The findings, which were collected from 35,000 children across 28 districts in 26 Indian states, were based on these four domains. Additionally, the study included a series of qualitative interviews conducted in Sitapur (Uttar Pradesh), Solan (Himachal Pradesh), and Dhamtari (Chhattisgarh), which delved deeper into the aspirations of the youth.

Education doesn’t automatically translate into increased ability

The report shows that overall, approximately 87 percent of the surveyed youth are enrolled in some kind of educational institution. The ratio of school and college dropouts has reduced over the years, with more young people completing senior secondary school than ever before. But when those who are not enrolled were asked why they discontinued their studies, the most commonly cited reason at 18.9 percent was ‘lack of interest’. Financial concerns, family constraints, failing to pass exams, and other challenges fell lower on the scale. Interestingly, 26 percent of those not enrolled in any educational institution reported that they used their smartphones regularly for some educational activity, such as watching online videos, exchanging notes, and resolving doubts.

“We can learn how to manage a household, how to talk to others, how to present ourselves, and how to respect the people around us,” a girl in class 10 from Sitapur responded when asked about the benefits of education.

For an age group that is expected to learn trigonometry and calculus as per the curriculum, only 43 percent could solve basic division problems.

However, it appears that years of schooling do not necessarily translate into proportional levels of learning. Approximately 75 percent could read a class 2 level text in their regional language and 57 percent could read simple texts in English. For an age group that is expected to learn trigonometry and calculus as per the curriculum, only 43 percent could solve basic division problems, and 10 percent could calculate simple interest on loans.

The current system doesn’t appear to account for the socio-economic background of a learner. Many of the youngsters reported that they have to work while pursuing education. Approximately 77 percent of the youth surveyed do some form of household work. Of the 34 percent who reported engaging in some form of paid work for more than 15 days in a month, 85 percent participate in agricultural work. The education system doesn’t reward children who work—rather, there’s a higher probability that their performance at school declines due to the increased workload that comes in secondary school.

Most of these findings align with those observed in ASER 2017. However, since digital access was increasingly incorporated in education during and post the pandemic, ASER 2023 added a digital skills assessment component, wherein youth were asked to attempt basic tasks using a smartphone. The test offers a clearer insight into the way technology has fundamentally changed the way youth are learning and thinking about their future.

Digital literacy is not the problem

Over the past few years, there has been a steady increase in smartphone penetration in India. True to this trend, ASER 2023 observed that 90 percent of the adolescents surveyed had access to a smartphone and 67.1 percent of the total sample were able to produce a smartphone during the survey itself (others indicated that the smartphone was with a parent/sibling who wasn’t present at home during the survey). Approximately 92 percent of those who were able to produce a smartphone during the survey were able to complete the digital tasks successfully on the following aspects.  

1. Ease of usability

Approximately 80 percent of young people who possess smartphones are capable of locating a particular video on YouTube, and of this group, 90 percent know how to share it with a friend. In addition, 70 percent can navigate the internet to seek answers to inquiries, while close to two-thirds are able to set an alarm for specific times. A little more than one-third can use Google Maps to ascertain the duration of travel between two destinations.

During these digital assessments, boys tended to perform better than girls in most tasks. However, the primary factor in this case appeared to be smartphone ownership. Among those who knew how to use smartphones, 43.7 percent boys and 19.8 percent girls actually owned the smartphone. When the differences in ownership disappear, so does the difference in digital skills between boys and girls. Computer ownership was found to be far lower than smartphones (less than 10 percent), but there were similar trends in digital skill patterns. Digital literacy is directly proportional to increased access to devices.

2. Tech for creativity and life skills

The survey clearly indicated that young people look at technology as a pathway for creative expression. Approximately 78 percent use their smartphones for entertainment-related activities such as watching movies or listening to music, 57 percent play games regularly, and 90 percent had used some form of social media in the previous week.

“With a phone in our hands, we can learn anything without having to spend money or ask anyone [for permission],” Shristhi Sandhil, an 18-year-old from Jharkhand, said as she talked about how she uses YouTube for learning new creative skills. This sentiment was echoed by many, who highlighted that it was the freedom afforded by the smartphone that made them turn to it.

The smartphone has enabled wider skill acquisition by cutting across barriers of access and opportunity. More than 35 percent of the youth reported using their smartphone to engage in dance, music, photography, and other hobbies.

Given the increased use of technology, including for creative expression, it is important to acknowledge that what was once an extra-curricular might have to become a part of the core of the curriculum. While creativity has a significant place in the cultural context of Indian communities and despite its recognition as a key twenty-first century skill, it is yet to be brought to life in a tangible manner by the education system. Through games, projects, activities, and other forms of interactive learning approaches enabled by technology, creativity needs to become a core facet of academic learning.

Young peoples’ aspirations tell a story

When asked about their aspirations, there were clear patterns across states and genders. For instance, in terms of career aspirations, while ‘nursing’ was the top voted choice in Kerala for girls, it was ‘teaching’ in Rajasthan, ‘doctor’ in Jammu and Kashmir, and ‘police’ in Maharashtra. Similarly, boys in Assam chose ‘army’, those in Tamil Nadu chose ‘engineering’, and in Chhattisgarh it was ‘agriculture’. While girls indicate a stronger aspiration for higher education, boys appeared to prioritise income generation as they plan their careers.

A boy studying in class 10 in Dhamtari told us, “I will become famous and gain respect in the community—there’s a boy from the village went into the army. My father had failed high school, but because of this [his son joining the army] he will also gain recognition. I will get money as well. And I will be able to protect the country.”

Both boys and girls indicated that social responsibilities would ultimately shape their decisions.

But what was concerning is that approximately 1 in 5 youth surveyed said that they did not know what they wished to pursue. Of the ones who indicated preference for a particular kind of work, 45 percent indicated that they didn’t know anyone engaged in that line of work. While more than 40 percent reported using a smartphone to search for information related to their future career, the availability of a role model in their community appears to play a strong role in determining if youth are able to make choices related to their career.

Both boys and girls also indicated how social responsibilities would ultimately shape their decisions. A class 10 girl from Sitapur said to the survey team, “My father says he will let me complete my BA  before I am to be married, although my brother says that they can arrange my married once I get admitted. I can’t say anything in such matters; it is up to them.” This experience was similar for many girls, who indicated that marriage will play a strong role in determining their future, while boys felt they were expected to earn enough to pay for all household expenses. These reasons also lead to a lack of aspirations around vocational work and agriculture, as they are not seen as socially acceptable or lucrative futures.

The influence of socio-economic contexts on career choices is undeniable. This underscores the need to establish a system that recognises the role that social milestones play in determining the career choices of young people. At the same time, the education system should provide pathways that enable youth to overcome the barriers imposed by these conventions.

What next?

Rather than inspiring lifelong learning, it appears that the consequence of the current model is burnout before adulthood. When the education system acts as sieve, and we see masses of youth who are unskilled and unemployable, we must ask ourselves: Why are we still trying to filter our adolescents based on their ability to clear exams that might not be relevant for the current job market? There are some clear learnings from ASER 2023 that educators need to apply:

• As access to smart devices increases, it is probable that digital literacy will automatically grow. This needs to be leveraged to help youth acquire skills that are going to be relevant for the future of work.
• Increased access to smartphones offers us the opportunity to develop open learning models that includes focus on twenty-first century skills like creativity without worrying about the restrictions typically faced by the school system.
• Young people need accessible role models in order to be able to break social conventions and make meaningful decisions to pursue their dreams.

We need to shift towards a model that incentivises learners to learn more, well after they leave the confines of a formal system.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn potential ways of solving India’s digital divide.
• Learn more about empowering the youth to build sustainable futures.
• Read this article to learn why reliable data on learning outcomes is crucial.

But can a system that has primarily relied on monitoring, corporal punishment, and rote learning deliver the goals of the NEP? What will it take for education officials at the state, district, and block levels, and for school leaders and teachers to adapt to the radical changes the NEP proposes?

Behavioural change in education

The success of educational initiatives—whether in foundational literacy and numeracy or teacher professional development—depends on the mindset of key stakeholders and how they perceive their own and others’ roles. This often necessitates a change in behaviour.

Behavioural change in school education is a relatively young field. It involves changing the behaviour of teachers and school administrators through a series of small but sustained techniques, or behavioural nudges, anchored in feedback, reflection, and action planning—the key design elements of behavioural change. The long-term objective of this approach is to radically improve education through systemic change.

At Centre for Intrinsic Motivation (CIM), we work with the education system and have used behavioural nudges and techniques to change teacher and administrator behaviours.

We work closely with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the body in charge of teacher development and training in every state, to enable implementation at scale. CIM sets up a core design and implementation team at the SCERT, co-creates content for the programme with them, and trains them to run it in that state.

One of the first things we do is elect a district champion, who could either be a District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) principal or a DIET facilitator. We conduct a full learning cycle for them and mentor them throughout the journey. District officials work closely with block and cluster officers, and the latter work with schoolteachers, conducting monthly teacher network meetings, classroom observations, and skill development workshops using the content that we develop.

Our interventions in Delhi, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu offer valuable insights into how these techniques can positively impact the attitudes of district officials, teachers, and students, leading to better classroom environments and sustainable change within the education system.

