Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label Quality of Education. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2011

PISA & TIMSS Confirm Low Quality of Indian Education

Indian students rank near the bottom on PISA, a global test of learning standards conducted in 74 nations this year. TIMSS, another standardized international test, produced similar results earlier in 2003.

This is the first time that Indian students participated in PISA. Students from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu took the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, coordinated by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Prior to this participation, students from Indian states of Orissa and Rajasthan took a similar test called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2003.

Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh rank high on human development indicators among Indian states. The India Human Development Report 2011, prepared by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), categorized them as “median” states, putting them significantly ahead of the national average. IAMR is an autonomous arm of India's Planning Commission.

Himachal Pradesh ranked 4 and Tamil Nadu 11 in literacy rates on India's National Family Health Survey released in 2007. However, in the PISA study, Tamil Nadu ranked 72 and Himachal Pradesh 73, just ahead of the bottom-ranked Kyrgyzstan in mathematics and overall reading skills. Shanghai, China's biggest city, topped the PISA rankings in all three categories—overall reading skills, mathematical and scientific literacy. The new entrants included Costa Rica, Georgia, India (Himachal Pradesh & Tamil Nadu), Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Venezuela (Miranda), Moldova, United Arab Emirates. PISA 2009+ involved testing just over 46 000 students across these ten economies, representing a total of about 1,377,000 15-year-olds.

In Tamil Nadu, only 17% of students were estimated to possess proficiency in reading that is at or above the baseline needed to be effective and productive in life. In Himachal Pradesh, this level is 11%. “This compares to 81% of students performing at or above the baseline level in reading in the OECD countries, on an average,” said the study.

The average Indian child taking part in PISA2009+ is 40 to 50 points behind the worst students in the economic superstars. Even the best performers in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh - the top 5 percent who India will need in science and technology to complete globally - were almost 100 points behind the average child in Singapore and 83 points behind the average Korean - and a staggering 250 points behind the best in the best.

The average child in HP & TN is right at the level of the worst OECD or American students (only 1.5 or 7.5 points ahead). Contrary to President Obama's oft-expressed concerns about American students ability to compete with their Indian counterparts, the average 15-year-old Indian placed in an American school would be among the weakest students in the classroom, says Lant Pritchett of Harvard University. Even the best TN/HP students are 24 points behind the average American 15 year old.

The 2003 TIMSS study ranked India at 46 among 51 countries. Indian students' score was 392 versus average of 467 for the group. These results were contained in a Harvard University report titled "India Shining and Bharat Drowning".

These results are not only a wake-up call for the "India Shining" brigade, but also raise serious questions about the credibility of India's western cheerleaders like Indian-American journalist Fareed Zakaria and New York Times' columnist Tom Friedman.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

India Shining, Bharat Drowning

Learning Levels and Gaps in Pakistan by Jishnu Das and Priyanka Pandey

Pasi Sahlberg on why Finland leads the world in education

CNN's Fixing Education in America-Fareed Zakaria

PISA's Scores 2011

Poor Quality of Education in South Asia

Infections Cause Low IQs in South Asia, Africa?

Peepli Live Destroys Western Myths About India

PISA 2009Plus Results Report

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Teach For Pakistan--Volunteer For the Noblest Profession

Guest Post by Rakesh Mani

With all the depressing news coming out of Pakistan in the last few months, there is one major development that has me hopeful and excited. Last month saw the launch of the Teach For Pakistan movement, which aims to expand the urban poor’s access to quality education by recruiting highly qualified young Pakistanis to teach in under-resourced schools for two years. In the long-run, these ‘fellows’ will go on to be successful leaders in various other fields, but will continue to support local educational initiatives from their positions of influence.

In the US, Teach For America (which the movement in Pakistan is modelled on) has been operating for over 20 years — with tremendous academic impact. Most alumni, over 60 percent in fact, have stayed within the field of education and continue to make an impact as educators and social entrepreneurs. In India, we launched a similar movement in the summer of 2009.

Almost two years ago, I was sufficiently inspired by the transformational power of grassroots work in education to come join Teach For India in Mumbai. But it was not easy. Leaving behind my banking job in New York meant exposing myself to financial insecurity, living the Spartan life of a schoolteacher and battling social and parental misgivings. But I was not alone either. I was inspired by 87 young idealists who had joined with me — all giving up lucrative careers and moving cities, countries and continents.

Teaching in Mumbai’s harsh Prem Nagar slums, some sights and sounds have become permanently etched in my mind — the family of five who cannot afford to send all their children to school, and therefore picked two, a girl and a boy; the beatings that a 3rd grade student can receive at home for scoring poorly on a weekly class test; a young girl reciting a poem from memory in fluent English without understanding a word of what she is saying.

