Of Response, Resilience and Reimagination of Education Ecosystems

The meaning of education

Let’s begin, as always, from the basics. How does a child learn? Through a set of interactions – with adults, her peers, with ideas in books, and so on – through which her understanding grows, and perspectives evolve; through repeated practice, it becomes a skill that she can put to use in the world around her.

Traditionally, as a society, we have appointed the role of a ‘teacher’, to invest heavily in driving these interactions, to focus on a generally agreed set of themes that are useful for a child (codified as a curriculum). These, today, are primarily driven through the aggregation of a school: a brick-and-mortar set up and a physically proximate community, through which these interactions (with the appointed adult, other children, with books) could happen under the guiding hand of the teacher, efficiently and at scale.

At Peepul, we believe in supporting and enabling every child to live up to their potential – and in pursuit of this, we look to guide and change the public education system in developing countries towards creating meaningful interactions that can help the children of the most vulnerable communities live up to their potential.

Within an education ecosystem (think of the public education system in a state or a district, or a private school network) – we believe it takes four interconnected interventions to make it exemplar:

(1) building and highlighting ‘bright spots’ (e.g. exemplar schools with drastically improved results) to build belief that change is possible,

(2) training teacher to build champions,

(3) empowering education officials mentoring the teachers, and

(4) monitoring of these teachers with the rich metrics, to build a supportive ecosystem for them to perform. [1]

What happens in this new world?

The question must be asked: what happens now, when we can no longer hold to the ‘appointed adult’-child interaction in a school the same way, with the pandemic and school closures? What would it take to ensure that yet, every child lives up to their potential?

As leaders of the education sector, we would have to orient ourselves to these changing circumstances, while staying true to the goal of education.

Responding to the crisis

Education ecosystems I am aware of across the country have responded to this crisis in similar ways:

Setting up a communication channel, typically a network of WhatsApp groups for information flow from a central source to the last mile of parents/children, via teachers; and then, sending digital student material through the channel, typically curated videos and reading content.

There have been variations in this approach: with varying levels of centralization in content curation, workload for the students, etc. [2]

This situation is leading to shifts in behaviour – which may perhaps become more imbibed as habits:

Government school-teachers are now working from home. There is potentially less oversight, yet, less overhead as well! While some teachers are extensively involved in relief efforts (in their role as government employees), many others are now able to focus primarily on delivering learning to their students, digitally.

Habits are changing for children and parents too – for one, a section parents are being nudged to share their phones with their children. Children on average are spending longer hours looking into a device. Parents may also, in a while, not be as sure about the value of school education as has been ingrained in them culturally so far.

There are many challenges in this model too – from the easy-to-expect difficulty of access for many (from issues of no electricity to limited data packs), to the did-not-see-that-coming (issues of privacy and cyber-harassment of female teachers by their personal numbers being available WhatsApp groups with parents).

Moving from Response to Resilience...

The country is showing signs of opening up the complete lockdown that it was in – but this will be in fits and starts, and for all we know, another lockdown may ensue. With hotspots and shifting colour codes of districts, this is likely to be a 1-2 year journey to settle into a normalcy (if that).

In many ways, pre-crisis, we were at the edge of an education crisis of epic proportions. Consider the statistic we all know: 49.7% of Class 5 students cannot read a simple text of Class 2, and 72.2% of Class 5 students cannot do division. This problem is perhaps particularly acute in the public education system, which has 166 million students enrolled and is a lifeline for the poor. [3]

We must use the discontinuity to our advantage. We must have collective leadership to imagine a new alternative to the pre-existing equilibrium, and implement it with rigor to make it the new norm. This would mean going to the root of what ‘education’ should be for: to build the next generation of citizens who are rational and sensitive. This would mean questioning long-held beliefs and assumptions. This would mean bold reimagination of education ecosystems, and rigorous execution to move us there.

And what this would mean, is also shifting from response to resilience. It would serve us well to build the resilience of the system – strengthen its ability to bounce back from shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic, to continue to deliver education (and in the new norm, I would hope, with high quality). Capacity building of the teachers and the layers of academic officials will be mission-critical in this – equipping them with the foundational understanding of how children learn; evolving their understanding of their role to encompass new ways of interaction with their students and their parents, and enabling them with the right resources to continue supporting children.

As part of building the resilience of the ecosystem, at Peepul, we have partnered with the School Education Department in Madhya Pradesh to conceptualize and launch a flagship teacher development programme, under the aegis of the Chief Minister’s “CM Rise” programme for improving school education – this looks to provide professional development to the ~300,000 teachers and education officials across the state of Madhya Pradesh. The CM Rise Digital Teacher Training was launched on May 1, 2020.

... while keeping ourselves honest to what we don't know

As we navigate the way to the reimagined education ecosystem, we must remember that the circumstances we are in are unusual. The stakeholders involved are imbibing new habits, learning new behaviours, and donning new roles – and this is changing the rules of the game. Even digital isn't what it used to be. In other words, with changed boundary conditions, we have different optimization points, and different stable solutions.

So, during the design, we must keep the end-user in mind (ask yourself: what is their reality today? What has changed in their lives? What are their genuine constraints? Talk to them. Do pilots.), and during delivery, we must build strong feedback mechanisms that deliver the real picture from the ground... And importantly, we must be open to listening carefully to what the beneficiary has to say, no matter how counter-intuitive or inconvenient it may be to the programme's design.

In short, it would do us well to continue to learn, and evolve our approach with our learnings. As the aphorism goes, “The illusion of knowledge is the biggest impediment to learning.”

Through the CM Rise Digital Teacher Training programme, we seek to do exactly what I’ve laid out above – use the discontinuity to our advantage, and work to build a resilient system; and at every moment, keep our ears close to the ground and our eyes open, to truly ensure an adapting, evolving programme that delivers real, lasting, and distinctive impact. Wish us luck!

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Girish is the Chief Operating Officer of Peepul (www.peepulindia.org), an education non-profit in India. Peepul partners with state and local governments to transform education systems. The views expressed in this article are personal.

[1] To understand this better, see our approach here: www.peepulindia.org/our-approach

[2] In our exemplar schools in Delhi, under the leadership of our wise and wonderful Education Director, Urmila Chowdhury, we have created a six-part structure to drive this across our network of three schools, and also across the 581 schools of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, under the “Reach And Teach” programme. Our approach focuses on enabling teachers to share curated high-quality content with each other, and setting standards while giving space to their individual creativity.

[3]Education outcomes from ASER 2018 report: http://img.asercentre.org/docs/ASER%202018/Release%20Material/aser2018nationalfindings.pdf. Total enrolment taken as Government and Government-aided schools from Class 1-12 (http://udise.in/Downloads/Publications/Documents/Flash_Statistics_on_School_Education-2016-17.pdf)