Grading the COVID-19 Classroom: A Parental Evaluation

  Source: The Hindu

Exactly three years ago, PM Modi announced the first nationwide lockdown for 21 days. Panic, crises, and chaos soon ensued. Little did we know that the misery would last much beyond 21 days. The memories of the pandemic bring to mind the images of people queuing in front of stores for daily essentials, migrants walking on foot across states, and rising death tolls. 

Among the several things that the pandemic put to the test was the K-12 education system. Schools were shut for nearly 500 days. Some schools closed down; others shifted online. Houses became new centres of schooling.

How a system performs during a crisis holds essential lessons about the resilience and antifragility (as Taleb would call it) of different players in the system. Several well-resourced private and government schools moved to online education and leveraged tech to engage students in learning activities. But what happened with schools in low-income rural districts? While the worst is past us and schools have reopened, this lockdown anniversary lets us look back and reflect on what happened in school education during the pandemic. 

Some organisations decided to study this early on in the pandemic. Although it helped provide timely information, it was too early to make any decisive claims on schools' different approaches. Others decided not to examine parental perception. 

Typically, parents are the ones who assess different schooling options and decide where and how their children will study. We were keen to know how parents viewed the various education providers and their level of satisfaction with each. So, at the Centre for Civil Society, we decided to conduct such a study.

We turned to the state with one of the lowest GDP per capita— Jharkhand. We went to five districts and surveyed ~5000 parents. We asked parents what they thought about the schools they sent their children to before, during, and after the pandemic. Post the survey, we also assessed the learning levels of their children in reading and maths using the ASER tools. 

A few interesting things emerged. We found that 25% of the parents send their children to private schools, even though only 17% of the schools in Jharkhand are private. In fact, during the pre-COVID period, the percentage of students enrolled in private schools was higher (28%).  

Our survey makes it clear that, in most aspects, private schools were better able to respond to the crisis. Private schools provided a greater diversity of learning materials, like online classes(39.5%),  audio/video learning modules (11.3%), and access to online learning portals (12%). This is true even though private schools were barred from raising fees and likely suffered from fee defaults. A study by CSF shows that school revenues decreased between 20% - 50% during the lockdown. 

Next, we asked parents how happy they were with their child’s education. Of the parents who send their children to private schools, 68% said they were “happy” or “extremely happy”. In the case of government schools, 57% of the parents said the same.

Children's performance on the learning tools shows that parents' assessment is accurate. We observed that parents' ratings of their child's academic performance tended to be similar to the child's test scores. So how did children perform in our study?

• 68% of the children in private schools are at the highest proficiency level in reading compared to 50% of the children who go to government schools (A high proficiency level means the child can comfortably read a story in Hindi). 

• 63% of children in private schools are at the highest proficiency level in maths, compared to 41% of the children in government schools (A high proficiency in maths means the child can perform division). 

Private schools are providing better learning outcomes. ASER  2022 shows an even wider gap between private and government schools in learning outcomes. 9.5% of students studying in Class 3 government schools can read a Class 2 text compared to 42.4% of students in private schools. And 20.8% of Class 5 government schools can divide compared to 52.7% of the students in private schools. Private schools provide better outcomes by charging an approximate monthly fee of ~ INR 500 (average based on what the parents reported in our study)¹ 

Not surprisingly, parents increasingly aspire to send their children to private schools. The UNESCO 2022 Report finds how ~1 in 2 adults in India believe that the primary responsibility of delivering education should not lie with the government. When we asked the parents, "If money was not a barrier, which kind of school would they like to send their children to?", 60% of those who send their children to government schools said they would like them to go to private schools instead. 

People often make the folly to assume that parents lack the information and know-how to decide what is best for their children. We think of parents as naive young children themselves. There is little truth to this.

If you are curious, you can view all of our results here. You may find a story we missed. 

P.S. Given the uproar surrounding the Oscar-winning Telugu song, “Natu-Natu” we would like to pick your brains on a recently released Telugu movie, “Vathi”, directed by Venky Atluri. What do you think about the movie’s take on the privatisation of education? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

See you until the next issue,

1. Note that the difference in results is likely because ASER covers all districts, and we only looked at five.