My worldview changed dramatically as I saw firsthand the stark challenges of poverty — illiteracy, child labour, abuse and the privations imposed by caste hierarchies. I was astounded by this contradictory nation — innovative yet impoverished, globally oriented yet parochially sectarian.

Despite the posturing of our politicians and patriotic czars, the reality is that the lowest sections of Indian and Pakistani society are united by their shared sorrows. The education received by a child is still largely determined by their birthplace and their socio-economic background. If Nehru and Jinnah could see our countries today, 62 years after independence, nothing would shock them more than the extent of illiteracy among the masses. They would be appalled that half the adult population (and more than half the female population) remains unable to read and write, and powerless to break the cycle of poverty and servitude.

In India, 15 out of every 100 children will never attend school. And among the 85 children who do, 50 percent will drop out before 5th grade.

The challenges are manifold and multi-layered. Firstly, there is limited access to schools (particularly in rural areas) and, in cases where they do exist, the quality of education is often poor and the infrastructure abysmal. For example, a recent study showed that only 55 percent of schools in India have separate toilets for girls — a major reason for parents not sending their daughters to study. Teacher absenteeism is rampant and textbooks, as vehicles for government propaganda, offer little contextual relevance in a student’s everyday life.

Education here largely involves the teacher playing narrator in the classroom. Students are receptacles who are trained to memorise and reproduce. The more meekly they accomplish this, the better students they are. But as young children are forced to submit to rote learning, they lose the critical consciousness they will need to succeed in the years to come. And as they embrace educational passivity, they also more readily accept the imperfections and injustices their societies impose on them.

The young leaders of this movement have a chance to provide young children with the essential tools for self-defence and empowerment in tomorrow’s Asia. Imagine the socio-economic revolution possible if our youth are better equipped to compete for secure employment, to defend themselves in court, to enforce their rights, to take advantage of technology and to take part, intelligently, in political activity.

Even without teaching full-time, there are numerous ways to contribute and be a part of the solution. Your time and presence is the most valuable commodity you can part with. Volunteering in classrooms and talking about your life and work allows students to fashion a broader mindset. They learn to communicate more effectively and find role models to emulate. Even something as simple as donating and reading out simple, colourful storybooks — which affluent children have easy access to — makes a huge impact.

In just two years as a teacher, I ended up learning much more than I could ever teach. And I hope that the thousands of young, accomplished Pakistanis who join and support Teach For Pakistan will have a similarly profound experience — in humility, perseverance and leadership.

Note: This piece was first published in Pakistan's Daily Times

Here's a brief video presentation on Teach For Pakistan:

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Teach For All

Pakistan Must Fix its Primary Education Crisis

Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital

Intellectual Wealth of Nations

Resilient Pakistan Defies Doomsayers

Student Performance By Country and Race

India Shining and Bharat Drowning

South Asian IQs

Low Literacy Rates Threaten Pakistan's Future

Light a Candle, Don't Curse Darkness

Mobile Phones For Mass Literacy in Pakistan

Poor Quality of Higher Education in South Asia

Teaching Facts vs Reasoning

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

South Asians' Primary Duty to Children

Guest Post by Rakesh Mani

There has to be something wrong with Indian society for it to allow its children to be among the most deprived and malnourished in the world. Across castes and social classes, there is so little attention given to the inalienable right of a child to enjoy a childhood of good health, education and a nutritious diet. How can we get a society of adults to be accountable for the treatment of its youngest citizens?

Several reports from international organizations like UNICEF and the World Bank have been sharply critical of the abject failure of governance in health and education that has left Indian children way behind their counterparts in Sri Lanka, Nepal and even Bangladesh. According to some recent statistics, two million children below the age of five die every year in India. That’s one every fifteen seconds which, shamefully, is the highest figure in the world.

But let’s just focus on primary education for the moment. Through my own experiences of teaching in an under-resourced Bombay school for the last six months, some sights and sounds have become permanently etched in my mind – the family of five who cannot afford to send all their children to school, and therefore picked two, a girl and a boy; the beatings that a 3rd grade student can receive at home for scoring poorly on an exam that tests little more than memorization; young kids reciting poems in fluent English without understanding a word of what they’re saying.

Primary education here largely involves the teacher playing narrator in the classroom. Students are receptacles who must memorize and then mechanically parrot away the narrated content. The more meekly they reproduce what has been written on the blackboard onto pen and paper, the better students they are. For education here is little more than an elaborate ritual of filling student notebooks and issuing communiqués which students patiently receive, memorize and repeat.