1. Facilitate self-assessment for teachers

Research has established that teacher beliefs determine teaching behaviour. If teachers believe that students can learn irrespective of their social and economic backgrounds, they bring that belief to their classroom practice. But how can teachers’ beliefs be assessed?

We begin with a module on self-reflection, which involves several open-ended discussions that attempt to understand what teachers think. We ask them a series of questions and present them with a range of situations, and the teachers’ responses to these prompts tell us about their mindset—whether they feel students are capable of learning something new, whether teachers themselves can learn or admit to their shortcomings, and more. We often encounter perceptions such as: “this student cannot learn because they come from a poor economic background”, or “there’s no point in wasting time on ‘dull’ students”.  

Once we identify the connection between teachers’ attitude and what they practice, and spot the gap between practice and desired outcome, we develop further modules. The insights from these sessions are funnelled into action plans that teachers take to the classroom to test. Students’ responses to these fresh approaches—which include a change in the way teachers address them and new activities designed for them—support or help disprove the methods tested. This evidence from the classroom aids the creation of follow-up sessions on cultivating a growth mindset among teachers. 

Mentoring teachers, supporting them to engage in deep conversations, and nudging them to reflect on their biases and their approach to teaching have contributed to a shift in attitudes. This attitudinal shift is key to teachers imbibing new pedagogies and technologies in their classroom practices.

2. Build self-esteem

One of the main impediments to exemplary teacher performance is low self-esteem. Often, officials and teachers are jaded about their roles. Their low motivation is driven by the poor quality of teacher education, inferior service conditions, lack of teacher autonomy, and few avenues for continuous professional development and support. Teachers lack the confidence to share, question, and think out of the box. We have found that providing them close mentoring and support has encouraged teachers to reconnect with the larger purpose of education and become proud of their role.

One of the ways we boost their confidence is through a module called ‘Building Connect’ that fosters a culture of trust and positive communication between teachers and their mentors. These mentors are fellow teachers selected from the more proficient among them. Those selected often had no prior idea of what mentoring entailed. When we explained it to them, they demurred, saying they lacked the confidence to mentor others. But we worked on developing their leadership skills through a series of small nudges.

In Delhi, we saw an increase of 19 percent in the self-esteem of teaching staff over four years.

We made the mentors aware, first and foremost, that their teaching methods were good and there was merit in sharing them with others. Realising that they were adding value not just to their own professional development, but also to that of their colleagues, boosted mentors’ self-esteem and confidence. We used the same method to identify teacher coordinators at the school level.

The next step was to improve collaboration and engagement between mentor teachers, teacher coordinators, and district officials to create a sense of ease around asking questions, making mistakes, and appreciating effort.

In Delhi, we saw an increase of 19 percent in the self-esteem of teaching staff over four years. A study done by the Dilshad Garden DIET in Delhi found that the majority of teachers showed increased confidence and motivation owing to the sharing of strategies, peer observation, and lesson planning during teacher network meetings.

3. Recognise and celebrate

Teachers crave platforms that recognise the difficult work they are doing. Creating communities of practitioners at the cluster and district levels has created avenues for them to be celebrated by both peers and government officials. Such appreciation has driven teachers in Tamil Nadu to share videos of their best practices with other teachers in the state, on WhatsApp and Padlet.

In Delhi, teachers who become part of the teacher network meetings are motivated to apply for the role of teacher coordinators and mentor teachers. The recognition they receive motivates them to continue conducting network meetings and supporting their peers, irrespective of the state mandate.

In Karnataka, recognition through cluster-level meetings has increased teacher self-esteem and confidence, furthering engagement with peers and officials. This evidences the genuine need for teachers to learn from one another. State governments can focus on identifying best practices and develop and diffuse these innovations within the system.

4. Encourage critical thinking

A central component of driving behavioural change is asking ‘why’. Nudging education officers to think about the ‘why’ of their policies and actions has sparked critical thinking. District review meetings have become more structured, and officials have started using data to reflect on the quality of their interventions. For example, in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district, the DIET principal wanted to understand how the post-COVID learning recovery programme was being implemented. Rather than ask for a status report, he encouraged block officials to discuss the teachers’ challenges and offer them support.

The CIM programme manager worked with his team to create Google forms to gather teacher feedback. CIM helped the DIET analyse this data, which revealed that many teachers faced two challenges: maintaining student portfolios for assessment and practising the suggested learning recovery activities. Based on this data, the district prepared a support plan for the teachers. Instead of reprimanding them for their lack of performance, block and cluster officials sought to understand the underlying problems and organised capacity-building workshops for them. They encouraged teachers to discuss their challenges related to student portfolios, clarified their doubts, and assisted them in contextualising action plans based on the individual needs of their students.  

“In most classrooms, only the children who know the right answers raise their hands, but I aim to create a classroom where every child participates,” shared a teacher from Panchayat Union Primary School, Kannigapuram, a two-teacher school in the Marakkanam block of Tamil Nadu’s Viluppuram district. 

CIM closely supports district officials through regular coaching calls and in-person meetings. We accompany them on teacher feedback sessions and classroom observations and offer feedback on the kind of questions they ask and the support they provide the teacher. 

In Karnataka, coaching calls confirm that officials are better able to connect to the overall purpose of their work. The calls have also evolved greatly. From conversations that required a lot of probing and effort on our side, most of them are now led by the officials themselves and focus on teacher development and problem-solving. 

The focus of officials during school visits and classroom observations has also changed. Earlier, they largely sought feedback on the administrative aspects of education delivery—such as attendance, infrastructure, and availability of books—and whether data was updated on the state’s management information system.

After several cycles of behavioural nudges, district officials now provide teachers with feedback on their lesson plans. They ask more open-ended questions, focusing on the quality of the teaching–learning process, challenges the teacher might face, how much of the lesson planning and execution the teacher was able to do on their own, and how often they collaborated with other teachers.

When a district coordinator changes their approach to teacher support and feedback, a ripple effect is seen in the quality of support received by teachers across the district. And teachers, in turn, rearrange their priorities in the classroom.

Behavioural bottlenecks

Behaviour change interventions are slow to execute because they necessitate attitudinal shifts. Facilitating such shifts in the education system isn’t easy. In the beginning, we faced resistance from both state officials and teachers. Education officers are tasked with multiple monitoring duties. Providing developmental feedback to teachers is time-consuming and requires the officers’ presence in the classroom. Many officials felt it was not part of their role to mentor teachers or observe classroom teaching processes, which also entails asking teachers about their lesson plans and preparations before coming to class and about their observation of student engagement. Officials would have to engage more deeply with teachers to obtain this information; this would take them and the teachers into deep and uncomfortable territory.

One of the teachers we worked with told us that he believed he was never wrong.

School principals also believed they only had to manage teachers and not support their professional development. They were also uncomfortable about assigning leadership roles to teachers. Coaching plays an important role in changing these perceptions.

Teachers, on the other hand, were defensive and resistant to feedback on their classroom practices. For example, all teachers undergo a prescribed number of hours of teacher training, but the implementation of that training in the classroom is unaccounted for. Now, to be questioned on student engagement and be told that students are losing interest wouldn’t go down well with them.

One of the teachers we worked with told us that he believed he was never wrong. After all, teachers are expected to know everything! After a series of behavioural change sessions, he says he now feels comfortable about acknowledging his mistakes and is open to feedback from not only his peers, but also from his students. 

Teachers also disclosed their initial reluctance to being observed by peers while taking classes and about discussing their challenges with officials—these activities led to them feeling threatened and judged. We had to help them realise that the officials were not there to test and grade them, but to support them to become better at what they do. The onus is on the official to display behaviour that reassures teachers of the former’s concern for them.

Work in progress

Building trust is a major step in overcoming these challenges and takes several years. But it can be achieved. Strong political and administrative will, along with educational leadership at both state and central levels, can galvanise long-term systemic change. It can do this by embedding key elements of behaviour change within district empowerment initiatives, policies, and professional development programmes.

—

Know more

• Read this article to learn how behavioural insights can be used to increase parent engagement in their children’s learning.
• Read this article to learn how a school in Delhi is changing teacher behaviours through role modelling.
• Read this article to learn how a livelihoods programme used a behavioural nudge to help low-income households create new assets.

Thus, those most impacted by the policy decisions often have the least influence over them—they often are excluded from identifying problems/needs they care about most, interpreting data finds, and shaping recommendations. This approach not only overlooks the valuable locally contextualised knowledge they possess, but also fails to uphold the principles of dignity.

Participatory approach to research

A participatory approach to research empowers communities to actively participate in decisions that impact their lives. It recognises the importance of listening to the voices of communities regarding what evidence is needed and how it should be interpreted and used. Evidence is a valuable resource that should be accessible to communities and influenced by their perspectives, ultimately shaping policy decisions. 

Recently, through Project Sampoorna in Jharkhand, India—(as part of the consortium, IDinsight is a monitoring and evaluation partner)—IDinsight used communication techniques and participatory methods like visual tools (storytelling boards and videos) to engage with school students and teachers—the primary respondents in the research. Through these tools, IDinsight shared some of the findings generated from the project’s baseline. This approach ensured participants’ inclusion in interpretation of data, thereby helping shape programmatic action based on their in-depth knowledge of school realities—this is a step toward more participatory research.

