In 2009, a batch of students from government and private schools in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, selected by the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry, wrote the objective, standardised PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment) test of the Paris-based OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) which evaluates the reading, maths and science capabilities of 15-year-old boys and girls. Introduced in 2000 to test the real, syllabus-neutral learning outcomes of 15-year-olds and held every three years, PISA is currently written by representative batches of teenagers from over 70 countries. Unsurprisingly, the Indian students who wrote PISA 2009 fared dismally, and were ranked 73rd among the student contingents from 74 countries. Since then, Indian students haven’t written PISA.
Nevertheless, the beneficial outcome of India’s PISA disaster seven years ago is the National Achievement Survey 2015 whose results were published on March 16. Conducted by the Delhi-based National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), for the first time ever, NAS 2015 assesses the real learning outcomes of class X students in English, maths, science, social science and a major Indian (state) language. A total of 277,716 students chosen from 7,216 schools affiliated with 33 syllabus-setting examination boards countrywide were administered objective, standardised tests in the five subjects. Although the authors of this unprecedented and comprehensive survey deny any such intent, in effect NAS 2015 is a verdict on the syllabus design and curriculum delivery capabilities of the country’s two pan-India and 31 state examination boards.
Quite obviously, the syllabi/curriculums prescribed by the country’s 33 school examination boards are substandard as evidenced by the dismal performance of Indian students in PISA 2009, and constant complaints of academics of the country’s handful of globally respected higher education institutions and leaders of India Inc, about the unpreparedness of school-leaving students for university education and/or the jobs market.
NAS 2015 confirms this beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore despite discouragement from the authors of the survey, your editors have gone out on a limb and extrapolated the results of NAS 2015 to rate and rank the country’s school examination boards on the basis of their syllabus-setting and learning delivery capabilities. It’s for readers to judge whether the methodology of the EW league table is logical and rational.
And in our second lead feature, against the disgraceful backdrop of a spate of physical attacks by lumpen mobs, and racial slurs by ignorant politicians directed against students from African countries, Summiya Yasmeen investigates the varied experiences of foreign students in India.
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