Pakistani School Kids Perform Better on Math and Reading Tests Than Indian School Kids

Recent World Bank report on student learning in South Asia is depressing. Sri Lanka is the sole exception to the overall low levels of achievement for primary and secondary school kids in the region.  The report documents with ample data from various assessments to conclude that "learning outcomes and the average level of skill acquisition in the region are low in both absolute and relative terms". The report covers education from primary through upper secondary schools.

Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014



Children Who Can Not Read by Age 10. Source: World Bank via Economist

Buried inside the bad news is a glimmer of what could be considered hope for Pakistan's grade 5 and 8 students outperforming their counterparts in India. While 72% of Pakistan's 8th graders can do simple division, the comparable figure for Indian 8th graders is just 57%. Among 5th graders, 63% of Pakistanis and 73% of Indians CAN NOT divide a 3 digit number by a single digit number, according to the World Bank report titled "Student Learning in South Asia: Challenges, Opportunities, and Policy Priorities".  The performance edge of Pakistani kids  over their Indian counterparts is particularly noticeable in rural areas. The report also shows that Pakistani children do better than Indian children in reading ability.

Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014


Here are some excepts from the World Bank report:

Unfortunately, although more children are in school, the region still has a major learning challenge in that the children are not acquiring basic skills. For example, only 50 percent of grade 3 students in Punjab, Pakistan, have a complete grasp of grade 1 mathematics (Andrabi et al. 2007). In India, on a test of reading comprehension administered to grade 5 students across the country, only 46 percent were able to correctly identify the cause of an event, and only a third of the students could compute the difference between two decimal numbers (NCERT 2011). Another recent study found that about 43 percent of grade 8 students could not solve a simple division problem. Even recognition of two-digit numbers, supposed to be taught in grade 2, is often not achieved until grade 4 or 5 (Pratham 2011). In Bangladesh, only 25 percent of fifth-grade students have mastered Bangla and 33 percent have mastered the mathematics competencies specified in the national curriculum (World Bank 2013). In the current environment, there is little evidence that learning outcomes will improve by simply increasing school inputs in a business-as-usual manner (Muralidharan and Zieleniak 2012).


Source: The Hindu

In rural Pakistan, the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) 2011 assessment suggests, arithmetic competency is very low in absolute terms. For instance, only 37 percent of grade 5 students can divide three-digit numbers by a single-digit number (and only 27 percent in India); and 28 percent of grade 8 students cannot perform simple division. Unlike in rural India, however, in rural Pakistan recognition of two-digit numbers is widespread by grade 3 (SAFED 2012). The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) survey—a 2003 assessment of 12,000 children in grade 3 in the province—also found that children were performing significantly below curricular standards (Andrabi et al. 2007). Most could not answer simple math questions, and many children finished grade 3 unable to perform mathematical operations covered in the grade 1 curriculum. A 2009 assessment of 40,000 grade 4 students in the province of Sindh similarly found that while 74 percent of students could add two numbers, only 49 percent could subtract two numbers (PEACE 2010).

Source: World Bank Report on Education in South Asia 2014



The report relies upon numerous sources of data, among them key government data (such as Bangladesh’s Directorate of Primary Education; India’s National Sample Survey, District Information System of Education, and National Council of Education Research and Training Assessment; and Pakistan’s National Education Assessment System); data from nongovernmental entities (such as Pakistan’s Annual Status of Education Report, India’s Student Learning Study, and its Annual Status of Education Report); international agencies (such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2009+ for India; the World Bank Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement Project in Bangladesh); and qualitative studies undertaken for the report (such as examining decentralization reforms in Sri Lanka and Pakistan). The study also uses the World Bank Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) framework to examine issues related to ECD, education finance, assessment systems, and teacher policies.

I hope that this report serves as a wake-up call for political leaders and policymakers in Pakistan to redouble their efforts with significant additional resource allocations for nutrition, education and healthcare.

Related Links:

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History of Literacy in Pakistan

Myths and Facts About Out-of-School Children in Pakistan

PISA, TIMSS Results Confirm Low Quality of Indian Education

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Learning Levels and Gaps in Pakistan by Jishnu Das and Priyanka Pandey

Pasi Sahlberg on why Finland leads the world in education

CNN's Fixing Education in America-Fareed Zakaria

PISA's Scores 2011

Poor Quality of Education in South Asia

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PISA 2009Plus Results Report

Views: 921

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 29, 2023 at 8:43am

Over 50% of #India's children can not read by age 10. Can India educate its vast workforce? #Education for most Indians is still at best unskilled. #Unemployed youngsters risk bringing India’s #economic development to a premature stop. #Modi #BJP https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/29/can-india-educate-its-...