About the project

Project Sampoorna is a social-emotional learning (SEL) initiative led by the Government of Jharkhand in partnership with a consortium of non-profit organisations. At the request of our partners, we integrated a participatory lens in our evaluation efforts to ensure greater involvement of students and teachers. 

Since the idea of using a participatory lens was explored after the implementation and evaluation designs were already finalised, the participatory elements were adapted accordingly and were focused mainly on sharing baseline findings.

We had collected baseline data primarily through student and teacher interviews and classroom observations. We wanted to share our learnings on student social-emotional skill levels, teacher behaviour, school climate, etc. to help teachers and students use this new evidence. We also wanted to get teachers’ and students’ input to contextualise our findings. 

However, communicating complex survey findings with teachers and students, and ensuring their engagement, was fairly new to IDinsight—we typically share findings with policymakers and decision-makers but rarely with community members on the ground. We knew that sharing findings should not involve technical terms or a digital presentation; instead, we needed something simple, fun, inclusive and relatable. We worked with IDinsight’s Dignity and Lean Innovation teams to develop a plan and selected three school activities:

1. Short video on baseline findings shared with teachers and parents on WhatsApp 
2. Storyboard presentation and ‘Draw Your Vision’ activity with students
3. ​​Discussion on baseline findings with teachers

In this blog, we share the team’s lessons from planning and executing a participatory approach to sharing our findings with students and teachers in government-run schools of Jharkhand.

Key Lessons learnt from participatory work in schools

Phase 1: Planning

Lesson 1: Evidence/data needs careful framing to ensure relevance, simplicity, and sensitivity

To engage stakeholders with our findings effectively, the careful selection and framing of the data were crucial. 

For the video and storyboard presentation, we started by identifying the target audience and clearly defining key takeaways we wanted to communicate. We then shortlisted the most relevant and easy-to-understand findings to include.

For the discussion with teachers, we selected findings that, apart from being relevant and simple, were also those that we needed additional context on. We were mindful of sensitively framing the findings, especially those that highlighted improvement opportunities. Take a hypothetical example: If a finding states that “60% of teachers scold students for wrong answers,” we frame it as “most students feel cared for and heard by their teachers; however, data also shows that some teachers might scold students in the class.” In this way, we combine a negative finding with a positive one.

Input from teammates with experience in community engagement, including those outside of the project team, as well as our implementation partners who routinely work with these participants, played a valuable role in framing the findings. Additionally, we sought feedback from a group of teachers through a small pilot to ensure the findings were easy-to-understand, allowing the key takeaway to shine through.

Lesson 2: Visualising step-by-step execution of activities before school visits helps identify potential roadblocks and brainstorm solutions

To ensure smooth execution of our planned activities, we visualised the entire process from entering the school to conducting the activities to leaving the school. This helped us identify potential challenges, develop solutions, and gain more confidence. 

We planned to conduct the storyboard presentation and drawing activity with students, and discussion with teachers in each school on a single day; hence, time optimisation was of utmost importance. To ensure efficient dissemination, we talked to school leaders, teachers, and implementing partners in advance. We clearly shared the goals of the school visits, communicated the logistical support needed, and confirmed teacher and student availability. This helped us reduce the time needed to initiate and organise the activities upon reaching the schools.

Phase 2: Execution

Lesson 3: Communication techniques should be familiar, inclusive and relatable to ensure audience engagement 

To engage teachers and students with data effectively, we needed to use formats that resonated and had limited technical concepts. Our usual methods of sharing findings with clients would not have suited this context. 

We therefore chose storytelling and activity-based techniques to communicate. For instance, the storyboard presentation and drawing activities we chose were part of the students’ day-to-day academic curriculum. The story we built was quite relatable because it included a teacher trying to improve her relationship with students and working with them to improve the class climate. Alongside verbal storytelling, we used a storyboard printed on a large flexible material stuck to the class blackboard—which, again, the students were used to looking at every day during class. The storyboard helped add to how relatable the story was—we used characters that looked like them, wore the same uniforms, and sat in similar classrooms. The drawing activity was a group activity; students enjoyed working with colours and collaborating on what they wanted to draw.

Since videos are always fun to watch, easy to understand, and shareable on social media, we developed an animated video for teachers and parents. When we showed this video to teachers, they found the story similar to what they had experienced in schools and were positive that both parents and other teachers would like and learn from it! Before starting the drawing activity, we also showed the video to the students, which inspired their drawing ideas.

Lesson 4: Using local and colloquial language by a familiar/relatable presenter helps the audience connect with the activities

To ensure relatability with the students, our team’s Field Manager took on the role of the storyteller for the storyboard presentation. It was important for the presenter to be someone the students could connect with in terms of language and cultural familiarity. We created a concise script in the local language with a colloquial touch, making it simple for students to understand.

As storytelling was a new format for IDinsight, we conducted multiple mock sessions with the team to refine the script and improve the tone and energy of delivery. Once finalised, our Field Manager diligently rehearsed the script with teammates and children in his community to improve its delivery. 

While delivering the storyboard presentations in schools, we actively engaged the students by asking simple questions they answered in unison. This interactive approach helped maintain their attention and connection with the story.

Similarly, the video script went through several revisions with our video production agency to ensure the language avoided jargon and appeared friendly and relatable.

Lesson 5: Creating a comfortable and safe environment is necessary for good participation and candour

IDinsight’s interaction with students and teachers is typically limited to when we visit schools for data collection on our monitoring and evaluation work. This was the first time we visited schools to share our findings instead, and creating a comfortable environment for students was a top priority for their participation, enjoyment, and learning. 

We collaborated with our implementation partners, who regularly engage with schools. Their presence helped us establish a rapport with school leaders, teachers, and students. Our partners facilitated introductions, conducted icebreaker games with students, and helped us communicate better with teachers and students. 

We also actively participated in icebreakers, which helped students feel at ease with us. The “draw your vision” activity allowed quieter students to express themselves through art, ensuring inclusivity. We also emphasised that participation in the activities was voluntary and respected students’ choice not to participate.

With teachers, we initiated conversations with a round of introductions and discussing the subjects they teach. We empathised with their experiences and challenges, creating a comfortable space for them to share their thoughts and opinions openly.

Phase 3: Insights Generation

Lesson 6: Document participants’ insights and recommendations to inform programme design and implementation

Given our goal of seeking input on the baseline findings, our activities were specifically designed to generate valuable insights. We took diligent notes on teacher and student responses and observed their levels of engagement. While the input on findings from teachers was relatively straightforward, the feedback from students was particularly interesting. 

This is because the latter was in the form of semi-structured discussions, and drawings we reviewed to derive meaningful insights. We shared these valuable insights with our partners to inform programme improvement efforts. For example, an artwork showcased classmates supporting a student with a physical disability and including him in their playground games. This vision could be used to build a student parliament-led project to ensure a disability-friendly school environment and infrastructure.

What’s next?

Our initial foray into participatory methods as part of the Sampoorna project has been a valuable learning experience. These insights will shape our future work and contribute to the broader landscape of similar projects at IDinsight. As we move forward, we are excited to refine our approach further, deepen our collaborative efforts, and continue making a positive impact in the communities we serve.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sumedha Jalote, Neha Raykar, and Debendra Nag for their reviews and valuable input on this blog. Special thanks to Tom Wein for his guidance in shaping this work and encouraging thoughtful reflection and knowledge sharing.

This article was originally published on IDinsight.

Start-ups and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) contribute significantly to the economic growth of a country by generating employment, bridging regional disparities, and improving the standard of living in various communities. Given the macroeconomic opportunities and the huge potential of the demographic dividend—India is projected to have 1.04 billion working people by 2030—the Government of India has been putting an impetus on entrepreneurship through programmes such as Make in India and Startup India. However, such efforts to make a difference may fall short if the working population is deficient in entrepreneurial skills and ambitions. Therefore, the need to make the population of India ‘entrepreneurship ready’ is urgent.

The graduate student enrolment rate in India is approximately 25–28 percent, depending on the method of calculation. This means that more than three quarters of the students who complete high school do not enrol in higher education and instead seek to enter the labour market each year. Most of these students do not possess employability skills and some lack even basic foundational skills. The youth unemployment rate in the country hovers around 25 percent.

Given the size of the Indian population, there is an urgency to equip the youth coming out of school with skills for seeking and generating employment. It would, thus, be of value to Indian society if entrepreneurship education starts at the high-school level.

Experiments in teaching entrepreneurship early

Currently, formalised education in entrepreneurship is often included at the graduation and post-graduation levels in India, and only at technical and management institutes. In most cases, these courses use conventional teaching methods and do not require students to participate actively. Questioning the practice that entrepreneurship education is only for those enrolled in college, the Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum (EMC) was instituted for classes 9–12 in Delhi government schools. The basic premise was that the development of entrepreneurial abilities and mindset through experiential learning in school would not only drive creativity, innovation, and passion to build something new or solve a social problem, but would also facilitate one’s career growth.

