Annual Status of Education Report 2019
One of the big debates in early childhood education is on Children's School readiness and whether early childhood education provides them with the requisite skills to cope with the school curriculum. A vast literature exists on the importance of certain cognitive abilities that are supposed to be developed during the years children spend in preschool so that they are ready when they enter school in grade 1.
In terms of what children learn in school one of the big debates is whether children in private schools perform better than those in Government schools. In the Indian context, the consensus seems to be that a large proportion of the differences in the learning levels of children enrole in private and government schools can be attributed to home factors. And while the private school effect remains positive even after taking into account the child's home environment, learning outcomes in private schools are nowhere near grade competency. But when do these differences start to manifest themselves ? Do children who start grade 1 in private schools have a learning advantage ? Let us look at the case of language according to the grade 1 curriculum, children are supposed to be able to identify and read words and Simple sentences. According to annual status of education report 2019, 21% children in grade one of the Government schools could read words compared to 46.7% in private schools advantage of 122%. How is this possible ? Is this affair comparison ? Are we comparing apples with apples ? The answer is clearly no.
First the age distribution in grade 1 of Government schools is very different from that in private schools. The right to education and national policy mandates that children enter grade one at age 6. however 26.1% children in grade 1 of Government schools are 4 or 5 years old compared to 15.7% in private schools. At the other end of the spectrum, 30. 4% children grade 1 of Government schools are 7-8 years old compared to 45.4% in private schools. Therefore comparing learning levels in grade 1 between Government and private schools becomes problematic. The Higher Learning levels in grade 1 in private schools maybe partly due to the fact that grade 1 in those schools has a higher proportion of older children.
Second it is well known that children who go to private schools come from relatively affluent backgrounds. They also tend to have educated parents. This affords them certain advantages which are not available to children who are from less advantaged families and are more likely to attend Government schools. For instance in the annual status of education report 2019 sample, had 30% of government school grade 1 children had mothers who had never been to school compared to only 12% of Grade One private school children. Further 27. 3% of grade 1 children in private schools had private tutors compared to 19. 5% in Government schools.
Third early childhood education is supposed to prepare children for school. Children are supposed to be exposed to activities that build their cognitive abilities and early literacy and numeracy skills. For instance the National Early Childhood Care and Education Curriculum Framework talks about developing skills related to sequential thinking, predicting patterns observing, reasoning and problem-solving in the preschool stage. These cognitive and early language skills are highly correlated with the child's ability to acquire further language skills. Therefore children who enter grade One better prepared with these are likely to perform better. For instance among the cognitive tasks administered in annual status of education report 2019, seriation, pattern recognition and Puzzle only 23. 8% children of grade 1 in Government schools could do all three tasks compared to 43.1% in private schools.
Once we take into account all these factors- age distribution in grade 1, home environment, affluence , mothers education and some baseline abilities that children enter grade 1 with, private schools still have a learning advantage. Where is this coming from? Since we are talking about grade 1, this difference cannot be attributed to and accumulated effect of better teaching practices in private schools.
what private preschools are doing is to start children on the school based curriculum in preschool itself. In other words the private sector keep children longer in preschool and exposes them to school like curricular even before they have entered School. For instance 14% children ine anganbadi could recognise letters or more compared to 52.9% in private pre schools and 12. 9% children in these private pre schools were already reading words(something which they are are supposed to learn in grade 1) compared to 2.9 percent in anganbadi. It is not surprising, therefore, that children from private preschools perform better in school.
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