But it’s quite apparent now that this factory-schooling model is not only dysfunctional but also destructive towards the myriad processes of human learning and growth. Pupils have to be encouraged to independently develop their own creative thinking processes. Curriculums have to be re-worked to foster a sense of competence, purpose and responsibility into students. And also equip them with a vital understanding of ethics and social responsibility.

As young kids are forced to submit to rote learning, they lose the critical consciousness they will need to intervene and transform their country in the years to come. As they embrace educational passivity, they will also more readily accept the imperfections and injustices their societies impose on them.

Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru decided in the early 50s to develop India’s higher education platform to compete technologically in the Cold War era, the importance of primary education in the country has been largely ignored. Instead the nation focused on building institutions that could produce more engineers, doctors and scientists. But how can we sustain these specialized programs without building sturdy foundations at school? Or rather, what quality of engineers and scientists must we be producing at these institutes of excellence? Excluding the IITs, what percentage of Indian graduates are able to compete effectively in the global economy?

As the Indian educational debate remains sharply focused on colleges and universities, it is worth remembering that elementary education is the foundation on which the promise of equal opportunity exists. Much work needs to be done towards making the primary education system accountable to the child for what she learns, and how she learns it. And we’re possibly in the worst of situations at the moment – more than 1 in 3 children who begin primary school will drop out before 5th grade and World Bank statistics show that less than 40% of Indian adolescents are attending secondary school. In this context, the new Right to Education Bill is being hailed as India’s great solution but alas, it is only a sketchy blueprint that has yet to be implemented effectively.

And then again, the bill only caters to children above the age of six. Meeting the nutritional and developmental needs of children under the age of six is critical for the educational journey they will undertake. But there is not enough public attention to this omission in the new bill.

For India’s children, things will clearly not change by themselves. If it takes a village to raise a child, it might take the whole nation to raise the ten million children born annually in India. There is a serious need for much more material that can be used for playful learning, and a need for more simple storybooks, which affluent children have easy access to. Urban slum children have no such resource, either at school or at home.

For a country like India, where almost 40% of the population is under the age of fifteen, this paints a highly disturbing long-term trend. And talking globally, 25% of the entire global workforce will be Indian in about twenty years – so be sure that the quality of education these kids receive is going to impact us all.

But perhaps this is not about numbers, or about economics. Maybe the harshness of the statistics tells us that there is something more sinister at play – that the dialog shouldn’t be about resources or economics at all but instead a debate on our values.

Author Rakesh Mani is a 2009 Teach for India fellow, working with low-income schools in Mumbai. He is also a New York-based investment banker, freelance writer and commentator who contributes to a variety of publications.

As a volunteer for "Teach For India", Mr. Mani is inspiring others by personal example. Teach For India is a nationwide movement of outstanding college graduates and young professionals who will commit two-years to teach full-time in under resourced schools and who will become lifelong leaders working from within various sectors toward the pursuit of equity in education.

While there is no Pakistani equivalent of "Teach For India", there are a number of organizations such Human Development Foundation (HDF) and Development in Literacy (DIL), and Greg Mortenson's Central Asia Institute, which are focusing on improving primary education and promoting literacy in Pakistan.

Riaz Haq's Note: This article focuses on the state of India's children, and raises fundamental questions about society's values. However, I find Mr. Mani's thoughts to be equally, if not more, applicable to Pakistan as well.

Under former President Musharraf, Pakistan followed India's lead by focusing on tertiary education with the higher education budget rising 10-15 fold in a short period of time.

Unfortunately, there was no commensurate increase or focus on primary or secondary education. As a result of the long neglect, Pakistan's primary and secondary public education is in shambles with insufficient funds, rampant corruption and ghost schools that exist only on paper with fictitious staff drawing salaries and perks.

This lack of focus on access and quality of children's education has resulted in the proliferation of madrassahs, some of which are highly radicalized, that fill the vacuum by offering a one-stop shop for poor children needing food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and basic education. Parents simply drop their children off at these madrassas, and essentially let these institutions raise their children, and brainwash the children in some cases.

As Pakistan now fights an existential battle against extremely violent radicals, many from the radical madrassas, the nation is now paying a heavy price for years of neglect.

Upon the urging of saner elements in Pakistan, and pressure from the alarmed world, a new education policy has recently been announced that will more than double education spending in Pakistan from about 3% of the GDP to 7%. If it is done correctly, instills proper values, and with transparency, then there can be hope for light be at end of the tunnel for Pakistan's younger generation.

