Chalk and cheese in private vs. government schools

Context: Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2019) was recently released.

Educational outcomes in private school versus government schools: The ASER 2019 surveyed 26 rural districts spreads over 24 different states in India. ASER 2019 provides schooling or pre-schooling status of 4- to 8-year old children.

Highlights of ASER 2019:

• The report finds that only 16% of children attending Class 1 in rural districts surveyed were able to read the given text. It says that 40% of children were not able to recognize letters, and 41 % were able to recognize two-digit numbers.
• As per ASER 2019, only 21% of children in grade one of surveyed government schools were able to read words. The number of children of surveyed private schools who were able to read words was 46.7%.
• As per ASER 2019, mothers of 30% of children in grade one of surveyed government schools had never attended school. The mothers of 12% of children in grade one of surveyed private schools had never attended school.
• ASER 2019 shows that the percentage of grade one children attending surveyed private schools and having private tutors was 27.3%. In government schools, this percentage was 19.5%.
• ASER 2019 found the status of cognitive development of children through cognitive tasks like puzzles, pattern recognition, seriation, spatial awareness, and sorting by color. The questions related to spatial awareness and sorting by color were given to 4 to 5 years old students only.
• The report finds that only 23.8% of children in grade one of surveyed government schools could make seriation, pattern recognition, and puzzle. But, 43.1% of children in grade one children attending surveyed private schools were able to do all these cognitive (thinking related) tasks.
• ASER 2019 shows that only 14% of children enrolled in anganwadis were able to recognize letters. But, the percentage of children in private pre-schools who were able to recognize letters was 52.9%.

Analysis of findings of ASEER survey:

Age distribution-related findings: It means the number of children in different age categories of a population. The report shows that government schools are having more four or five-year-old children in standard 1 than private schools.

• As per ASER 2019, nearly 26.1% standard 1 children in government schools are having an age of 4 or 5 years.
• But, the percentage of standard 1 children who are in private schools and having an age of 4 or 5 years is 15.7%.

At the same time, ASER 2019 shows that private schools are having more 7 or 8 year old children in standard 1 than government schools.

• As per ASER 2019, government schools have 30.4% seven or eight-year-old children in standard 1.
• But, the percentage of standard 1 children who are in private schools and having the age of seven or eight years is 45.4%.

The age distribution findings of ASER 2019 showing that the percentage of 7 or 8-year-old children is higher in private schools and the percentage of 4 or 8-year-old children is lesser prove that better learning outcomes in private schools may be due to higher proportion of older children.

Home factor-related findings: In the sample used by ASER 2019 survey, nearly 30% of children studying in grade one of government schools had mothers who had not gone to school. But, this number was only 12% in the case of children studying in grade one of private schools. Nearly 27.3% of children studying in class one of private schools had private tutors. In the case of children studying in grade one of government schools, the percentage of children without private tutors was 19.5%.

Skills related findings: Only 23.8% of children studying in grade one of government schools could do cognitive tasks given as part of ASER 2019. But, 43.1% of children studying in grade one of private schools could do cognitive tasks assigned as part of ASER 2019.

Pre-school learning-related findings: Only 14% of children enrolled in anganwadis could recognize letters, and 2.9% could read words. But, 52.9% percentage of children enrolled in private pre-schools could identify letters and 12.9% could read words. These findings show that children enrolled in anganwadis could not perform better than children enrolled in private pre-schools. Only 12% of children enrolled in anganwadis could do cognitive tasks given as part of ASER 2019. But, 23.4% of children enrolled in private pre-schools could do cognitive tasks given as part of ASER 2019.

Conclusion:

Analysis of age distribution and home factor-related findings of ASER 2019 give the impression that children studying in grade one in private schools show better learning outcomes due to learning advantages such as older age, mothers who had gone to school and availability of private tutors. But, these learning advantages cannot make much difference in the learning outcome of grade one children as this is just the first stage of learning. Analysis of pre-school learning-related findings shows that children enrolled in private pre-schools perform better than children enrolled in Anganwadi. This means that India needs to strengthen and improve its early childhood programme and early childhood learning centres (anganwadis) to empower children with early cognitive, literacy and numeracy skills.