Teachers burdened with administrative work; need to enable, not disable, them: Former vice-chairman and CEO of HCL Vineet Nayar

Education


Former vice-chairman and CEO of HCL Vineet Nayar, who runs the NGO Sampark Foundation, believes learning outcomes in primary classes will not improve unless the focus shifts to teachers, who remain burdened with administrative work. Nayar tells Sourav Roy Barman that findings of the National Achievement Survey, which has shown a dip in learning levels across grades compared to 2017, should alarm authorities more, as it shows that “classrooms seem to add very little to learning outcomes”. Excerpts from the interview:

🔴 What is your take on the NAS-2021 findings that show that between 2017 and 2021, the literacy and numeracy skills of students worsened considerably across subjects and grades?

Although we do not have a very sophisticated tool of measurement, these are all indicative measurements, you would see that the learning outcome has only dropped over the last five decades despite manifold increase in investment in education. Unlike 2017, when classrooms were fully functional, the 2021 data represents learning at home, when the Covid-19 pandemic forced children out of schools for almost two years. Thus, if we take the 2021 data as learning without classroom and look at 2017 data as learning within classroom, we can start to understand the incremental value add or the lack of it of going to school. It seems that classrooms added only 3-9% to home learning, which is quite surprising. It indeed is a simplistic argument but it does raise a series of questions we must ask. If we don’t see that data from that perspective, we are missing something fairly big. We are wrongly looking at the survey data. We need to get a little bit more alarmed with the survey data.

🔴 Where are we going wrong?

It is a fact that education happens in the classroom. It happens between the teacher and the child. The learning levels are improved by the teacher. Therefore, we need to enable the teacher, not disable them… Our current system is disabling the teacher. Whether it is record keeping, election duties, something today, something else tomorrow.

🔴 So you are saying teachers are missing from the debate on foundational learning and learning outcomes?

Can you improve learning outcome without the teacher? The only person who can improve is the teacher. It is also a fact that the teacher is not the most educated person in the country today. All educated people have turned away from the villages. And the only person available is someone who does not have a job outside. So, there are limitations to the capacity building of a teacher. I think the NIPUN Bharat (Centres’s scheme to improve foundational learning) mission is a great statement of intent, but the execution bit is where we are faltering. The implementation is being done in the old way, whereas you need disruptive innovations. The articulation is visionary, but there is no innovation in the implementation, like, say, in the case of “Har Ghar Jal” scheme.

🔴 As a leading name in this field, what are you doing to push the government in the right direction?

I am part of some of the bodies like the National Technology Mission. We are pushing for the adoption of low cost technological tools. That is the reason we are converting old TVs into smart TVs using low-cost android devices in 1 lakh schools as a pilot project. A smart TV in the classroom will aid teachers in reviewing the lesson plan of the SCERT chapter they are about to teach. A teacher can show children the concept video of the lesson on TV and can use creative teaching methods such as a song or a dance based on songs for each lesson. Teachers can perform group assessment of students by playing interactive games on TV. Before smart TVs, we started with specially designed kits on maths and then we pushed audio devices. The possibilities that such technologies offer are truly endless.

🔴 Which states have adopted the technology so far?

We have signed up with eight states — Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh in a limited way, and in Maharashtra and Rajasthan we have just started. But this is less to do with Sampark Foundation. We have reached 1 crore children. By the end of two years, we would be touching 2 crore. But this is a small percentage. The reason I quit HCL and committed $100 million to try and do this was to be a catalyst of change. We are dedicated to this to try and demonstrate innovative experiments and skills so that the states can adopt it. I am hopeful once we finish this experiment in these eight states, it will get adopted nationwide and it is free for anyone to adopt.

🔴 You are also part of the national focus group (of National Curriculum Framework revision) on technology in education. As part of the group, what are the key suggestions or recommendations that you have shared?

There are many ideas. It’s very easy to put computers in all schools but is that the right thing to do? My suggestion to the group has been the fact that we have to be innovative. That we should leverage audio technology. We should leverage the ability to convert dumb TVs into smart classes. We should leverage artificial intelligence. We should leverage completely new form of teacher capacity building. These are programmes that are very innovative, takes less effort and creates high impact. When we look at ideas, which are very effort intensive, like computer labs, like giving tablets to every child, they sound good on paper, but they would not create the impact because the effort required to implement them is resource heavy. So, my emphasis has been to find frugal innovative technologies, which create high impact and make the NIPUN Bharat mission come alive.

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🔴 Did the group take into account the digital inequity in India?

Yes, we did. The reason I pushed for audio technologies and television is because of this issue. Not only is the digital divide in India very large, but it is also going to get larger. The mistake we are making is believing that everybody will have a mobile phone, but by the time everybody has a mobile phone, education would have moved on from mobile devices to some other device. The digital devices will only increase, not decrease. So, our solutions have to take that into consideration. And that is the reason I recommended solutions like audio devices, television solutions, offline artificial intelligence tools, available solutions, which are frugal in nature and solutions that are available in the rooms.

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