Improving students' reading and numeracy: It takes a village and more

livemint.com:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests that approximately 20 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) points are equivalent to a year of learning. By this metric, India was 12 years behind China in mathematics, science and reading abilities the last time India took the PISA test in 2009.

At a macro level, the last 15 years have created a large gap between the world’s two largest countries. Between 2010 and 2023, the gross enrolment rate (GER) of students in higher education in China has risen from 26.5% to 60.2%, while India’s comparable GER has stagnated between 25-28% since 2017.

Low foundational literacy levels in math and reading abilities at a young age and a low enrolment rate in higher education has led to India’s labour productivity being 44% lower than that of China’s. More importantly, a student’s inability to learn even basic reading, writing and mathematics has led to disillusionment among the students, teachers and parents.

This is why 8 out of 10 Indian students who enroll in grade 1 don’t reach grade 8, 25% of teachers don’t even show up to class, and parents are largely not concerned whether their child is learning or not. This has created a vicious cycle.

The problem is not one of spending on education but of the community’s involvement and attitude towards education, which have a disproportionate impact on a child’s learning outcomes. In Vietnam, World Bank researchers found that as much as half of the country’s score differential on the 2012 and 2015 PISA tests could be explained by community factors like the expectations that parents placed on students and teachers, which led to increased discipline, with the country being among the bottom three