Raji Jayaraman is an associate professor of economics at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She studies education and learning outcomes in India.
April marks the beginning of the academic year in India. Primary schools across the country are slated to reopen to 130 million young children, most of whom have been out of school for over a year now. In terms of lost learning, the cost of school closures has been massive. Children in India didn’t switch from in-person to online schooling, as was the case in many wealthier countries.
They went from having schooling to having none. A pandemic survey indicates that eighty percent of Indian parents reported that no education material was delivered during their lockdown. So, for a full year, most children—especially those from poor families in rural India—are unlikely to have enjoyed any academic learning. Not reading. Not writing. Not math. Nothing.
One of India’s greatest post-independence achievements is having attained near-universal primary school enrollment. Parents in India send their kids to primary school en masse, often at great personal sacrifice. Tragically, although kids go to school, many don’t learn much once they’re there. In 2018, according to ASER, only forty-four percent of grade five students in government schools could read a grade two level text, and less than a quarter could do division. Suspend school for a year, and even these meagre skills will depreciate. When kids start school again, where will they even pick up?
Learning is cumulative. If you don’t recognize a word, then reading a sentence is impossible. If you can’t do addition, then multiplication is a fantasy. This means that children who were enrolled in grade two during the pandemic year are unlikely to learn anything if they enrol in grade three when school reopens. In fact, the automatic grade-to-grade promotion commonly practiced in government schools means that this one-year hiatus risks leaving many kids stuck at their pre-pandemic learning levels…perhaps forever. We’re not talking about a lagging cohort here. We’re talking about a lost generation.
The challenge lies in getting kids up to speed, with the understanding that different children face different learning deficits. A one-size-fits-all solution—such as having all kids repeat a grade—isn’t enough. Government school teachers seem ill equipped for this challenge. Class sizes are huge and teachers, when present, tend to stick to the curriculum rather than teach students at their individual levels. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that an overstretched Indian government school system is going to be up to the task that’s now required.
This leaves three other means of supporting children as they re-enter schools: family, tutors, and technology. Relying on any one of them is risky, especially for poorer children. Family members could in principle help, but parents or older siblings in low-income households often lack the same literacy and numeracy skills as their younger counterparts. Private tutors are expensive. And those of us whose children have spent much of the year in virtual classes know by now that technology is no substitute for in-person learning. This is especially true for younger children, who lack the discipline, focus, or tech skills required to independently navigate digital learning materials, and need in-person guidance and supervision.
Bridging the learning gap is possible. India is a country of over a billion people, hundreds of millions of whom have at least a secondary school education and can be rallied to help younger children in their communities. It has a world-class IT industry and growing expertise in digital learning. The country also has an extraordinary array of grassroots non-profit organizations capable of pulling these pieces together.
Pratham, for example, is a formidable education-focused NGO whose digital initiative matches small groups of children to a local mentor who guides them through digital learning materials that they work their way through on a tablet, based on their skills and interests. Khan Academy already has learning modules that are customized for the Indian curriculum, and its portfolio of courses available in Indian languages is expanding. Grassroots NGOs are perfectly capable of taking this technology to students, with in-person support from local communities. Rigorous impact evaluations of both Pratham and Khan Academy’s programs have shown that they are effective in improving children’s learning outcomes.
Two challenges remain. First, how can digital learning materials be delivered to the poor at scale? According to the National Statistics Office, only four percent of rural households have a computer and under a quarter had internet access, so programs that rely on either of these are unlikely to reach the needy. Using smartphones seems more promising. In the last two years alone, the proportion of rural households with smartphones has nearly doubled, up from 37% in 2018 to 62% in 2020. Most kids that received learning material last year received it through WhatsApp. But reaching the poor requires making both the internet and smartphones more affordable. This raises the second question: where will the money come from? Public primary school education budgets are meagre, and the pandemic-related economic contraction has only made matters worse. International donor agencies are spread thin. This leaves charitable donations from wealthy individuals and philanthropic organizations. Perhaps with their support, India can avert losing a generation of learning to COVID-19.