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1674441854136512513?s=20

As the rich world and China grow older, India’s huge youth bulge—some 500m of its people are under 20—should be an additional propellant. Yet as we report, although India’s brainy elite hoovers up qualifications, education for most Indians is still a bustUnskilled, jobless youngsters risk bringing India’s economic development to a premature stop.

India has made some strides in improving the provision of services to poor people. Government digital schemes have simplified access to banking and the distribution of welfare payments. Regarding education, there has been a splurge on infrastructure. A decade ago only a third of government schools had handwashing facilities and only about half had electricity; now around 90% have both. Since 2014 India has opened nearly 400 universities. Enrolment in higher education has risen by a fifth.

Yet improving school buildings and expanding places only gets you so far. India is still doing a terrible job of making sure that the youngsters who throng its classrooms pick up essential skills. Before the pandemic less than half of India’s ten-year-olds could read a simple story, even though most of them had spent years sitting obediently behind school desks (the share in America was 96%). School closures that lasted more than two years have since made this worse.

There are lots of explanations. Jam-packed curriculums afford too little time for basic lessons in maths and literacy. Children who fail to grasp these never learn much else. Teachers are poorly trained and badly supervised: one big survey of rural schools found a quarter of staff were absent. Officials sometimes hand teachers unrelated duties, from administering elections to policing social-distancing rules during the pandemic.

Such problems have led many families to send their children to private schools instead. These educate about 50% of all India’s children. They are impressively frugal, but do not often produce better results. Recently, there have been hopes that the country’s technology industry might revolutionise education. Yet relying on it alone is risky. In recent weeks India’s biggest ed-tech firm, Byju’s, which says it educates over 150m people worldwide and was once worth $22bn, has seen its valuation slashed because of financial troubles.

All this makes fixing government schools even more urgent. India should spend more on education. Last year the outlays were just 2.9% of gdp, low by international standards. But it also needs to reform how the system works by taking inspiration from models elsewhere in developing Asia.

As we report, in international tests pupils in Vietnam have been trouncing youngsters from much richer countries for a decade. Vietnam’s children spend less time in lessons than Indian ones, even when you count homework and other cramming. They also put up with larger classes. The difference is that Vietnam’s teachers are better prepared, more experienced and more likely to be held accountable if their pupils flunk.

With the right leadership, India could follow. It should start by collecting better information about how much pupils are actually learning. That would require politicians to stop disputing data that do not show their policies in a good light. And the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party should also stop trying to strip textbooks of ideas such as evolution, or of history that irks Hindu nativists. That is a poisonous distraction from the real problems. India is busy constructing roads, tech campuses, airports and factories. It needs to build up its human capital, too.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 30, 2023 at 9:07pm

The State of Global
Learning Poverty:
2022 Update


CONFERENCE EDITION
June 23, 2022

Annex 5: Detailed 2019 country learning poverty data

Country Name Learning Poverty Learning Deprivation Schooling Deprivation Year Assessment Assessment


Iceland 9.3 6.8 2.7 2006 PIRLS
India 56.1 53.7 5.1 2017 NLA
Indonesia 52.8 49.4 6.8 2015 TIMSS
Iran, Islamic Rep 35.2 35.1 0.2 2016 PIRLS


Norway 6.0 5.8 0.2 2016 PIRLS
Oman 41.8 40.9 1.4 2016 PIRLS
Pakistan 77.0 65.0 34.2 2014 NLA

https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/e52f55322528903b27f1b7e61238e4...

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 13, 2023 at 7:08pm

Bilal I Gilani
@bilalgilani
Literacy rate by age

Alhamdulilah the younger generation is significantly more literate than older generation

Our literacy rate ( which is calculated on 15+ age group) is going to rise slowly as it has older cohorts in large numbers

Literacy is not end all but it's a start

https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1679408985613676545?s=20

(Bar graph shows literacy rate is 75% for 10-14 age group, 73% for 15-19 and 69% for 20-24....going down to 51% for 40-44 and 34% for 60-64 age group)

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