As government rolls out a new National Education Policy, it would do well to code in foundational learning and oral reading fluency.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.
The Sustainable development Goal aims a complete free equitable and quality primary and secondary Education.
Even though many countries have significantly raised education investment ,today the world is facing a learning crisis -Learning Poverty.
Obtaining the fundamental skills of Reading and Basic Math is a precondition for active participation in modern society. As reading skill is an important gate way skill and all children should be able to read and understand a story by age of 10.
A child needs to be able to “learn to read” before they can begin to “read to learn”.
WHAT IS LEARNING POVERTY?
Learning Poverty means being unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text orwho cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school at the age Ten.
All foundational skills are important, but we focus on reading because
reading proficiency is an easily understood measure of learning
(ii) reading is a student’s gateway to learning in every other area; and,
(iii) reading proficiency can serve as a proxy for foundational learning in other subjects, in the same way that the absence of child stunting is a marker of healthy early childhood development.
In other words, if the foundation is weak and if by grade 3, the student cannot read, there are no pillars to build upon. This single failure is pushing up learning poverty levels to new highs according to World Bank estimation.
Eliminating learning poverty is as important as eliminating extreme monetary poverty, stunting, or hunger.More than half of all children in low and middle income countries suffer from Learning Poverty.
The World Bank estimated the levels of “Learning Poverty” across the globe by measuring the number of 10-year old children who cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school. In low- and middle-income countries “learning poverty” stands at 53%, while for the poorest countries, this is 80% on average.
In a new and urgent way to look at this, the World Bank has introduced the concept of learning poverty. Their results show that 53% of children in low- and middle-income countries are not able to read or understand simple text by age 10. This comes nearly 5 years after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What’s more worrying is that despite multiple interventions across countries, at the current rate of improvement, 43% of kids will still be ‘learning-poor’ by 2030.
To achieve it in the foreseeable future requires far more rapid progress at scale than we have yet seen.
LEARNING POVERTY IN INDIA
About 55 percent of children in India at late primary age today are not proficient in reading, adjusted for the Out of School children.
In India, 2 percent of primary school-aged children are not enrolled in school. These children are excluded from learning in school.
Below Minimum Proficiency. Large-scale learning assessments of students in India indicate that 54 percent do not achieve the Minimum Proficiency level at the end of primary school, as per the data from grade 5 in 2017.
Defining Learning Poverty
While it is easy to talk about foundational skills and the lack of these gateway skills can have on lifelong learning and employ ability, it is hard to measure them accurately.
Basic literacy and numeracy are what most studies break down foundational skills to. However, even as foundational learning comprehend so much more, one skill is more fundamental than the others that is READING.
Reading proficiency helps children learn better in all other subjects. And, it can be measured effectively.
This is why, learning poverty is defined as being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. It is expected that by this age, children should be able to “independently and fluently read simple, short narrative and expository texts,” “locate explicitly-stated information” and “interpret and give some explanations about the key ideas in these texts.” If they can do this, it allows them to ‘read to learn’ in later years.
Where does India stand?
There is no denying that India has made considerable improvement in education enrolment in recent years, almost reaching the goal of universal access to schooling. But learning outcomes continue to be poor. According to the ASER (Rural) report 2018, only 50.3% of Class V children can read a Class II level text. This shows a high degree of what the World Bank defines as learning poverty – being unable to read and understand a simple age-appropriate text by age 10.
If a child cannot read age-appropriate text or will be unable to move on from identifying words to grasping subject concepts. Put another way, all later schooling becomes a waste. And it is generally agreed that the inflection point is Class III. Countries which have prioritized and invested in foundational learning have produced a better quality of workforce, enabling their economies to take off.
Therefore, India would do well to shift the focus onto foundational learning. And getting age-appropriate reading right by Class III is a simple, quantifiable metric that can be implemented across the education landscape. As government rolls out a new National Education Policy, it would do well to code in foundational learning and oral reading fluency. Like Swachh Bharat, the government must accord the highest priority to this goal.
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Reference.
The World bank -Ending Learning Poverty.
The world Group- A learning Revolution to Eradicate Learning Poverty.
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