In 2021, to push the experiential component of the curriculum further, a large-scale programme called Business Blasters was announced. Students in classes 11 and 12 would work on a business idea that could generate profit and/or create social impact.

The programme was designed to build the awareness and skills required for entrepreneurship, including business acumen, curiosity, collaboration, communication, and overcoming the fear of failure. A seed capital of up to INR 2,000 was allocated to each team of 10 students. They were asked to come up with business ideas that would be useful, practical, profit-making, or that created social impact, and had potential for growth. The teams were mentored to improve upon their business idea before finally pitching it to investors. The six-month-long programme involved approximately 3 lakh students, 1,000 school leaders or principals, more than 10,000 teachers, 1,000 business coaches and mentors, and a special task force of the Department of Education. It was personally overseen by Delhi’s minister of education.

Given that it was a pioneering initiative, there was much that we learned during this programme with regard to pedagogy and implementation of entrepreneurial education with an experiential component. Here are some of our key learnings.

1. It opens up career choices 

This large-scale programme on experiential entrepreneurship proved to be a real-life career choice laboratory. It helped students become more observant and aware of their surroundings, which led to a greater sense of curiosity and critical thinking around potential opportunities and possibilities. The students said that they were pleasantly surprised to learn that they could not only solve problems in their environment, but also earn a livelihood while doing so.

Most students who study in government schools in Delhi come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The primary breadwinners in these students’ families are their fathers/mothers, who work as helpers, cleaners, mechanics, or in clerical jobs. Owing to their economic condition, these students are required to enter the labour market early (soon after school) to support their families. This leaves them with limited opportunities for higher education.

The Business Blasters programme helped them think of entrepreneurship as a legitimate and rewarding career option on completion of high school.

2. It helps increase employability skills and self-efficacy

Our conversations with students showed us that the skills and abilities gained in the process of running a business were likely to create a lasting impact irrespective of the outcome.

During the intense hands-on process of thinking of an idea, taking feedback, improving the idea, working with a team, making a pitch, building the product, and selling it, the students became aware of their strengths and weaknesses, developed confidence and improved self-efficacy, learned to take risks, and were able to effectively communicate their ideas and problem-solve.

No amount of classroom learning or participating in mock activities would have helped them build such skills. Students who were team leaders also expressed that, for the first time, they understood the importance of teamwork and collaboration, what it meant to face challenges in planning and execution, how to deal with conflict, and ways of navigating setbacks. Experiential learning made learning more relevant and real for most students.

3. It changes the mindset of stakeholders

Business coaches, teachers, and officers involved in the programme shared that seeing the participating students build and take charge of their businesses made them aware that these students—just like their own children—had potential. The various stakeholders involved in the programme shared that the students were better off when the support they were being provided moved away from the frame of charity and empowerment. Instead, it is better to focus on providing opportunities that are typically not available to the students.

Running an innovative project at scale

The time-bound nature of the project, the uncertainty caused by first-time implementation, and concerns about the safety of the minors involved helped us learn about large-scale project management of new ideas. Based on our analysis of the way the programme was run, it was clear that while policymakers can provide the vision, it takes a team of dedicated individuals working in collaboration to execute this vision. The on-ground team benefitted from the following approaches on the project:

1. Tight deadlines

The individuals who were responsible for project implementation shared that they appreciated the tight monitoring and deadlines during the process. It helped them focus while carrying out tasks that were unfamiliar and outside the scope of their work and expertise. They mentioned that in the absence of deadlines, it was likely that the teams would not have performed as well.

2. Autonomy

They further acknowledged that the sheer challenge of executing a large-scale project made them innovate and find their own resources to complete the work. It was not only the monitoring but also the operational autonomy (within situational and project constraints) given by the top team to the on-ground teams at various levels that led to the successful implementation of the project. The school teams also appreciated the freedom they had to shape the journeys of student teams that belonged to their school.

3. Shared learning

Being able to share concerns and solutions across schools made it possible to quickly learn and find solutions for sticky issues such as finding mentors and ensuring student safety. Not all problems could be envisaged by the central team and not all answers could be found within the implementing teams. Open communication in all directions helped in finishing the project and facing the challenges that came along the way.

One of the key challenges we encountered related to the network of business coaches, investors, and others who played an important role in creating a supportive environment for the students.

Several local entrepreneurs and BBA/MBA students agreed to take on the role of business coaches on a pro bono basis. In hindsight, however, we think the pro bono nature of the work needs to be revisited, and mentors need to be managed better as they faced several challenges during the course of the programme.

Mentors and coaches had trouble taking out time and travelling to meet the teams, and many of them ultimately dropped out. The coaches had little flexibility in scheduling the sessions, since the meetings with the students (who are minors) had to be conducted during school hours in the presence of the schoolteacher.

While mentorship may be provided pro bono, there is a need to find innovative ways to incentivise the business coaches, who spent two to three hours per week each month with the students. Use of group chats and video conferencing are ways to work around the distance and travel issues for continued support. But a few face-to-face meetings must be factored in while drawing budgets in the future.

For the long-term engagement of business coaches, identifying ways to support and reward them will become a relevant exercise as the programme progresses. Additionally, schoolteachers—several of whom were mentoring students on business ideas for the first time—need to be trained.

For more experiments like the Business Blasters programme, the wholehearted involvement of the school system and the bureaucracy cannot be overemphasised. Considering the current crisis of higher education and record high unemployment, such experiments, we believe, are worthy of emulation. A systematic analysis of the experiment’s success will help in better implementation of the next edition of such a programme.

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Know more:

• Read more about what is lacking in life skills assessment in India.
• Read more about the importance of entrepreneurship in school curriculums.

In the last year or so, a subset of AI—generative AI—has been gaining traction. Generative AI uses deep learning to analyse existing sets of data to create new outputs. Unlike its predecessors, generative AI also has reasoning capabilities. ChatGPT, which can produce human-like responses to text prompts, and DALL-E, which can create images and artworks from text prompts, are popular examples of generative AI. 

The rise of generative AI has raised curiosity and piqued interests. It’s early days and there’s no clear verdict, but its potential has opened up many possibilities. This article looks at some of these possibilities and highlights how generative AI can be effectively adopted in the education sector.

Generative AI in education

Generative AI can help bridge many gaps in a country like India that has vast cultural and social differences and barriers of inequality. It can be beneficial to various sets of stakeholders in the education system, be it students, teachers, or parents.

Recognising the importance of developing AI skills for children, CBSE has introduced AI as a skill module in classes 6–8 and as a skill subject in classes 9–12. Additionally, there are several organisations that are creating virtual assistants for students, teachers, and parents to enable them to learn and teach better. Many such initiatives are now being seen across a diverse set of use cases.

Here are some potential ways in which generative AI can be used:

1. Parents can leverage virtual assistants to figure out activities they can do with their child to help enhance their reading and comprehension skills. For example, parents can narrate stories generated by the AI to the child or get the child to read aloud a story. This can be especially useful for parents who aren’t literate but want to be involved in their child’s education.

2. Generative AI can help teachers follow the prescribed guidelines for teaching in an efficient way without spending hours going through multiple reading materials. A virtual assistant built on generative AI can assist a teacher in planning unique and engaging classroom activities by referring to a selection of carefully chosen documents and expert insights and suggesting methods that may work in a class setting.

3. This technology can adapt to the unique needs of a child and so, under the assistance of a caring adult (teacher, parent, or community member), it can be extremely helpful in early childhood education where learning pace and approaches vary from one child to another. It can be useful in developing foundational literacy and numeracy and teaching basic language skills.

4. Generative AI can assist with speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech translations, and also adjust the tone and cultural context while translating. This will help in making education more inclusive for children from various linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds. 

5. Generative AI can help create virtual labs on smartphones, especially for students in senior grades and colleges. This will be particularly useful for students from marginalised backgrounds who may not have access to a physical lab to perform science experiments or learn vocational skills. AI can aid in helping them understand these skills and concepts.

6. Virtual assistants can be used to resolve students’ doubts and queries and also help them in developing skills such as critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, and communication. It can be a function of how one trains the virtual assistant to aid students in developing these skills. Students can speak with the virtual assistant in their local language, write and scan text, or type into it directly. Similarly, a school app that uses virtual assistants can be customised for students, teachers, and parents to track assignments, attendance, results, etc.

Many of these are already being piloted by various organisations that are working closely with a set of stakeholders on the ground.

Approaches for effective adoption

While there are many possible ways to implement it, currently the adoption of generative AI in the education space remains minimal and experimental. In order to incorporate it in our programmes more effectively, the following things need to be kept in mind:

1. Picking the right problem

Amid the myriad of potential applications for generative AI, it’s crucial to ensure that our focus is directed towards solving and addressing the correct issues. For example, it is important to identify the real problems that a teacher faces while teaching a class or managing it. Can there be more constructive methods of doing so? What’s the most practical way for a teacher to do this without giving up their own agency? Are the suggestions contextual and relevant for the teacher to implement?

Forums and events, user research, and focus group discussions with the community serve as a valuable compass for shaping appropriate solutions and policies.

