Change agents need to come together to ensure learning outcomes in schools, finds CII-KPMG in India paper

Share this News:

· Change agents like governments and nodal agencies, schools, teachers, parents need to participate actively to bring about systemic changes and to have positive impact in classroom

Chandigarh – The CII-KPMG has come out with a paper titled – “Learning outcomes in school education – at the core of building a knowledge economy” that was launched today at the CII School Summit.

The study recognises some crucial practices for teaching that have positive impact in the classroom. The tone for a favorable change in the classroom can be set by bringing in a few systemic changes and efforts by schools and communities. Change agents like governments and nodal agencies, schools, teachers, parents and education communities would need to participate effectively.

· Stakeholders should encourage cross-pollination of best practices in government and private schools, across subjects and grades, so that changes are better adapted and universalized

· Assessments should be looked at as a diagnostic of what needs to be the focused on or what needs to change

· Need for comprehensive curriculum, which will ease transition between state board and central boards and from one class to another

· Language proficiency should be enhanced. This is found to support academic proficiency in other subjects as well

· Accountability of schools should be on learning outcomes and student performance

· Training needs analysis should be conducted

· Practices such as co-teaching, teacher mentoring, teacher reflection, research and collaboration should be encouraged

· Sharper and well defined lesson plans need to be built

· Assessments should be used as a tool for reflection and remediation

Speaking about the paper launch, Narayanan Ramaswamy, Partner and Head, Education and Skill Development, KPMG in India said, “This paper has analysed key inputs to the education system that act as levers of change. Our effort is to reflect on those practices that have been effective and their impact on the learning outcomes in our school education system.”

He further added, “We have also delved on emerging requirements and approach towards design of policies and programmes. I hope that this paper helps in bringing some fresh thinking and a dialogue among stakeholders to have a transformative approach towards building an innovative, knowledgeable, confident and compassionate new generation of youngsters in India.”

Amit Kaushik, Chairman, CII School Summit 2018 said, “Globally, the world is dealing with a learning crisis, as is India. More children are in school than ever before, but they are clearly learning a lot less. This paper provides useful insights into how stakeholders in the education ecosystem can come together to influence the teaching-learning process to ensure improved learning outcomes and build a brighter future.”

The learning ecosystem needs to constantly evolve to gratify both active and passive learning needs. Careful attention needs to be placed on understanding the learning levels of a student and accordingly building up concepts in a directly purposeful, active learning method to enhance learning outcomes. The study feels that it is important to reinforce a teacher’s self-perception as agents of change by empowering them systematically as well as professionally.

The paper also highlights the need to focus on long-term learning gains and flexibility to teachers that will encourage risk taking in the classroom and advance learning gains. Also, uniform and continuous data collection for informed decision-making and evidence-based practice involving longitudinal action research are important to up the ante.