Improving Odisha’s Quality of Education

C: That is an interesting task! Could you please clarify what you mean by the quality of education and how would it be measured?

I: Good question! The performance of students in examinations can be taken as a proxy for the quality of education and the mean score of students can be used to measure it.

C: Alright! Are there any specific class of students for whom the analysis needs to be done?

I: For primary school students (1st to 5th standards) and secondary school students (6th to 8th standards) only.

C: Also, what is the objective of trying to increase the quality of education?

I: There has recently been a survey study and the state has underperformed in the education criteria. The objective is to improve the statistics of the state before the next survey that is next year.

C: Are there any other metric that needs to be looked at apart from the mean score?

I: What other relevant metrics can you think of?

C: Along with mean score we could possibly look at median scores and pass percentage of students too.

I: Good, but for now just focus on the mean scores.

C: Alright! We can start by understanding what and how things are being taught in government schools. For this, I would like to bucket the issue into 5 areas: Curriculum, Methodology, Faculty, Infrastructure and others

I: Okay go ahead!

C: I would like to start with Curriculum and sub-divide it into the subjects that are taught and the content of the subjects

I: The subjects that are taught are standard and same as other states. Could you look into content.

C: Sure! Content would consist of the breadth and depth of learning based on the number of topics and the details covered from each topic.

I: Yes, the content is too broad for the primary and secondary students to understand. Let’s move to the next bucket now.

C: Now we have methodology. The teaching pedagogy can either be faculty-based, case-based or interactive with class discussions and participation. Which method is currently being used?

I: Most of the schools follow a faculty-based teaching pedagogy.

C: An interactive pedagogy is the most effective way of teaching among the three.

I: Agreed! What else?

C: We can now move to Faculty which can be analyzed by seeing the student to teacher ratio and the quality or qualification of teachers. Do we have any information about this?

I: The teacher student ratio is comparable to other states however due to budget constraints highly qualified teachers could not be employed. Good analysis so far, let’s move ahead.

C: The next head is Infrastructure which I would like to further divide into classroom infrastructure and outside class infrastructure. The classroom infrastructure would consist of chairs, table, blackboard, fans etc. If the infrastructure is not up to the mark, the ability of students to learn is hindered.

I: The classroom infrastructure is good enough and does not hinder the learning ability of the students.

C: Okay! We can now look at the outside class infrastructure. The different segments within can be extra curricular facilities, security of students or food and water

I: What would food/water include?

C: Usually government schools provides mid-day meals to incentivize students to come to school, so are those meals available and is the quantity and quality up to the set standards?

I: It has been found that the food provided by the vendor is not of good quality and has led to students becoming unwell leading to absenteeism. Since you had defined an “Others” category. What would it consist of?

C: Others could include the reasons internal and external to the students. Internal reasons would include the interest of students to learn and family background. The external reasons would include the awareness and accessibility including transportation facilities.

I: Understood! However, these are not an issue.

On a whole we have identified four issues that we can work on. However, due to time and budget constraints, we need to choose one among these four to invest in. Which issue should we start with and why?

C: According to me, the absenteeism issue should be looked at to begin with. Firstly, attending school would have a direct impact on mean score of the students. Secondly, it is feasible as all it requires is to change the food vendor. Lastly, unlike other issues, absenteeism is measurable and would help as a stat in the next survey.

I: Good work! We can close the case here.