One useful approach involves gaining insights into the challenges faced by the target audience and relevant stakeholders. Forums and events, user research and understanding, and focus group discussions that engage with the community and delve into their real-world experiences serve as a valuable compass for shaping both appropriate solutions as well as policies. These foster open communication and deeper empathy towards the problem so that solutions and policies are co-created while paying attention to inclusion and co-designing for diverse stakeholders and perspectives.

In the early stages, it is also useful to ensure that programmes are undertaken in a low-stakes manner. This means that evolution goes through stages with appropriate checks and balances. To avoid undesirable results, one can always figure out the value proposition at a smaller scale. 

2. Building the ecosystem

Most organisations working in the education space are not equipped to build or leverage generative AI. For example, if an organisation wants to build a storytelling application that narrates stories to children in the local dialect, they would need a diverse set of experts from the technology ecosystem, besides domain experts. This calls for greater synergy between the education space and the tech space and a conducive ecosystem that supports them. However, fostering such collaborations requires resources, money, permissions, and access. Therefore, without the support of funders, policymakers, and a larger ecosystem, this synergy is not possible.

3. Figuring out who takes responsibility

When an organisation engages technology experts to develop applications on their behalf, the issue of responsibility and ownership becomes quite complicated. For instance, if an organisation collaborates with a state government and a technology expert to implement a new application, the following questions arise: Who assumes the charge of managing and monitoring the app? Who rightfully claims ownership of the technology and shoulders the onus of data governance? Who accepts accountability for any setbacks? This requires careful crafting of policy guardrails and guidelines, governance structures, and clarity in the roles and responsibilities of those involved so that stakeholder interests can be safeguarded. There needs to be a clear policy on how the data is coming in, whether it is anonymised, and what this data is being used for.

4. Checking for bias

Since generative AI is heavily dependent on the data it is being fed, biases are a pertinent threat. These biases can be detrimental to a child’s education or can lead to exclusion. While building models, it is important to ensure that no inherent bias is getting introduced and that the impact of the tool on the child has been evaluated. The onus should also extend to other players in the space including parents, teachers, and the community. For this, models should be tested thoroughly with smaller cohorts to identify and address such biases before deploying them at scale.

So far, generative AI has elicited a range of responses—either it is being hailed as the biggest technological breakthrough of the century or being met with vehement criticism. However, for wider adoption, its potential benefits need to be recognised while also acknowledging the challenges it presents.

Generative AI can help in overcoming the challenges to education in India only if it has an ecosystem that innovates and supports its growth, participates in its evaluation, and assumes responsibility for failures. This ecosystem should comprise community members; social, private, and public sector organisations; experts; thought leaders; and funders, and demand active participation from each of these stakeholders.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn about how to EdTech can work in low-resource settings.
• Read this article to learn more about generative AI in the education sector.
• Read this article to learn about the digital divide in the education sector.

For children from these communities, schools provide safety and a routine. They ensure that children are not pushed into labour. Attending school is also a way for girls to avoid early marriage and ensure mobility and freedom. Additionally, the provision of midday meals by schools serves as a crucial support system in combating child hunger.

During the pandemic, 84 percent households reported income loss, which in turn added to the challenges of attending school. Reports indicate that as schools shut down, many children, particularly boys, developed an alcoholism problem and indulged in substance abuse. Constantly living under conditions of stress and anxiety also curbed their desire to pursue education and other goals.

Post-pandemic education

After the pandemic ended, there was a stark decline in education quality across the country. An assessment of students from grades 2–6 across five states revealed that, when compared to the previous year, 92 percent and 82 percent children across all grades lost at least one specific language and mathematical ability, respectively. The situation was worse for grade 10 students, only 13 percent of whom scored more than 50 percent in mathematics. In all these assessment tests, the performance of children in public schools and those belonging to marginalised communities was the lowest.

The School Children’s Online and Offline Learning (SCHOOL) survey conducted in August 2022 across 16 states and union territories in the country focused on relatively deprived villages and bastis (slums), where children generally attend government schools. It found that among children in grade 3—an age where they should be able to read fluently in their mother tongue—only 25 percent could read more than a few words. This figure is worse for Dalit and Adivasi children.

It is estimated that only 27.5 percent students had access to digital devices when schools switched to digital mediums. Among those who were part of digital classes, only 15.8 percent found the online learning experience to be good. Teachers too were unprepared for virtual classroom interactions. Poor internet connections and lack of access to digital devices excluded marginalised students from online education.

Why digitisation is not the solution

The education space in the last two years in India is marked by two distinct trends: greater centralisation in classroom methods and learning through digitisation, and neglection of the inextricable link between equity and quality of education in attempts to bridge learning losses.

To make up for the losses incurred during the pandemic, governments at both the central and state levels drew up plans to improve foundational learning through bridge courses, remedial centres, new textbooks and work sheets, teacher trainings, and so on. Digitisation cut across as the main feature through all these initiatives.

For example, Chandigarh initiated Project Phoenix, which includes a continuous assessment of each child’s learning. The assessments are conducted on a monthly basis in order to identify children’s learning gaps. The Andhra Pradesh government signed an MoU with BJYU’s to ‘provide learning opportunities’ through digital technology. In Gujarat, ‘centralised summative and formative examinations’ have been introduced for grades 3 to 12. This involves centralised data entry for all 4.3 million students for all the subjects, and approximately 500 million unique data entries are compiled and analysed for each examination. In Puducherry, all schools with pre-primary sections have been provided with a Bluetooth device that possesses loudspeaker, voice recording, and USB capabilities.

In addition to capturing student data, apps and software have been developed to digitise the process of education governance. This includes time-barred bills, resignation and premature retirement, permission for higher education, NOC for recognition of schools with CBSE/ICSE, recognition and registration of schools, issuance of second copy of certificate, verification of documents, and migration certificates. According to the state governments, this has expedited the disposal of various types of applications and teacher grievances. 

Instead of privileging the capacities of teachers and the natural curiosity of students, digitisation has reduced the teacher to a mere conduit of information.

But this drive for digitisation has caused a distinct transformation in the role of teachers. At a time when fostering open dialogues with students, comprehending their unique challenges, and empowering them to learn at their individual rhythms should be prioritised, there is an increasingly prominent focus on e-learning. This shift has led to the standardisation of pedagogical content—dictating not only what must be taught, but also the speed at which it should be delivered and how student progress should be evaluated. This undermines and bypasses the role of engagement and dialogue, removing personal contact between the student and the teacher. Assessing children within such rigid parameters has placed undue pressure on teachers to simply check predetermined boxes. It has diverted them from relying on their inherent strengths and professional expertise. Instead of privileging the capacities of teachers and the natural curiosity of students, digitisation has reduced the teacher to a mere conduit of information.

This centralised mechanism monitors both student and teacher performance, ultimately neglecting cultural differences, institutional experiences, social and economic backgrounds, as well as the significant challenges of disparity and inequality within the education system. What cannot be measured cannot be true, and so all the debates and discussions on what constitutes education and issues of pedagogy based on inclusiveness and equity have become irrelevant.

Moreover, this system is prone to errors that can lead to significant setbacks for students. Mistakes in uploading student information, document mismatches, and inconsistencies in the spelling of a student’s name across various records can result in the denial of scholarships, admissions, certificates, examination hall tickets, and other such critical aspects. The absence of a direct interface with individuals to voice concerns and rectify these issues further compounds the problem.

Equity and quality of education

Without addressing the issues of inequity that plague the education sector, it is unlikely that any attempts to improve the quality of education will actually work.

A stratified education system affects the quality of education by hindering access for every student.

The nature of India’s education system and the manner in which public schools operate are a reflection of its social inequities and hierarchies. While a small number of public schools are well endowed (as in the case of Kendriya Vidyalayas or Navodaya schools), there are thousands of public schools that struggle financially. The inadequate infrastructure and resources of public schools in small towns and villages reinforces inequalities and discrimination.

A stratified education system affects the quality of education by hindering access for every student. This challenge makes it even harder for the most marginalised to fully participate in school; enjoy the educational journey with proper teacher guidance, classroom resources, and necessary infrastructure; and successfully complete their secondary education. Efforts to enhance education quality, such as remedial teaching and bridge courses, often seem to lack genuine commitment, resulting in an overall failure of the education system to fulfil its purpose.

It is only when the education system is propelled to act based on the principle of equity that the capabilities of every child can be developed. It is this commitment to equitable standards that will help overcome existing challenges of discrimination due to gender, caste, ethnic origin, family background, and socio-economic circumstances.

Only a rights-based approach focused on the principle of equality and universality can enable children to have equal opportunities. This approach should include measures such as:

• Designating an authority to track and ensure children attend school.
• Providing children with the resources required to pursue their education.
• Providing out-of-school children the appropriate support to catch up to their peers.  

It is in recognising the integral link between equity and quality of education that real solutions emerge. Greater investments would flow, students would not be pushed out of schools for want of learning, and special arrangements would be made to retain children in schools and enjoy the process of education.

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Know more

• Read this to learn more about the COVID-19 pandemic impact education in India.
• Read this to learn more about the New Education Policy 2020.

The National Education Policy 2020 recognises and ably articulates the importance of life skills in the Indian education landscape, and eight Indian states—Delhi, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Telangana, Nagaland, Uttar Pradesh, and Tripura—have introduced curriculums and teacher training to promote the social and emotional skills of students and teachers.

