MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING: SOME
 IMPORTANT FEATURES
 

1.Introduction

1.1 The need to lay down Minimum Levels of Learning (MLL) emerges from the basic concern that irrespective of caste, creed, location or sex, all children must be given access to education of a comparable standard. The major focus of the policy formulation behind the MLL exercise is upon equity and reduction of existing disparities. The effort is to combine quality concerns with concerns for equity keeping in view the developmental needs of children from the disadvantaged and deprived sections of the society, the dropouts, working children, and girls, who constitute the majority of school-going age population in this country, and to whom, in all likelihood, at least for some time to come, primary education will he the only opportunity for structured learning. This basic concern underscores the approach adopted by the committee in defining the minimum levels of learning.

1.2 Minimum levels of learning can, perhaps, be specified in a variety of ways. For instance, MLLs can be stated as expected learning outcomes defined as observable terminal behaviours. One may also go for a taxonomic analysis of learning objectives such as knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation and so on and accordingly indicate the expected learning outcomes. One can also state the MLLs in terms of learning competencies expected to be mastered by every child by the end of a particular class or stage of education. These different approaches for stating the MLLs are not mutually exclusive. Of the various alternatives available, the committee has chosen to state the MLLs in terms of terminal competencies. Each competency can be further delineated in terms of sub-competencies while specifying the content inputs or while measures of learning.

1.3 It may be noted that the set of MLLs would actually represent the rational criteria adopted for judging the adequacy of the curricular inputs provided and the learning outcomes to be expected. There can be no finality with respect to any set of MLLs. This applies to the set of MILLs developed by the committee also. Two basic considerations kept in view while formulating the MLLs are: (i) the cognitive capabilities of the children at different classes or grades corresponding to different stage of development; and

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6 MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING AT PRIMARY STAGE

(ii) the empirical reality in terms of the enabling environmental conditions that characterize the primary education programmes.

1.4 No attempt has been made by the committee to provide a technical analysis of the meaning of Minimum Levels of Learning. The present section discusses some of the important operational features which have guided the committee in formulating the MLLs.

2. Specification of MLL : A Quality Issue

The emphasis on defining precisely what children should have learnt by the end of every stage of education stems principally from three concerns.

2.1 Firstly, laying down of well-defined levels of learning Is expected to introduce a sense of direction and a greater element of accountability in the system. It is often pointed out that neither teachers and pupils, and as a consequence, nor parents and educational planners seem to know where they are and where they ought to be. Without a clearly defined sot of criteria for measuring student progress, it is not surprising that the teacher lose sight of their goals, and it is far-fetched to presume that such measures as regular attendance and the completion of the syllabus in time can effectively substitute measures of actual attainment of learning. As a natural consequence, the pupils also are likely to lose a sense of purpose and motivation in their studies, and many parents may get to doubt the worthwhileness of schooling rather than employing the children. more usefully elsewhere. Stating precisely what the objectives are and clearly defining. The minimum levels of learning that all children must achieve at a given stage of education, is thus seen as one of the important prerequisites for infusing a sense of direction to the system and thereby paving the way for improving its accountability.

2.2 Secondly, it is expected that MLL will provide an effective tool for programme formulation for school improvement. The quality of a school or educational system should, in the real sense, be defined in terms of the performance capabilities of its students and graduates. Yet, in practice, since inputs into the teaching process are generally easier to measure than education's multifaceted outputs, quality is often depicted in terms of the former than the latter. However, at the present juncture, when the focus of school improvement programmes tend to be on factors that are likely to multiply costs per capita, it is necessary to set up measures for judging the quality of schools by what students are actually learning What is It that makes a good school? Is it better buildings, more equipment or better qualified teachers ? To what extent can we increase inputs to increase output in terms of pupil achievements? What kind of inputs yield better output? In order to find proper answers to these questions and provide inputs selectively, we have to first define our measure of output in the form of expected standard of achievement by practically all children.

2.3 Thirdly and fundamental to the issue, there is the widely held perception that in a vast majority of government and municipal schools children can

MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING: SOME IMPORTANT FEATURES 7

barely read their own textbooks even after spending as many as five years in school, Considering that, to a large number of them, opportunity for education is not likely to be available beyond the primary stage and what they learn here must sustain them throughout their lives, it becomes imperative that the educational system makes sure that these precious school years of the children are not wasted, That all children, irrespective of the conditions the come from and the condition of the schools they attend, reach a minimum level of learning before they finish primary education that would eventually enable them to understand their world and prepare them to function in it as permanently literate, socially useful and contributing adults.

