Pratham, a Mumbai-based NGO, has scaled up a remedial tutoring program in over 20 cities, following an evaluation by J-PAL researchers.
Balsakhi Remedial Tutoring in Vadodara and Mumbai, IndiaPDF version
Policy Issue:
Over the past decade many developing countries have expanded primary school access, energized by initiatives such as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which calls for achieving universal primary education by 2015. However, these improvements in school access and enrollment may not always translate into improvements in skills and learning for all students if the quality of education is poor. While much is now known about how to get children into school, much less is known about how to improve school quality in a cost-effective way. Many schools rely on rote learning and memorization, but can lessons which are more tailored to children’s learning level improve achievement? How important is a pedagogical approach which adapts to the level of the child?
Context of the Evaluation:
A 2005 survey found that 44 percent of Indian children age 7 to 12 could not read a basic paragraph and 50 percent could not do simple subtraction even though most are enrolled in school. Even in urban India, the learning levels are very low. In Vadodara, a major city in the Indian State of Gujarat, only 19.5 percent of the students enrolled in grade 3 could correctly answer questions testing grade 1 math competencies. Ironically, the difficulty in improving the quality of education is complicated by the success in getting more children to attend school – neither the pedagogy nor the curriculum has been adapted to take into account the quantity and characteristics of the influx of new children.
Details of the Intervention:
In conjunction with education-oriented NGO, Pratham, researchers evaluated the outcomes the Balsakhi Program, a remedial education intervention, in 122 public primary schools in Vadodara and 77 schools in Mumbai. A tutor (balsakhi), usually a young woman recruited from the local community and paid a fraction of the cost of civil-service teachers ($10-15 per month), worked with children in the grades 2, 3 and 4 who were identified as falling behind their peers. The instructor typically met with a group of approximately 15-20 of these children who taken out of the regular classroom into a separate class for two hours of the four hour school day. Instruction focused on the core competencies the children should have learned in the first and second grades, primarily basic numeracy and literacy skills. The instructors were provided with two weeks of initial training and a standardized curriculum that was developed by Pratham.
In the 2001 school year approximately half of the schools were given a tutor for grade 3, and the other half were given a tutor for grade 4—which school received which was randomized. In 2002, the schools were given a tutor for the previously untreated grade. In determining program impact, grade 3 students in schools that had a tutor were compared to grade 3 students at schools that had tutors for grade 4.
Results and Policy Lessons:
Impact on Education: The program had substantial positive impacts on children’s academic achievement. Scores on tests administered after the program showed that in both cities in both years, the program improved overall test scores, with the biggest gains in math. The number of students in the bottom third of program classes who passed basic competency tests increased by nearly 8 percent, while those in the top third who passed increased by 4 percent. As the program was designed to help those originally falling behind, the evidence revealed that this target group was indeed the group that benefited most from the program. For example, only 2-3 percent of children in the bottom third could do long division at the start of the year, but by the end of the year 40 percent could in program classes could compared to 28 percent in non-treatment classes.
Scale-Up: There was rapid turnover among the balsakhis (each stayed for an average of one year, typically until they got married or got another job), indicating that the success of the program did not depend on a handful of very determined and enthusiastic individuals. The program was very inexpensive since the main cost was the tutors' relatively small salaries. For the increase in test scores which the Balsakhi program achieved, it was a very cost-effective program (about $0.67 per standard deviation increase in test score). The program has since been adapted, re-evaluated, and scaled-up across India.