But how do we really know if these interventions are working in our local contexts? A straightforward response would be to assess the targeted skill sets of the participants before and after an intervention to understand its effectiveness. But collecting data at periodic intervals by default does not guarantee that this data and the measured changes are contextually and culturally appropriate.

In 2022, the Dream a Dream research team tried to understand the need for life skills intervention in government schools in Telangana’s Kondurg district. As part of the research, we asked teachers whether they had heard of life skills and if they could elaborate on what it means. A majority of the respondents defined life skills as ‘any skill that makes life easier’, and listed cooking, cleaning, and driving as examples. Although this response is arguably correct, we had intended something different.

Most of us who undertake field visits can admit that such situations arise more often than we would like to confess. Without an understanding of the community and their culture and norms, the questions we ask and the data we collect might not be useful, regardless of the methods employed. A contextual knowledge of the community needs to be at the core of life skills interventions since the various domains of life skills—such as communication, conflict resolution, and teamwork—are understood and operationalised differently across cultures.

Lack of contextual knowledge and unconscious penalisation of students

Though Eastern education philosophy has traditionally espoused concepts of holistic education, which included the social, ethical, emotional, and moral development of students, the scientific tools for measuring these skills were pioneered in the West in the late 1930s. Many life skills measurement tools such as the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment, Social-Emotional and Character Development Scale, and Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scales were developed in Western countries. Therefore, the questions being asked in a survey based on these tools might not be relevant for a community outside of the West. Even if the skills covered by the survey tool are relevant, it may not be able to capture cultural nuances.

For example, while independence is encouraged in the West, accomplishing tasks in a team is encouraged in collectivist societies such as India. Likewise, eye contact is encouraged in conversations in the West, but in many cultures, especially in Asia, eye contact with older people is discouraged or considered disrespectful. So, if a survey tool standardised for a Western population is used in India, students are likely to be scored differently even if they are competent in a particular skill.

The language used in the construction of the tool is another factor of concern. Although students in English-medium schools across India are taught the language, the meanings attached to specific words may vary based on their cultural contexts and understanding of the mainstream usage of the language. For instance, in one of our assessments, students from a low-income rural school had difficulty understanding the statement ‘I share my problems with others.’ Through conversations with the students, our team realised that they associated ‘sharing’ with materials that can be physically divided such as chocolates and pencils, and use ‘talk/say’ when it comes to communicating something that is on their mind. So, by design, assessments can favour those with an understanding of the mainstream usage of language and unconsciously remain challenging for students who do not have that same kind of access or exposure.

Furthermore, life skills are interconnected and have varied dimensions—each skill has multiple characteristic attributes. For example, within the domain of ‘working with others’, the skills required to successfully complete a project would be different in a controlled space such as a classroom versus an open space such as a playground or a picnic. The complexity intensifies when students are comfortable expressing their skills in certain environments but suppress themselves in other spaces because of social norms. For instance, due to skewed power dynamics in the community, students from marginalised castes might not voice their opinions or initiate conversations in a classroom that they share with dominant caste students from the same locality. Their lack of interaction or communication in a classroom environment might not be an adequate reflection of their skill set. Therefore, when assessments do not consider these social realities, they produce inaccurate data that is neither reflective of the student and their social context nor useful in decision-making.

Keeping student context at the centre

Knowing that every aspect of an assessment is influenced by context and local actualities, it is important to consider how they validate or invalidate a student’s abilities, identity, and culture. Intentionally creating space for different learning environments, multiple ways of demonstrating skill, and multiple types of evidence for skill improvement creates equitable and just assessment processes. More importantly, it fosters a sense of belonging among students.

The Life Skills Assessment Scale (LSAS) by Dream a Dream was one such attempt. Earlier, we struggled to measure the impact of our life skills programmes since the standardised scales available either measured specific life skills or were not contextually appropriate for disadvantaged communities. Taking the contextual realities of disadvantaged communities into consideration, the tool was designed in collaboration with clinical psychologists Dr Fionna Kennedy and Dr David Pearson. The tool enables trained staff to assess young people in different settings across various activities.

Some of the proven ways to assess life skills in a contextually relevant manner include behavioural observation in different settings, situational judgements, anchoring vignettes (getting participants to rate other people’s behaviour before rating one’s own, and using the former as an anchor to rate their individual response), and creating community-specific norms for test administration. But these methods are scattered and not readily available for public use. Addressing these access gaps and covering understudied skills such as cooperation, negotiation, and critical thinking in assessments is therefore critical.

The unlearning we need

Although the acknowledgement of the need for life skills in mainstream education in India is a laudable move, ensuring the just and equitable assessment of students’ skill requires unlearning and innovation on many fronts.

At the core of this attempt is to think about whether what we accept as legitimate evidence of learning is inclusive of different communities and their ways of learning and expression. A practical way to approach this would be to ask a few grounding questions at the launch and during the assessment process. Some examples include:

• Do we comprehend the community’s knowledge/understanding of what we are trying to measure?
• Are the measurement tools prepared with a grounded awareness of the concept? Was the measurement tool tested for validity in a particular context?
• Does the measurement process provide mechanisms to capture diverse evidence of learning/improvement from the community?
• Is the data collection approach culturally sensitive?
• Will our data analysis, interpretation, and recommendations be conducted in light of the contextual realities?

When assessment tools are developed with a grounded and intersectional lens, they can bring forth unique and nuanced insights and can ably help ascertain the effectiveness of different programmes. We must acknowledge that life skills assessment tools need to be contextually designed to ensure there are no chances of oversight or misinterpretation.

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Know more

• Read this report on the importance of weaving life skills into school education.
• Read this article to learn more about the importance of intersectionality in social-emotional learning programmes.

Foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) forms the basis of all future learning, and affects life outcomes. High rates of FLN are directly correlated to increased workforce participation and higher per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Both the public and private sectors have invested in improving the quality of foundational learning in schools, and India has emerged as a sandbox for innovations in financing models for education with grants, debt-based models, impact bonds, and other instruments. Three impact bonds have been trialled: the Educate Girls Development Impact Bond (DIB) launched in 2015, the Quality Education India (QEI) DIB launched in 2018, and the Haryana Early Literacy DIB launched in 2019.

With all three impact bonds now completed, it is an opportune time to reflect on them and distil early lessons for the primary education sector in India. We at the British Asian Trust draw on our experience with various education initiatives, including the QEI DIB, to share five learnings with funders and donors within the education sector. These learnings offer an insight into how programmes can be designed and delivered more effectively to improve the quality of learning for India’s children.

Learning #1: Donors can link funding to improvements in learning outcomes, rather than only to inputs or activities

The focus of the three education impact bonds was on improving learning among children. Accordingly, they measured and tied funding to learning outcomes as key success metrics. All three surpassed their learning outcome targets, even though two of these—the QEI DIB and Haryana Early Literacy DIB—were being run during prolonged COVID-19 school closures.

To illustrate, the Educate Girls DIB achieved 116 percent of the enrolment target and 160 percent of the learning target by its final year. The QEI DIB improved literacy and numeracy skills among its students by 2.5x in comparison to their peers in other schools. And, students in the Haryana Early Literacy DIB could fluently read 42.4 words per minute while children in non-intervention schools could read only 30.3 words per minute.

We are often asked if outcomes under impact bonds are better or higher than grant-funded programmes. There is very little robust research on this in India or globally, partly because it is still an evolving area of practice and partly due to the difficulties in conducting such research—it requires running a parallel model that is similar to the impact bond model in all respects, except that it is funded via grants. However, some implementation partners in the QEI DIB told us that learning outcomes under the DIB exceeded those in their grant programmes by 50 percent or more.

Factors that make impact bonds work can also be applied to other types of financing mechanisms, including grants. These are:

• Clearly defined outcomes, along with rigorous and independent evaluation and verification of these outcomes.
• Payments and incentives that are linked to the achievement of outcomes. 
• Appropriate transfer of risk from implementation partners to investors when needed. This provides freedom and flexibility to nonprofits to innovate with interventions and delivery processes.
• Robust performance management and data-driven decision-making.
• Strong governance, transparency, and accountability.

Learning #2: Both direct and indirect interventions can improve learning among children, with varying implications on depth and scale of impact

Education interventions can be broadly categorised as direct or indirect. In direct interventions, implementation partners work directly with children to deliver their inputs. In indirect interventions, they build the capacities of key stakeholders such as teachers, principals, and government officials to enable them to perform well, and therefore improve quality of learning.

The QEI DIB included both direct and indirect interventions, with a common end outcome—improvements in literacy and numeracy skills. At the end of the programme, students under both direct and indirect interventions achieved learnings gains in comparison to their peers. Students under direct interventions showed greater improvement in learning when compared to indirect interventions. However, the indirect model was found to be 1.5x more cost-effective (in terms of producing a unit of outcome).

The selection of an intervention should therefore be based on programme objectives and learning contexts, such as the level at which students are. Where students lag more or where rapid gains are the objective, direct interventions have a higher impact and show better results. Indirect interventions are well suited where large-scale change or systems strengthening is the goal, as they are easier to mainstream and are cost-effective but may need more time to yield measurable learning improvements.