3.Specification of MLL: A Curriculum Issue

3.1 Every curriculum, as it attempts to modify the cognitive as well as non-cognitive domains of development of the learner, lays down specific educational objectives and the corresponding learning outcomes expected on the part of the learners. Usually, these are defined with reference to targets of educational achievement under ideal conditions of learning, enabling the learning to fully realize their inherent potential and engage in socially useful life. However, the criticism levelled against the existing set of curricular prescriptions and the corresponding learning outcomes is that they are only designed to prepare students for secondary and university education. Consequently, there is an overload of content of facts and information that would have very little relevance to the life or needs of a majority of students.

3.2 Also, it is often pointed out that the outcomes of learning expected do not seem to be based on the maturity level of the learner especially during the initial years of elementary education. This ambitiousness in the primary level syllabus is now increasingly recognized as counter-productive to excellence in learning and dangerous to the concerns of equity. The syllabus load often compels the teacher to ignore altogether certain basic principles of the teaching-learning process. The need to complete the syllabus seems to take precedence over the need to progress according to the pace of learning of the whole class and teachers find themselves forced to ignore the strugglers, forego attempts at remedial teaching or considerations for experimentation, exploration, observation or activity-based learning. The conventional textbook and lecture method of teaching, being the quickest way to complete the syllabus, becomes the best option available, forcing upon the students a joyless rote memorization, an overemphasis upon textbooks and in many cases, a reliance on help from outside the school. The disadvantage this builds into the system for the already deprived needs no special elaboration-for those who have no support for learning at home or outside the school, no proper textbooks and learning aids, and who consequently have a complete dependence on schools for mastering their syllabus, it leaves little scope but for repetitions or dropping out. Even many of those who manage to complete, despite these handicaps, attain at best an incomplete mastery of the basic skills.

8 MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING AT PRIMARY STAGE

3.3 Laying down minimum levels of learning should help to resolve some of these problems by identifying the irrelevant and excessive learning load in the existing curriculum. The MLL exercise should, therefore, be viewed as part of a larger curriculum reform endeavour attempting to move towards greater relevance and functionality in primary education. The implications of this exercise are:

- lightening the curriculum of its textual load and also the burden of memorizing unnecessary and irrelevant facts;

- leaving room for the teacher to relate textbook information and objective reality into a meaningful process of understanding and application;

- ensuring the acquisition of basic competencies and skills to such a level where they are sustainable, and would not easily allow for relapse into illiteracy;

- permitting mastery learning not only by the brighter students in the class but also by almost all children including the first generation learners.

4. Some Basic Features of MLL

Specification of MLLs should meet the purpose of increasing learning attainments and serve as performance goals for the teacher and output indicators for the system. For this, the MLL must have, apart from relevance and functionality, the attributes of achievability, understandability and evaluability.

4.1 Achievability

A basic characteristic that MLLs must satisfy is that they should correspond to learning objectives that are achievable by all learners. This is so because of certain specific reasons:

(i) To serve as performance objectives and goals: it is generally observed that curriculum objectives are so remote from the life situation of the child and the actual levels of achievement in the class that very few teachers feel the assurance that they can help their pupils achieve the objectives. They tend, therefore, to implicitly formulate their own objectives, either going through the motions of textbook lessons or just rote memorization. It is felt that the teacher would teach to the prescribed curriculum objectives and accept them as goals only if he feels confident that he can actually achieve them. Such a situation must be ensured in our educational institutions if the teachers have to use learning objectives as performance goals and output measures.

(ii) To ensure learning up to mastery level by every child in the class: The present objectives, as achievement tests reveal, are mastered by very few children in a class. The majority learns them inadequately, or incompletely, and tend to easily forget them. The endeavour should, therefore, be to set MLLs closer to the realistic levels of attainability so that the class as a whole

MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING: SOME IMPORTANT FEATURES 9

works towards mastery of these MLLs. In operational terms, 80 per cent or more of the children mastering at least 80 per cent of the prescribed learning levels should be the performance target for the teacher henceforth.

(iii) In a country in which achievement levels vary widely with regions, districts, school conditions, socioeconomic profile and other diverse factors, setting realistic and achievable minimum levels necessarily demands a great deal of flexibility in implementation. For example, what is easily achievable as mastery level learning in municipal schools in Bombay at present may not be immediately feasible for panchayat schools in Jaisalmer district in Rajasthan. It is, therefore, expected that each region, preferably district, will examine the MLLs in relation to its own situation, and set intermediate targets which would permit within a reasonable expectation of improvement in school conditions and a specified time frame, mastery level attainment by almost all children in their schools. It is necessary that this exercise be preceded by a careful criterion-referenced assessment of the existing levels of achievement. These intermediate stages may be set as time-bound targets to convey a sense of urgency and serve as a reference against which indices of implementation and accomplishment can be compared. The expectation will be that by improving inputs into the system, the levels of achievement in each school or region are gradually raised till they reach the MLLs. Different regions, depending on their present levels of achievement will take varying periods of time to reach the standards indicated by the MLLs. The endeavour will be to direct greater resources where levels of learning are lower and to consciously accelerate the pace of development in the needy regions, thereby reducing disparities and equalizing standards over the entire country in the shortest possible time.

