Discussions

Your Name and Title: Prof Indrani Bhaduri

School or Organization Name:National Council of Educational Research and Training

Co-Presenter Name(s): -

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: SDG 4.0

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s):Assessment Experts, Teacher educators and Teachers

Short Session Description (one line):Will discuss the National Achievement Survey Results and its implication for SDG 4.0 

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):

Merely expanding the education system is not adequate. Though improved enrolment is necessary, but it is not a sufficient condition for progress. Instead, enhanced learning outcomes—in the form of competencies are a key to bring about quality in education and ensure its sustainability. Acquiring the relevant competencies and skills are fundamental to realise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Children need to develop the competencies to analyse, reason and communicate their ideas effectively and build their capacity for being a life-long learner. In this direction, periodic and technically robust learning assessment surveys play a vital role to gauge the competencies attained by the children and its subsequent progress through the grades.

National  Council  of  Educational  Research  and Training  (NCERT )  has  been  periodically conducting the large-scale surveys of student learning achievement in government and government aided schools at grades III, V and VIII in different curricular areas since 2001 with an interval of three years. In year 2015, NCERT conducted learning achievement survey on grade 10 students for the first time covering the different types of school management, including those which are privately managed. In 2018, the second cycle of NAS for Class X was conducted.

NCERT has been implementing these surveys on sample basis at the State/UT level. Even though the learning gaps were being identified and shared, it did not percolate to the grass root and since the interventions suggested were generic, it lost its applicability and suitability at the implementation stage. With the passage of time it was felt that these concerns need to be addressed in a much more decentralized manner. Keeping the above in view, it was proposed to conduct the National Achievement Surveys, with districts as the unit of sampling. NAS (2017) provides the learning levels of the children vis-a-vis the learning outcomes developed by the Council. The learning gaps identified at the school level were used to provide feedback to the districts. A framework of intervention was developed which was shared with the States to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the schools.

NAS, 2017 had been a humongous exercise of assessing 2.2 million students from grades III, V and VIII on a single day. This necessitated meticulous planning at each and every step. The methodology used in developing the test items, preparing the sampling frame, sampling procedures, administration of the tests and the analysis of the results.Some of the important steps in the implementation of NAS were:

• Sensitization of  the  state  officials and  the  stakeholders  in  the  States/UTs  and

Districts.

• Development of an assessment framework and the tools for assessing the learning levels and competencies of the students and the background information.

• Communicating the  roles  and  responsibilities  of  the  different personnel  (‘who would do what’) involved at the State and National levels.

• Development of guidelines and protocol for administration of the survey in the schools.

• Development of templates using different software for data capturing, storing and analysis.

• Development of guidelines and protocol for data capturing, data storing, and data analysis.

• Sample selection for Classes III, V and VIII for reporting at the district level.

• Administration of tools in the sampled schools with the help of a trained cadre of field investigators.

• Monitoring the administration of the tools at the School, Block, and District level.

• Collation of the data collected from the Schools at the Block, District and State level.

• Following the protocol for data capturing, storing and analysis.

• Analysis of the data at the District levels to understand the learning gaps and preparation of 701 District Report Cards (DRCs), 36 State Learning Reports (SLRs) and the National Technical Report to Inform Policies, Practices and Teaching Learning.

• Development of  packages  for  interventions  and  sharing  with  the  States  for addressing the learning gaps at the district level.

NAS 2017 helps us to understand the progress towards achieving the learning outcomes and also suggests ways to improve the learning levels of our children. But then again NAS is much more than just a report card for the districts. It is a protocol developed which helps us examine our student’s progress towards the attainment of learning outcomes. It is designed to look behind the scorecard to illuminate how our education policies and practices need to evolve to improve the learning levels of our children. The implementation of NAS includes in its ambit the capacity development of school leaders, teachers and the whole network of officials at blocks, DIETs, SCERT, boards of school education and the Directorate of Education in the different States/UTs.

 NAS 2017 is a fair and accurate statement of the educational health of the different States and Union Territories in the country. The students who participated in NAS were randomly selected to represent all students in their respective districts. The entire assessment process was scrutinized by national and international experts to ensure its adherence to established standards. At each step of its development, NAS used careful quality control procedures. During the test development process, each item went through all the technical rigours before finalization. The items were translated adhering to the guidelines developed and vetting of each and every item was carried out before its acceptance. A cadre of field investigators were trained who administered the tests following standardized procedures. The tests administration was carefully monitored.

In this paper the NAS results will be extrapolated in the light of the SDG 4.0

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:http://www.ncert.nic.in/programmes/NAS/DRC.html