Learning #3: Targeted and structured collaboration between implementation partners can improve learning outcomes

The QEI DIB brought together the complementary expertise of two vastly different social organisations—an EdTech partner and a nonprofit—to deliver better learning outcomes for a common group of children. The EdTech partner provided the digital solution, closely monitored the data from the solution, and adapted it to the needs of the students. The nonprofit partner led engagement with students, teachers, parents, and community leaders to improve uptake and usage of this application, especially in rural areas where digital learning was limited or absent.

The collaboration between the two organisations was enabled by the clear set of roles and responsibilities laid out to achieve a shared goal and dedicated performance management support to aid integration. Both organisations agreed to joint duties to deliver combined targets, which were measured annually to assess their performance. They devised strategies together to leverage each other’s strengths and navigate challenges.

Taking joint accountability and responsibility can create a blueprint for achieving better learning outcomes.

For instance, EdTech labs generated data on students each day; this data was collected and stored in a central database. The EdTech partner conducted workshops to train the nonprofit team on understanding and reading the system-generated data. Based on the data, the five best and worst performing schools were identified, and an executive committee at the programme level deliberated on solutions to mitigate challenges encountered by the five worst performing schools. At the end of the QEI DIB programme, students under the intervention improved their literacy and numeracy skills by 5x compared to other students.

While collaboration between two social organisations for delivering an intervention is not uncommon in the social sector, taking joint accountability and responsibility for targets and outcomes in a structured manner can create a blueprint for achieving better learning outcomes.

Learning #4: Providing flexibility to nonprofits to adapt, adopt, and innovate can yield high outcomes

A common learning for all three impact bonds has been around providing flexibility to implementation partners to adapt their interventions based on on-ground needs and realities. Along with the implementation partner’s expertise, intervention adaptations are guided by strong performance management systems and data-based decision-making.

For example, Educate Girls pointed out that the DIB gave them financial as well as operational flexibility to achieve outcomes, which spurred innovative and creative classroom solutions. At the community level, their field workers were given the freedom to test different approaches and adapt strategies for enrolment and learning outcomes specific to a child’s unique challenges. Educate Girls was also able to hire and move resources freely through the course of the DIB.

Implementation partners from the QEI DIB and Haryana Early Literacy DIB also highlighted how the flexibility provided during COVID-19 allowed them to pivot their interventions to include components such as home and community classes and/or e-learning tools via WhatsApp and more. These pivots were made with a continued focus on achieving learning outcome targets at the end of the programme.

Learning #5: Building and sharing evidence on learning can lead to improved programme and evaluation design

Assessing learning outcomes remains a complex and nuanced process. It starts with defining the right metrics to capture learning skills and competencies across different age and grade groups, determining the period needed to realise these changes, and developing appropriate methodologies that allow for this testing.

All three impact bonds developed customised evaluation frameworks in line with programmatic needs and shared resources explaining the final evaluation results and approach in detail. Most education programmes commission their own assessments, as national databases typically do not offer benchmarks at the right level of geography or do not address the needs of programmes.

While this is unlikely to change in the short term, donors are highly encouraged to share their evaluation methodologies, data, and results on programme completion with the sector as it helps set a standard for similar interventions, reduces the need for duplication, and informs evaluation design for future programmes.

These lessons from impact bonds in education stand to offer invaluable insights to donors who aim to improve the quality of learning among children. While it may not be possible, or even desirable, to replicate impact bonds to achieve these goals again, the learnings can be incorporated into grant-based or other financing mechanisms to ensure that development funds are able to achieve the outcomes they seek in an efficient and effective manner.

Note: The authors would like to acknowledge Dalberg Advisors’ contribution in culling out some of the insights mentioned in this article. 

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Know more

• Read this review of education impact bonds in low- and middle-income countries.
• Read this article to learn how a more robust ecosystem around social finance can be built in India.
• Learn more about areas in which development impact bonds are more effective.

When ‘free’ is prefixed to ‘public library’, it immediately redraws the lines of who deserves to have the right to read and the right to information. Doors and shelves are thrown open to all. It is by default, definition, and design anti-caste, gender and disability inclusive, and accessible to all regardless of their social or economic background.

This is not a new understanding of the public library. The earliest instance in modern India goes back to 1906 when Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the maharaja of Baroda, invited the American librarian W A Borden to help establish public libraries across his state to further his public education programme. Fast-forward to 1986, when the Chattopadhyay committee drafted the National Policy on Library and Information System, which linked access to equity. But little came of it in terms of reform. The draft was never ratified into policy.

In recent years, and especially during the COVID-19 lockdown, grassroots efforts have sprouted free libraries across the country, most notably where quality education and access to books has generationally been lacking. Even before the pandemic broke out, librarians in villages, urban working-class neighbourhoods, remote outposts, tribal settlements, and prisons began talking to one another, seeking resources on librarianship and library infrastructure. These conversations coalesced into the Free Libraries Network (FLN), which today has more than 200 library organisations, practitioners, and activists who drive the free library movement. We envision not just support for our own individual struggles in running community libraries but also a free public library system for all.   

A public library must be free on two counts—free from any kind of fee, be it for membership, penalty, or a service like the use of the internet or a workshop; and free from barriers of caste, class, gender, and disability, giving everyone the freedom to read to acquire knowledge and information. If libraries are not free, how can the country achieve intellectual equity? FLN focuses its attention, among other things, on the 1986 draft national policy, from which the provision for ‘free’ has been summarily discarded in reports written through the 1980s. In 2022, when a Rajya Sabha review committee revived the conversation to centre libraries as a critical component of culture and education, there was no mention of ‘free’ as an essential understanding of public libraries.

The Indian public library system

What would our public library system tell us about the intellectual health of the country? Today, we see the consequence of ignoring equity in knowledge and information when, as a collective, we are unable to tell good pieces of information from bad ones, and cannot discern when someone is pushing us towards herd thinking. Policy focus all along has been on school-led, curriculum-based literacy and numeracy. But creative and critical thinking, which are the bedrock of a progressive society, have not been championed with the same vigour. What that omission has cost us is tremendous: a loss of intellectual discernment and the ability to imagine an equitable world. 

A free public library system can change that.

India reportedly has 54,856 public libraries (although there is no definitive source and data differs depending on where one looks), but many suffer from systemic neglect. There’s no clarity on which library is open, which is shut, which programmes and curriculum a library follows to invite readers into reading and, most importantly, which is free and which isn’t. Without updated and accurate data, how can we start rebuilding our public library programme?

Public libraries in India are the prerogative of the state, yet only 19 states have formulated library legislation. Of these, The Haryana Public Libraries Act, 1989, is the only one that claims to grant free public access. Yet, despite legislation, Haryana’s public libraries are not really free. It should be noted that a library cess, derived from state revenue taxes, pays for the upkeep of these libraries—in other words, the public funds them.  

Now consider the Delhi Public Library, which falls under the purview of the Union Government. The membership fee is INR 25 for below poverty line (BPL) card holders and INR 100 for others. Those who apply must have membership forms attested by a ‘responsible person’, such as a gazetted officer or lecturer, or produce INR 3,000 as security deposit if attestation is not possible. Membership is also contingent on proof of current residence. Even if the fee were not a deterrent, the demand for documentation is.  

The free library as a public good

Enter a public library today and you’ll think it continues to serve centuries-old purposes of academic education alone, because you’re more likely to find students preparing for an exam than any other demographic. But public libraries are meant for more than that. They are public places that transform into hubs of collective imagination and free-thinking spaces for people to gather, to create, to think collectively and build something for the future. Such collective spaces are key to human development. As the IFLA-UNESCO Public Library Manifesto points out, community libraries foster local connections and are crucial to creating a well-informed citizenry required for a healthy democracy.

It must be reimagined not just as a place for learning and thinking but also as a space for social and cultural engagement. To that end, a free public library can emerge as that third place between home and work—for people to gather, socialise, and actively build community life. This means the library has a huge role to play for non-readers too. 

Community at the core

A free library is defined by its collective of people and not just its collection of books. In fact, the community exercises ownership over the library and is empowered to determine library programmes, book collections, languages, reading levels, and reading aspirations. For example, you may have adolescents coming in, who are at an age where they’re interested in exploring various kinds of relationships with one another. One cannot, as a free library worker, exclaim, “Oh my God, keep them apart!” A library that responds to its members will wonder, “Can we organise sexual health and wellness workshops for them, in addition to building a collection that speaks to their interests as well as broadens them?” That’s what makes the library a dynamic space—the fact that it is constantly in dialogue with the community.

Whoever lives in the community communes at the library, making the collective diverse and inclusive.

When it sets out to be a welcoming space, the library automatically transforms into a multi-generational, multicultural oasis. In one of the libraries I work at in Delhi, the neighbourhood (Khirki) includes people of different religions and caste identities, migrant workers from Bihar and West Bengal, as well as asylum seekers from countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria. Whoever lives in that community communes at the library, making the collective diverse and inclusive.

It’s only when there’s dialogue between the community and the people who fund the library that the idea of the free library is truly safe. It is not ideal for any single group outside the community to hold sway on critical operational and policy decisions. That’s why it is essential to define librarianship as best practices and curriculum that derive from community consultation. For example, if the community indicates it requires Ambedkarite literature or books about the Mughals, the library has to provide them.