4.2 Communicability

It is not enough that MLLs are realistic and achievable. It is equally important to set them in a language and form that are easily understandable to all the teachers, many of whom located in remote rural areas work in isolation without any outside help or guidance. Apart from primary school teachers, the MLLs should also be understandable to the NFE instructor, the parent, and the community. Thus, in order to function as achievement targets, the MLLs must be spelt out simple enough terms so as to be understandable to all those concerned with the academic growth of the children. Accordingly, an attempt has been made to prepare the Report of the Committee in a such a way that it places in the hands of the primary school teacher and the NFE instructor a document that will serve as a statement of expected competencies guiding their classroom teaching and evaluation procedures. This should also be equally useful to curriculum developers, textbook writers and educational administrators.

4.3 Evaluability

The statement of MLLs should be such that they serve as an effective blue print for continuous and comprehensive evaluation of learners and thereby

10 MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING AT PRIMARY STAGE

streamline the processes involved. Presently, no systematic learner evaluation procedures are adopted at the elementary stage in many of the schools. Most states follow a no-detention or automatic promotion policy, according to which children am not to be detained in the same class to repeat the course, since this has been identified as a main reason for dropping out without completing even the primary stage of education. The no-detention policy presumes an intrinsic ability of all children to learn provided they are taught well enough, and places the onus upon the teacher and the school to create conditions whereby leaning can effectively take place. It is, however, observed that many teachers interpret 'no detention' as 'no testing' and have altogether given up doing pupil evaluation, with the result that, very often, no one is fully swam of the learning status of the children till they reach the terminal class of the elementary stage. Taking stock of this situation, the Working Group for the Eighth Five Year Plan (1989) has recommended the introduction of a comprehensive evaluation system: Students should have a well-defined goal of acquiring a mastery level, particularly in subjects which serve as the basic tools of learning. Parents seem to feel dissatisfied with the levels of learning being achieved in schools and would feel happier with a testing system introduced. Teachers too need to know more clearly about the expected outcomes; in the courses they teach. Educational administrators would have in the system of tests of learners, the instrumentality to appraise the performance of institutions and teachers.

For MLLs to provide this well-defined goal of acquiring a mastery level it is necessary that they must give a clear-cut specification of expected learning outcomes, which would permit the construction of criterion-referenced tests by the teachers. Results of such tests based an the MLLs should be such that the teacher can identify which specific learning outcomes or competencies have not been mastered by the learner, help the learner to relearn the clusters of competencies representing specific unit, as well as prepare corrective for remedial instruction quite precisely. Thus MLLs stated in easily evaluable terms should help the learners achieve mastery levels as they move from one unit to the next. The attempt has thus been to set the MLLs in such a way as to make assessment of learner attainment easy for the teacher, whether it is done through written, oral or other types of tests.

4.4 Learning Continuum

The endeavour has been to set MLLs in as simple and comprehensible manner as possible, specifying the competencies to be mastered under each learning unit from Class I through Class V. Learning has been seen as a 'continuum', in which the units are sequenced hierarchically so that the clusters of competencies in one unit build as directly as possible on the competencies in the preceding unit. It is firmly believed that if the children progress systematically through this continuum, mastering the concerned sets or competencies in each unit before they move on to the next, learning each

MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING: SOME IMPORTANT FEATURES 11

subsequent unit will be more enjoyable and meaningful, and the achievement of minimum levels of learning will be facilitated.

5.Comparable Learning in NFE

5.1 Even though the MLLs are being specified in terms of five classwise stages, the underlying concept of 'learning continuum' makes this division only indicative and not rigid. In practice, the pace of learning of the child will decide how long it should take to reach the prescribed MLL, and age, earlier teaming experience, learning time within and outside school are some of the factors that will decide the pace.

5.2 It is conceivable, therefore, to prescribe the same levels of learning for the NFE system, or any other alternative system for primary education. Indeed, this exercise of laying down a level, of learning that has regard not to the syllabus and contents of primary schools but specify expected learning outcomes in the form of functionally relevant skills and competencies should help in answering in a convincing manner the questions regarding comparability of learning standards between formal primary schools and alternative models. The question no longer remains one of NFE conforming or not to the primary school norms, but becomes one of the viability of different models and methodologies to attain prescribed levels of learning. From questioning the rationale of the NFE system, the concern shifts to issues regarding the duration, quality and teaching processes of the various models and hence, logically to the inputs required to ensure that the prescribed levels of learning are effectively reached by WI learners.