#rte@6: dear rajasthan, don't fail us - abdul latif … to pass / fail rte prescribes...

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@shriyamohan (https://twitter.com/shriyamohan) | 1 April 2016

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#RTE@6: Dear Rajasthan, don'tfail usSHRIYA MOHAN (HTTP://WWW.CATCHNEWS.COM/AUTHOR/SHRIYA-MOHAN-1433930083.HTML)

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EARLYBIRD

Rajasthan wants to be able to fail middle school students. Is that the best way to teach? (https://twitter.com/inten/tweet?status=Rajasthan+wants+to+be+able+to+fail+middle+school+students.+Is+that+the+best+way+to+teac%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F3aFxRH)

EARLY

#RTE@6: Dear Rajasthan, don't fail us http://www.catchnews.com/india-news/rte-6-dear-rajasthan-don-t-fa...

1 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

BIRD

Indian educators need to move beyond pass-fail. Learning needsto be fun (https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?status=Indian+educators+need+to+move+beyond+pass-fail.+Learning+needs+to+be+fun+via+%40CatchNews+http%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F3aFxRH)

EARLYBIRD

Rajasthanwantstobeabletofailmiddleschoolstudents.Isthatthebestwaytoteach?(https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?status=Rajasthan+wants+to+be+able+to+fail+middle+school+students.+Is+that+the+best+way+to+teac%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F3aFxRH)

EARLYBIRD


EARLYBIRD

Rajasthan wants to be able to fail middle school students. Is that the best way to teach? (https://twitter.com/inten/tweet?status=Rajasthan+wants+to+be+able+to+fail+middle+school+students.+Is+that+the+best+way+to+teac%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F3aFxRH)

EARLYBIRD

Indian educators need to move beyond pass-fail. Learning needsto be fun (https://twitter.com/intent


2 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

Right to pass / fail

RTE prescribes no-detention

States like Rajasthan think that's a bad idea

More in the story

/tweet?status=Indian+educators+need+to+move+beyond+pass-fail.+Learning+needs+to+be+fun+via+%40CatchNews+http%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F3aFxRH)

EARLYBIRD

Rajasthanwantstobeabletofailmiddleschoolstudents.Isthatthebestwaytoteach?(https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?status=Rajasthan+wants+to+be+able+to+fail+middle+school+students.+Is+that+the+best+way+to+teac%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F3aFxRH)

EARLYBIRD



3 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

F

Dry run: Bihar bansliquor in rural areas,restricts sale in urbancentres(http://www.catchnews.com/india-news/dry-run-bihar-bans-liquor-in-rural-areas-restricts-sale-in-urban-centres-

Why pass-fail is not the best way to teach

How can we improve our pedagogy

riday, 1 April, marks six years of the Right to Education Act (RTE).

For the first time it now faces some first public opposition due to

the 'no detention' policy: Section 16 of the Act prohibits schools from

failing and expelling students up to Class VIII, irrespective of their

performance in their examinations.

Rajasthan is the first Indian state to move an amendment to dilute this

section for "improving the quality of education." Last September, the

state Assembly passed a Bill diluting the section by adding the proviso:

"provided that if a child has not achieved class-appropriate learning

level in a class, he may be held back in that class."

"Rajasthan is the first state in the country to do so and this will

improve quality of education," said Vasudev Devnani, minister of state

for primary and secondary education.

Of 22 states, 18 agree that the no-detention policy needs to be

abolished, Devnani, the chairman of the all-India no-detention

committee nominated by the Ministry of Human Resource

Development, told Catch:

Also read

"If examinations are not taken

seriously up to eighth standard

and if students are blindly

promoted, they will fail in large

numbers once they reach ninth.

If their base is so weak then how

will their education develop?"


4 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

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According to him, detentions

should be applicable from the

fifth standard onward and that

he wants to put in place annual

evaluation systems: "There

should be no drop outs between

first and fourth standards. At

fifth, there should be

district-level examinations,

where students who don't pass

are given a second chance. If they

fail a second time, they get

detained."

News reports suggest that the

ministry's objection to the

amendment is on the ground

that it goes against the spirit of

the RTE Act - a central law that

can't be changed by states at will.

It needs the assent of the

President. So, will Pranab

Mukherjee approve the change?

should he?

Devnani is unfazed: "Wait for the

Budget session to be over. We are

all in agreement and the RTE will

surely be amended across India."