Even as it sets out to be a democratic, egalitarian space, the public library must guard against excessive regulation, for anyone who controls the library controls knowledge and information flowing through the library. This is another reason to urgently push for library reform, and ensure that the library is driven by policy but is not policed.

What the government is doing

The National Mission on Libraries was launched in 2014 with an outlay of INR 400 crore to develop model libraries and create digitised archives of books, manuscripts, and audio-visual material through the National Virtual Library. But given how inequitable digital access is in India, this is still not an example of an accessible public library that anyone and everyone can use. The questions to consider when pushing for a digital library are: who has access to the internet, who has access to smart devices that can browse a platform like the National Virtual Library, and what kind of digital literacy do they need to enter it? When you start asking these questions, you realise that in this country, digital can emerge as yet another barrier between people and reading. Many in the publishing industry are also pushing digital books, to the detriment of print. What they’re in turn widening is the gap between a majority of Indians and books at a time they need it the most. 

Perhaps these are concerns that the government needs to address at its upcoming Festival of Libraries 2023, an initiative by the Union Ministry of Culture. New library policies, fresh funding (INR 100 crore), and a library ranking system, among other initiatives, are expected to be launched at this forum, with the objective of reinvigorating the country’s library system. It’s a welcome move as long as it keeps the public library people-focused. ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ won’t happen as a matter of injunction. You cannot order people to move together but you can structure the possibility of their meeting one another, of finding common cause and forming solidarities in the world of ideas. This can only come from creating free spaces. That’s the beauty of the publicly funded free library—a free intellectual, social, and cultural space that supports the aspirations of all and is powered not by the individual and not by the government, but by the community it was built to serve.

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Know more

• Learn how a community library network in Bhopal is more than a place for borrowing books.
• Learn more about the financial state of India’s public libraries.
• Learn more about what the budgetary allocations for social welfare look like for 2023–24.

Weak internet connectivity, interrupted electricity, outdated devices, and a lack of tech literacy were among the various issues that teachers experienced owing to their financial resources and geographical location. These situations were largely identified in schools located in rural and remote areas or government schools in cities. A survey conducted in 2020 across six Indian states found that 36 percent of teachers listed access to tech infrastructure in schools as a barrier to remote education.

The discourse around strengthening remote learning has largely been focused on students’ experiences, but teachers must also be integrated into the process. EdTech solutions have enormous potential to deliver quality at scale and contribute to a resilient education system. However, this potential can only be fully realised through the proactive participation of teachers. Bringing teachers on board requires investments in making EdTech products easy to use, affordable, and engaging.

We have solved for access. What next?

In the initial months of the pandemic, the main challenge that teachers and schools faced was around training and resources. Government schools in rural and urban India were underfunded, underequipped, and underprepared for the abrupt shift to remote learning. During the pandemic, as many as 50 percent of teachers were spending more money on teaching materials than before the schools closed. In cases where devices existed, they were not optimised for smooth connectivity.

The government and private sector were quick to act. From 2020 to 2022, the market size of EdTech products increased from USD 0.75 billion to USD 2.8 billion. This figure is estimated to grow to USD 4 billion by 2025. Public initiatives such as DIKSHA and free access to the National Digital Library, among others, provided a much-needed push. There was a 30 percent increase in screen time spent on education-related phone apps during the lockdown. Moreover, the user base for EdTech increased, particularly for the K-12 segment (primary and secondary education), which grew from 45 million to 90 million during this time.

With EdTech providers experiencing more reach, they must now focus on improving the quality of their solutions. This includes understanding local contexts, aligning with the state curriculum, and creating relevant lesson plans. The products must take a user-centric lens to increase chances of uptake. In our experience, maximising the reach of EdTech solutions among teachers hinges on getting four processes right.

1. Identifying the change agent

Community-based stakeholders such as self-help groups or anganwadi workers (AWWs) can deliver maximum impact as they have a pre-existing relationship with the local community. This is especially true in rural or low-literacy environments, where external organisations or nonprofits may be met with suspicion. India has 13.9 lakh anganwadi centres, which cater to a massive slice of the population and are crucial in driving early childhood care and education. In our experience, AWWs are curious and resourceful and enjoy close ties within the community, making them the ideal change agents.

However, including them in intervention design and implementation is not enough; organisations must earn their trust to win the vote of the larger community. For instance, Rocket Learning facilitators, who run several teacher peer groups, share daily learning activities and AWWs respond with videos of students carrying out those tasks. Play-based learning encourages proactivity and engagement from the AWWs. Tapping into the aspirations and motivations of AWWs is also key to their full involvement. Many of them want to be empowered with the resources that allow them to impart foundational learning and be taken seriously as educators. It is necessary to account for this in the programme design by including upskilling opportunities for field workers and on-ground implementers and encouraging the workers’ personal development in the process.

2. Nudging teachers towards the right behaviours

Encouraging teachers based on behavioural insights can play a key role in influencing what is happening inside classrooms. This can range from personalised assessment reports that track performance to digital badges or certifications that reward engagement. These mechanisms add a ‘human’ element to EdTech products and reinforce desirable behaviour.

Quantitative data can help draw out patterns not just to design nudges but also to optimise them.

Designing effective nudges requires substantive data, both qualitative and quantitative. Human-centred surveys and qualitative research helps root interventions in local contexts. For instance, tracking teachers’ daily, weekly, and monthly activities, priorities, and needs can help organisations identify the touchpoints to double down on.

Meanwhile, quantitative data can help draw out patterns not just to design nudges but also to optimise them. Data can allow EdTech providers to zero in on the most favoured communication channels (YouTube, WhatsApp, etc.), format (voice, text, or multimedia), or time of day, and leverage these preferences for maximum impact. Monitoring and evaluation help factor in changing patterns and update and fine-tune these over time. This encourages teachers and parents to conduct different activities with children, share proof of completion, and receive ‘rewards’ or ‘certificates’ upon achieving targets.

3. Creating holistic digital communities

Learning cannot take place in siloed teacher–student and parent–student interactions. It is necessary for teachers and parents to be in sync with the students’ learning progress and achievements, especially in a remote learning scenario where the boundaries between the classroom and home are blurred.

While setting up digital communities, low-capacity settings are ideal to utilise existing structures. Used by more than half of the students and 89 percent of teachers, WhatsApp, for instance, emerged as the most popular channel of communication. Designing simple solutions that build on top of these patterns make them cost-effective and increase the likelihood of participation. It is also especially beneficial for parents who depend on daily-wage labour and cannot skip work to attend physical meetings.

Creating a constant feedback loop between teachers and parents is effective in helping establish positive parent–teacher, teacher­–supervisor, and teacher–child relations. This also creates a supportive community that parents and teachers can lean into to share their concerns and vision for the child’s learning journey.

4. Working effectively with governments

Working with governments is the best way to deliver impact at scale. Market-driven EdTech solutions tend to prioritise users who can afford to pay for their products. Meanwhile, organisations looking to deliver services to marginalised communities often face resource limitations. Government support can bridge this gap between intention and impact, ensuring fairness in terms of student usage, learning activities, and teacher training. Having said that, it can be time-consuming to ensure state willingness and capacity to roll out such programmes at scale. Moreover, EdTech organisations seeking to implement solutions in government schools have to contend with formal rules and informal practices that vary from state to state. Integrating the hardware, product, and lesson plans into the existing public school ecosystem often requires approvals and negotiations at multiple levels.

Organisations and governments working in these spaces must project teachers as the face of the intervention.

Aligning with state priorities and designing focused interventions across the governance hierarchy—from the anganwadi teacher and their supervisor to the project-, district-, and state-level officials—is critical to keeping the system engaged. Additionally, organisations cannot copy-paste intervention templates that worked in one state or district on to another. It is necessary to gauge the motivations and priorities of each administration before formulating an approach. Recognising the unique needs and operating environment of the state to tailor the plan is a vital step in ensuring meaningful engagement. 

Ensuring EdTech uptake among teachers in rural areas with no experience or tech receptiveness is challenging but necessary. The World Bank’s EdTech Readiness Index recognises this, listing teachers as one of the six pillars to be strengthened for best practices in policy and application. Prioritising teachers’ motivations and attitudes, and pushing for a broader mindset shift, will play a major role here.

Most importantly, it is necessary to dispel fear and suspicion around tech. EdTech services should not be presented as a replacement for teachers, but as a resource that complements their work and helps ease their burden. Organisations and governments working in these spaces must project teachers as the face of the intervention as much as possible. Only through educator buy-in and engagement can we tap into the full power of EdTech to transform students’ lives and work towards building a resilient education ecosystem.

In order to build and sustain teachers’ engagement, it is imperative to position technology and EdTech as tools that can build and further augment teacher capacity. We need to leverage data from such solutions to build positive loops in terms of teacher behaviour and be cognisant of region-specific nuances for the design-to-implementation journey of EdTech solutions.

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Know more

• Learn how teachers’ well-being can be promoted in India.
• Read this report to read about the impact of EdTech on the country’s education landscape.
• Learn how upskilling trends get influenced by EdTech solutions.