Here's a video report about Pakistan's decrepit public education:

Friday, October 9, 2009

Asia Gains in World's Top Universities

The latest edition of the world's top universities from The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) has few surprises in 2009. The top 10 Universities are: Harvard (US), Cambridge (UK), Yale(US), UCL, London (UK), Imperial College, London and Oxford (both UK, joint 5), Chicago (US), Princeton (US), MIT, Massachusetts (US) and California Institute of Technology (US). As always, the top of the list is dominated by American and British Universities this year, together making up about 40% of the entire list of 200. The US universities account for more than a quarter, while the UK institutions make up about 15% of the top 200 universities. Outside of the US and the UK, there is fair representation of Australian, Canadian and European institutions and a smattering of Asian universities from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore and Malaysia.

A US publication, US News & World Report, also published its ranking of the world's top universities in June, this year. USN&WR rankings are not identical but quite similar to the Times list.

The number of Asian universities in the list of top 100 has increased from 14 to 16. The University of Tokyo, at 22, is the highest ranked Asian university, ahead of the University of Hong Kong that stands at 24.

Leading UK universities said institutions in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong were "snapping at the heels" of western institutions, arguing they need more funding to compete on the global stage.

However, there has been a significant fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 this year.

The rankings are based on an international survey of 9,000 academics who assessed the institutions' research facility, teaching quality and ability to recruit staff and students abroad.

"The broad message of these tables is clear - the leading UK research universities are held in high esteem internationally but countries like China and Korea, which are investing massively in their best institutions, are snapping at our heels" Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group of universities said.

Piatt said the UK was less well-funded than its competitors and if public spending cuts hit budgets they would be under increasing pressure.

The entire Muslim world is represented by just one university from Malaysia on the top 200 list. Other Muslim nations including Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE are represented by one or more institutions among the top 400 universities listed by the Times of London for 2009. Egypt, the largest Arab nation by population, is conspicuous by its absence from this prestigious list of 400 institutions of higher learning.

Here are some of the key highlights:

1. Among the top 20 universities, including one tied ranking, there are 13 American, 5 British, 1 Australian, 1 Canadian and 1 Swiss on the list.

2. Top Canadian university is McGill in Montreal, at number 18, up from 20 last year. Australian National University and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) are ranked at 17 and 20 respectively. Another top Canadian University in top 200, University of Toronto, is ranked 29.

3. Top Asian universities are University of Tokyo at 22 (down from 19 last year), followed by University of Hong Kong at 24 (up from 26), National University of Singapore at 30, and Hong Kong University of Technology at 35 (up from 39).

4. Outside of Hong Kong, the top Chinese university is Tsinghua at 49 (up from 56), followed by Peking University at 52 (down from 50).

5. The top Irish university is Trinity College, Dublin, at 43, up from 49.

6. Two campuses of the Indian Institutes of Technology make the list, down from three in 2006. IIT Bombay is ranked 163, up from 174 last year, and IIT Delhi at 181, down from 154 last year. Beyond the top 200, there are four more Indian institutions in the top 400 list. These include IIT Kanpur at 237, IIT Madras at 284, University of Delhi at 291 and IIT Kharagpur at 335.

7. Except for UC Santa Cruz (at 252) and the relatively new campuses at Merced and Riverside (at 285), the rest of the University of California campuses are on the top 200 best universities list. UCLA is at 32, UC Berkeley 39, UC San Diego 76, UC Santa Barbara 106, UC Davis 108, and UC Irvine at 161. On a personal note, it is nice to see both of my daughters' schools, UCLA and UC Berkeley, show up among the top 50 institutions on the list. It is also a consolation to see Rutgers University, where I taught in late 1970s, ranked at 183.

8. Ranked at 181, Universiti of Malaysia is the only institution from a Muslim nation on the list, down from two in 2006. It is a sad commentary on the quality of higher education at universities in Islamic nations that renders them unable to be considered for such prestigious lists. It is not hopeless however. There are several up and coming universities in Islamic nations, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which can move up the list if there is continued focus on excellence in higher education.

9. Beyond the top 200, there are thirteen more universities on the list of top 400 from Muslim nations. At 201, the University of Indonesia just missed the top 200 list. Saudi Arabia's King Saud University is at 247, Indonesia's Universitas Gadjah Mada at 250, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd University at 266, Malaysia's Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia at 291, Malaysia's Universiti Sains Malaysia at 314, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at 320, Universiti Putra Malaysia at 345, Pakistan's National University of Science and Technology (NUST) at 350 (up from 376), Indonesia's BANDUNG Institute of Technology at 351, Turkey's Bilkent University at 360, Iran's University of Teheran at 386 and UAE's United Arab Emirate University at 374.

Table Courtesy of Two Wobbling Minds: