Education in Tamil Nadu - The Government's rosy picture

The Hindu (November 16th Chennai edition (http://www.hindu.com/2009/11/16/stories/2009111657980100.htm) had a front-page article on how China was planning to adopt the activity-based learning (ABL) model that Tamil Nadu government schools employ to teach primary-school students. The article stated that Chinese officials were impressed by the level of confidence and enthusiasm exhibited by students owing to the interactive nature of the ABL model. The delegates were taken to visit schools in Tiruvallur, Madurai, Kancheepuram and Coimbatore. Although the government might rejoice over this ‘feat’, reality still seems to question this rosy picture. Does this actually translate to better learning outcomes?
A recent field visit to Vandavaasi taluk in the Tiruvannamalai district in Tamil Nadu with the Tamil Nadu ASER survey team seemed to contradict the government claims that Tamil Nadu is doing well in education. Yes, Tamil Nadu fares really well in terms of inputs such as infrastructure, learning material and the like – however, ASER survey results (available at http://www.asercentre.org/) find that students in Tamil Nadu aren’t really doing that well as far as learning outcomes go. The gap between public and private education becomes quite evident during such field visits. Government school students (in class V) for instance could not even subtract while a private school student (class III) could not only subtract but divide with ease (assuming division is a little harder than subtraction. This so-called confidence that government school students exhibited was not to be found in the village that we visited. Students who went to private schools were far more confident and ‘literate’ than the government school students. Maybe we were just missing out on these so-called ‘confident’ government school students, but state-wide ASER results seem to confirm the above observation.
Thus, it brings us back to the debate alluded to in an earlier blogpost – is it ultimately just an accountability issue, the problem being that the public sector lacks accountability? What can we do to increase the accountability mechanism in government schools? As long as government school teachers don’t face incentive structures or the threat of being fired if they don’t perform – will they actually do better? It is also important to note here that private school teachers in rural areas are actually paid less that their government school counterparts. Some may even question whether it boils down to whether it is just an issue of bad teachers – The Landmark store (in Nungambakkam, Chennai) is having a debate on Friday, November 20th at 7 pm to discuss whether the Indian education sector has failed because of its teachers or students. It would indeed be interesting to see the outcome of this debate.