twenty largest states
is around 55 per cent at the secondary and higher secondary levels.

A national education policy should focus on the quality of education received by every student in
India and not distinguish between a student enrolled in a public or in a private school. Thus, a
critical enabler of improving education quality in India is expanding the supply of high-quality
institutions (both public and private).

However, there are severe constraints on the entry of high-quality private school providers -
most notably placed by the RTE. We now have data to assess the implementation of the RTE to
offer an informed view on how this has affected education quality and availability in India.

There are two important reforms to RTE provisions on private schools that we recommend: .
Regulation of private schools based on disclosure a

and not based on input mandates: The RTE's input- based approach to education quality never
made sense given the extensive evidence that most school inputs are neither necessary nor
sufficient for improving learning outcomes. This has led to an unnecessary and disruptive
closure of several low-cost private schools that parents were choosing of their own accord. In
many cases, even government schools are in violation of these input-based norms. We
therefore recommend:

Repealing all input-based mandates for schools under the RTE (for both public and private
schools) and changing the approach to regulation of private schools to be based on
transparency and disclosure as opposed to input-based mandates. By focusing regulation on
disclosure, policy would acknowledge the considerable variation across India and allow diversity
of models of effective schooling to emerge. Regulation is still important, and private schools can
and should still be sanctioned for lying, but they should not have to meet input mandates.

Such an approach will facilitate (as opposed to inhibit) the expansion of quality private-school
providers and allow for variation in approaches across locations and providers. As an aside, it
would also facilitate localized cost-effective innovations by government schools, which may be
made difficult by the RTE (such as hiring tutors without formal teaching credentials for providing
supplemental instructional support).
b. Introduce a national policy for charter schools (that will at least permit serious pilots): The
goal of RTE Clause 12c was to provide students from economically weaker sections (EWS) the
opportunity to attend private schools, and it aimed to reimburse private schools for this.

The fundamental problem with this approach is that it was based on confiscating existing
capacity in private schools for a social purpose as opposed to creating new capacity. Further, it
was deeply illiberal in that it was basically a stealth nationalization of a quarter of private
schooling capacity without adequate compensation. Finally, data over the past five years show
that several states have (a) set the reimbursement rates considerably below the norms in the
law, and (b) in many cases not reimbursed private schools in a timely manner.

The consequence has been a steady shutting down of non-minority private schools that have
not been able to bear the burden of the cross-subsidy imposed on them by the RTE.

We therefore propose that RTE Clause 12c be replaced with an approach to public-private
partnerships that achieves the equity aims of RTE Clause 12c while also increasing the supply
of high- quality education options in India.

Specifically, global evidence suggests that charter schools - which are public schools that do not
charge fees (because they receive public funding equal to the per-child variable cost in the
public system) and cannot admit students selectively, but managed by private entities with
operational autonomy (especially over teacher hiring and accountability) - have been successful
at substantially improving outcomes for disadvantaged students while also increasing the total
supply of schools.

Indian evidence (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2015) suggests that private schools are
more productive than public schools (delivering similar or modest improvements in learning at a
much lower cost per child). Thus, if privately managed schools (with autonomy over teacher
hiring, retention, pay and performance management) were to have the same level of per-child
spending as the current government schooling system, we could potentially substantially
improve learning outcomes without increasing the spending per child from the status quo
(although there is no direct evidence of this to date). There are hundreds of high-quality
operators of private schools who would be willing to operate hundreds or thousands of new
schools (or take on management contracts of existing government schools) that serve EWS
students if offered a reliable per-child compensation by the government that is of similar
magnitude to the current spending per child in government schools.

Of course, leveraging such operators for providing a public interest good like education will
require adequate oversight and regulation. But an enabling framework for such an approach
could put India on a qualitatively different path for improving education outcomes in the coming
decade. At the very least, policy guidelines to this effect can motivate serious pilots and
evaluations of this approach.
7. Taking vocational education seriously: The jobs crisis in India is partly a skills crisis with
millions of 'educated unemployed youth on the one hand and employers routinely complaining
that they cannot find adequately skilled manpower. A major reason for this is the focus of the
education system on passing exams (usually by cramming) with no real understanding of the
subject

matter. While there is not enough research on vocational education in India to have evidence-
backed ideas for policy, there is suggestive evidence from the United States of the importance
of integrating vocational education into secondary and higher secondary school curricula.
Recent research suggests that the rising 'college wage premium' (defined as the wage increase
of a college graduate relative to a high school one) may not be being driven only by a more
complex economy and the greater need for higher education (as is commonly believed). Rather,
it suggests that this may be explained at least in part by changes in high school curricula.
Specifically, Alon (2018) shows that high school curricula in the United States used to have
substantial vocational content up to the 1950s but that this changed in the 1960s to focus
almost exclusively on college preparation.

