ABSTRACT
The twentieth century experienced an expansion of schooling across countries when a larger number of children attended schools for longer periods of time. The literacy rate increased from 21.4 per cent in 1900 to 56 per cent in 2000, dropout rates declined, and so did the number of out-of-school children. According to UNESCO’s Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) 2023, globally, 87 per cent of children complete primary school globally, 77 per cent complete lower secondary school, and 58 per cent of youth complete upper secondary school. There were 244 million out-of-school children and youth worldwide in 2022. The primary school age out-of-school rate has been declining fast, while the number of lower-secondary out-of-school children has remained relatively stable since 2014. Global initiatives and national efforts such as the Education for All movement, Millennium Development Goals, and Sustainable Development Goals have aimed to improve access to education and learning outcomes. Yet, despite these initiatives, the global learning crisis persists and is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
India has made great strides in analysing and understanding school quality. While the focus of public interventions in the early decades of independence was to create schooling facilities, the priority shifted after the education policy of 1986 to creating facilities in the schools (Operation Blackboard) and in the 1990s to student learning – Minimum Levels of Learning. The empirical studies on the quality of education in India carried out by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration in 1989, multiple studies by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) under the District Primary Education Programme in the 1990s, the Annual Status of Education Report from the decade of 2000s, National Assessment Studies by NCERT in the decade of 2010s and 2020s, highlighted the low levels and wide variations in learner achievement among social groups and geographical locations. In many states, the between-school variations in learner achievement have been higher than within-school variations, implicating the need for public policy interventions to overcome between-school variations.
The intervention strategies adopted in several countries to enhance learner achievement include: (1) an overall increase in learner achievement, (2) interventions targeting under-achieving students, (3) prioritising disparities in learning achievement, and (4) creating a more inclusive education system. An initial step to any intervention measure to improve learning levels is an empirical analysis to identify the problem areas. This will help identify the locations, social groups, and schools where added support is needed to reduce inequalities in learning achievement. Needless to add, an education system that enhances learning levels for all and reduces inequalities in learning among all groups will emerge as an inclusive education system.
