Madhya Pradesh ASER2010 experience

It was 4th February 2011 when i reached Bhopal for ASER 2010 resurvey in M.P. After 3 days of orientation we moved to our respective districts. My district was Balaghat, a big district with eight blocks. After reaching there we found that it would be better to conduct the survey in a single phase rather than two phase. So we planned to raised volunteers. We targeted B. Ed colleges for our purpose. We got a very wonderful response from the colleges and we successfully collected 54 volunteers for the survey. All volunteers were B. Ed students and were very keen to the survey.

After that we conducted our training session according to the schedule. In between the training two person from a local NGO came to the venue. They were interested to participate in the process. They tried to convince us about their creditability. Suddenly they changed their topic and came to monetary matter. They asked about our budget and I told them. After listening to the budget they became less interested. After that they start questioning on ASER reports reliability. I tried my best to convince them but they were not listening. They started advising me regarding the survey process. After listening to their advices I offered them to have a field visit with us. They went away without saying anything.

During the Survey period I was very busy and i forgot about them. After the completion of survey, while our rechecking process was going on they again came to me. Now they are with a different issue. They started blaming us that we are following a wrong process and what ever results coming is not realistic. Balaghat is a very developed district with respect of education. What ever reports come from government Balaghat always do well. Almost all students go to Pvt school. I was surprised to know about that. What a myopic analysis was that. I did not tell them any thing. I just sow them few of our formates and met few of our volunteers. After seeing the formates and listening to the volunteers they had nothing to say. They went away. After wards i went to know that actually they were messenger of District Education Department.

ASER FINDINGS:A LONG WAY TO GO

All children are in school is almost achieved, which is a great achievement for all Indians. All most all schools are having a good infrastructure. Being optimistic it is good news that The Right to Compulsory Education Act came into force on 1^st April 2010.Now it is our duty to check the quality of education. But how to do it? There are various ways e.g. checking at input level, checking the process or checking the output. We have choose the last one, checking the output i.e. if our children are going to school then what they are learning. In ASER we just tried to find out the learning level of our children. It is done at very basic level, it contains only reading and basic arithmetic. The tools which are used for child evaluation are equivalent to standard one and two level. Basically survey is done in rural India.

Findings are very interesting. Evaluation is done with children from the age group of 5 to 16. Regarding reading level only 41% of the age group can read standard 2 level stories across India in 2007. In 2008 also the percentage was same as 2007. But in 2009 the percentage fall marginally to 40%. This is a serious matter of concern. The picture seems more disappointing when it seems class wise reading level. In the year of 2007 it was found that more than 40% of standard five students cannot read standard two level stories. In the year of 2008 the percentage increased to 44%. It was 48% in the year of 2009. If a child who is studying at standard five and cannot read standard two level stories then it is big question mark on his or her learning level.

The level of basic arithmetic’s is also not optimistic. Only 30% of children, who belongs to the age group of 5 to 16 can solve division problem. In the year of 2008 the percentage falls down to 27%. It was 29% in 2009. Class wise data show a much clear picture about the situation. Almost 58% students from standard five cannot solve division problem. In 2008 it increased to 63%. There was a little improvement in 2009 data in comparison to 2008, the percentage decreased to 62%. These data shows that even after spending five years in school students are not able to do some simple arithmetic’s which are useful in our daily life.

The situation is very serious as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan is going to finish its term but our main objective is yet to achieve. Now Right to Compulsory Education Act is coming but the problem with the Act is that, it is concern with inputs rather than learning levels. As a citizen of India we are paying 2% education chess so it is our duty to make accountable the responsible authority to get best from our investments.