While this made sense for students who did go to college, it may have worsened labour market
outcomes for those who did not - since their high school education did not suitably prepare them
for the labour market (compared to previous curricula that had more vocational content).

It is important for India not to repeat this mistake. Vocational education is widely seen as not
desirable and something that is only chosen by students who are not academically smart. This
will have to change if we are to provide the human capital needed to enable inclusive growth.

Some of the leading education systems in the world, including those in Singapore, Germany
and Switzerland, feature tracking of students into vocational streams after grades six or seven.
This allows these students to obtain more human capital than they would obtain by staying in
school, through a combination of vocational classroom training and practical training or
apprenticeships. The training is also linked to credible credentialing (which is sorely missing in
our current skills ecosystem). This enables markets to pay a wage premium for skills, and
qualified workers in technical fields can earn middle-class wages and incomes.

India would do well to think seriously about such an approach, which would likely better serve
the millions of students who 'pass' exams but cannot find jobs because they have no real skills.

Appendix A: Heterogeneity and Learning Levels in Middle and Primary Grades

The figures on pages 161 and 163 show the levels and dispersion of student achievement in
mathematics and Hindi in samples of students from two states, Delhi and Rajasthan. This
comes from two separate studies using the Mindspark software (developed by Educational
Initiatives, an Ahmedabad-based company) with government school students in these states.
The graphs rely on two pieces of information: (a) the grade that students are enrolled in and (b)
the software's assessment, based on a common diagnostic test given to all students at the
beginning of the intervention which assesses their actual ability levels. This can be thought of as
the software's assessment (based on all questions answered) of the achievement level of the
child (and is the level at which the software will begin to pitch instruction afterwards).

Figures 1 and 2 come from a sample of students from five government schools in Delhi who had
chosen to take part in an evaluation study of Mindspark and had been selected randomly by
lottery (and are reproduced from Muralidharan, Singh, and Ganimian 2017).

Note that the main reason these data rely on computer- based assessments is that the tests are
administered without

Figures 1 and 2: Learning levels in Delhi schools

ceiling or floor effects. This dynamic testing allows us to measure the exact learning level of
each student. In contrast, paper-and-pencil tests (typically of grade-level content) suffer from
severe floor effects in the Indian context. Thus, if a student has a very low score on such a test,
we have no idea as to how far below grade-appropriate competence the student is (whereas
this is not a problem on a dynamic computer-based test).

There are three key patterns illustrated by these figures:

1. By the beginning of grade 6, students are, on average, 2.5 years behind in maths.

2. By grade 9, this gap is even larger, at about 4.5 years in maths and 2.5 in Hindi.

3. In any given grade, the learning levels of students span four or five grade levels.

The patterns shown in these figures may well be the most important facts about education in
India. While the facts about low average levels of learning are well known, these figures
illustrate two additional critical points (2 and 3). In particular, the striking variation in student
learning levels within a class highlights both how far behind grade- level curricular standards
many students are and also the extremely challenging task for teachers in government schools
in handling such variation in student achievements.

Consistent with the patterns in these figures, Muralidharan, et al. (2019) also find that students
in the lowest third of within-grade test scores make no progress at all in learning during the
school year, despite being enrolled in and attending school (consistent with their being so far
behind curricular standards that textbook-based classroom instruction is essentially useless).

These facts are implied by several other studies across India as well, and are likely to be an
important reason for why the very large increases in education expenditure and resources in the
past two decades have not translated into improved learning (because these resources do not
address the binding constraint of the education system, which is that children are too far
behind).

One limitation of Figures 1 and 2 is that the sample is limited, coming only from five schools in
one city and, further, from a non-representative set of students who chose to be part of the
study.

Figures 3 and 4 draw instead on a much larger sample of over 5000 students in forty Adarsh
schools in four districts in Rajasthan, covering both urban and rural areas and spanning the
entire range of elementary school from classes one to eight (from an ongoing study of the
impacts of deploying the Mindspark software in government schools in Rajasthan).

All students in these classes in the programme schools were covered (and hence we do not
need to worry about self-selection of better/worse performing students here). As we can see,
the entire pattern observed in the smaller sample in Delhi is evident in Rajasthan too: there is
similar dispersion in classes six to eight as in Delhi, and
similar deficits compared to curricula which widen over

his periodhore importantly, we see that this process of this widening spans the entire period of
elementary school widening eficit from grade-appropriate standards and the dispersion within a
classroom both increasing sharply with every additional year.

These graphs illustrate the most critical constraints in the structure of the Indian education
system today: the curriculum targets only the very top of the distribution and leaves most
students behind; the immense variation within a classroom makes the delivery of any effective
instruction very hard; and, consequently, most students are far from class-appropriate standards
even after completing the full course of elementary education.

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