When we use fear as amotivator"Students do well not out of fear of failure but because they are

motivated," says Nitya Ram, programme head and educationist with

New Delhi's Vasant Valley school's sister arm Learn Today.


5 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

With years of experience in designing pedagogy for CBSE schools, Ram

says failing students would neither help them learn better, nor

improve the quality of teaching.

"Policy makers don't understand. They think the only way to get a

teacher to teach well or a student to learn is to put in an element of

fear. We have to get over the fear-and-punishment mentality," Ram

says.

"Why don't we focus on making an education system where a child

enjoys studies so much that they pass on their own? Being called a

failed student is a big psychological setback for a school child."

But if everybody gets to pass, isn't being an 8th pass then just

notional? Won't students and teachers collectively abuse a system that

passes even the most dud student? Also, what happens when a child

moves from 8th to 9th where the no-fail policy expires? Reality

eventually gets tested.

Let's get creative with teachingFace these facts:

The proportion of children in Class V who can read a Class II-level

text has declined by almost 15 percentage points since 2005.

The number of Class VIII students who can perform a simple

division has declined by almost 23 percentage points.

In 2013, only two out of five children in third standard could read

a paragraph from a first standard textbook.

Across 550 rural districts, although RTE improved enrolment in

schools to 96%, it came at the expense of the quality of learning.

Source: The 2013 Annual Status of Education Report by Pratham

Education Foundation


6 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

In a bid to hit upon the right solution, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty

Action Lab (J-PAL) and Pratham did an experiment. The idea was to

group children by reading and comprehension abilities or math or

science fundamentals rather than age, and to make learning fun.

The premise was that grade-level teaching, based on a pupil's age

alone, was leaving children behind. What if, we could instead group

kids simply by concepts they were learning?

In eight randomised control trials in Bihar, UP and Haryana, the

experiment found that when kids from third to fifth grades were

divided based on their level of learning rather than age, their grasp

over concepts improved tremendously.

Also there was no such thing as failing. A child simply didn't move

from addition to subtraction to division in a set pattern but moved to

the next only once a concept was mastered.

In Tamil Nadu, such a learning method has been around for 13 years.

The Unicef supported activity-based learning (ABL) was first

undertaken by the Chennai's civic body in 13 schools on a trial basis in

2003. It was then adopted by all 270 primary schools in the district.

According to the system, there is a learning ladder that every child is

on. When a child goes off for 10 days to help his parents on a farm and

gets back to school, he doesn't have to fall behind because he gets put

back at the spot on his ladder where he left.

He picks up again from where he stopped. It also allows late joiners. So

a 10 year old having never been to school can start from the basics.

There is no question of failure.

The key feature of the ABL method is that it uses child-friendly

educational aids to foster self-learning and allows a child to study

according to his or her aptitude and skill.


7 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

(http://www.catchnews.com@shriyamohan (https://twitter.com/shriyamohan)

The curriculum is divided into small units, each a group of self

learning materials (SLM) comprising attractively designed study cards

for English, Tamil, Maths, Science and Social Science. When a child

finishes a group of cards, he completes one 'milestone'.

Activities in each milestone include games, rhymes, drawing, and songs

to teach a letter or a word, form a sentence, do maths and science, or

understand a concept. The child takes up an Exam Card only after

completing all the milestones in a subject.

But what happens outside the purview of the RTE, in grade 9, when

there is no more hand holding?

"By the time they will be on a par if you follow the system sincerely.

The reason it works is because your foundations are strengthened.

When you understand 100% before going to the next level, what you

know, you really know," says Ram.

A massive component of making these systems effective are intense

teacher trainings on the use of new methods that make learning fun.

States such as Rajasthan still have a severe dearth of trained teachers.

There are a total of 27,359 teacher vacancies across primary and

secondary schools in the states. That's a third of all teaching positions.

Perhaps, instead of having the easy way out and arguing for the right

to fail students, what Rajasthan should do is invest massively in

increasing teacher numbers and ensure quality teaching before it can

turn towards a systemic education overhaul.

Edited by Joyjeet Das

SHRIYA MOHAN (HTTP://WWW.CATCHNEWS.COM/AUTHOR/SHRIYA-MOHAN-1433930083.HTML)


8 of 13 4/1/16, 1:31 PM

/author/shriya-mohan-1433930083.html)

An editor and writer of development stories at Catch,

Shriya has 8 years of experience as ...

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