Gunotsav in Assam: Some observations

With a view to enhancing the quality of education at the elementary level, the Government of Assam planned to implement ‘Gunotsav-celebrating quality’ from the 2017 academic year in Gujarat. It has been implemented in the state for three years since then. The idea of such a programme was mooted with the expectation that it would usher in a new era of enhancement of the quality of education along with remarkable infrastructural development in the schools. The results of the Gunotsav 2023, which was conducted in three phases across Assam from January 18 to February 18, 2023, with the participation of 4,13,516 students from 41,507 schools, were announced on April 25, 2023, and show a remarkable 22.58% jump in A/A+ grades. The results hint at remarkable progress achieved by the government schools in Assam in the last few years, which naturally evokes a feeling of optimism about the future of the government vernacular medium schools, which have declined in the last few decades in terms of student enrolment, learning outcomes, and infrastructure. The better performance shown by most of the schools in the state demonstrates progress achieved by the government schools of Assam after the conduct of Gunotsav since 2017. But the irony of the fact is that the results do not tell us about the real state of affairs in most of the schools in the state, and for this reason, questions are being raised by many regarding the validity of the grades achieved by many schools. We think that the Gunotsav has really contributed towards the creation of an atmosphere of competition among the government schools of the state for achieving a better grade, but the issue that concerns most of us is the means many schools are following to achieve that object.

It was a great opportunity for me to participate in the Gunotsavs since 2017 as an external evaluator, and I have visited a good number of schools located in towns and remote areas of the state. From my experience of visiting the schools and exposure to the teaching-learning situations in the schools and the level of infrastructural attainments, I have learned a lot of things about the bleak scenario of elementary education in Assam, and I am really concerned about the future of our children. There was a time when children from all classes of society were sent to the government schools for their education, and nobody was unhappy about their level of attainment or the quality of education they were offered. Things changed very rapidly, and the well-to-do families started to prefer the private English-medium schools for their kids. The indifference and apathy from the governments for years have resulted in a decline in the quality of education. Lack of infrastructure, teachers, and adequate apparatus in the classrooms are some of the problems commonly shared by all the government schools in Assam. Most of the students in such schools are from marginalised sections of society and lead a perennially poverty-ridden life where livelihood is always prioritised over education. Irregular attendance and school dropouts are common problems faced by the teachers in such schools. The thing that has astonished me most during my visit to the schools in the last three Gunotsavs is the level of learning outcome, which is miserably poor. The reasons behind it need to be properly analysed and remedial measures introduced pragmatically. Only a few students out of the thousands of students I have interacted with so far could read the given words, sentences, or short passages correctly and fluently in Assamese, and the number of students with the ability to read in English was even far less. However, when we talk about infrastructural attainments, new policies, new methods, and digital literacy, the thing that is taken into account above all is the learning outcomes of the students. Most of the external evaluators, like me, were astonished at the miserably poor reading skills of the students. Neither could they do well in the writing skill. There are students who are not able to write a single word either in Assamese or English, and the number of such students is not small. Still, such schools are performing well in the Gunotsavs and achieving a grade of A or A+, which raises concern regarding the validity of the results of the Gunotsav. As an evaluator, I think that the entire process of evaluation needs thorough revision for a proper assessment of the learning outcomes of the schools. As per set guidelines, assessments of the schools were made based on students’ performance in 90% scholastic areas and 5% on co-scholastics and community participation. Assessment of the learning outcome is given priority in the entire scheme of evaluation of a school, which in most cases has failed to achieve the desired objectives because of the flaws involved in the entire process of evaluation, which offers ample scope for manipulation of the marks. The government is trying to motivate the teachers towards the achievement of better grades by offering a package of regularisation of the posts of the teachers serving in contractual posts. As reported by a number of teachers in some schools, they have always been under pressure from their district- and block-level officers for their underperformance in the previous Gunotsavs. Many of them were in urgent need of a better grade to save their faces and avoid the ire of the senior officers. It is not difficult to judge the attainments of students in various areas and offer a grade that a school genuinely deserves. An evaluator or a group of evaluators can do it by randomly selecting some students and going through the performance of the school in various other non-scholastic domains. The grades achieved by some schools have really astonished us, and such a trend will ruin our schools further. I think the government should not encourage unhealthy practises in the schools for the achievement of higher grades; on the contrary, it should step up monitoring of the scholastic development of the students. A school is basically for imparting good education, and if students are without the minimum knowledge of reading, writing, and numeracy, there is no meaning in infrastructural development. There are different factors that are responsible for the pitiable performance of the students, and there is no point in being complacent about our achievements after having obtained the grade of A or A+. They need deep introspection to achieve the objective of ensuring outstanding performance by the students. The grade of A+ implies some sort of perfection in scholastic and non-scholastic areas and the best infrastructural development and remarkable practises by the school community, but considering the loopholes in the evaluation system, that should not be expected from all schools obtaining an A+. So the phenomenal jump in the number of A/A+ schools does not tell us the story of the glorious journey of the government schools from a state of failure to outstanding success. It would be wiser to chart out the common problems plaguing the schools and take up strategies for their uplift. The department has a number of officers and coordinators from the cluster level to the district level, but the higher authorities are unaware of the ground realities. I feel only a few coordinators and officers regularly visit the schools, and the visitors’ registers prove it blatantly how the officers and coordinators have been neglecting their duties for long. Infrastructural facilities like toilets and drinking water are so poor in some schools that nobody would believe that the SMC, the Headmaster, the Coordinators, and the Officers are delivering their duties properly. Some teachers even complained that they had to pay the officers for their visits.

I plead with all to think seriously about the condition of primary and secondary education in Assam. A grade brings an occasion of celebration and a kind of recognition of good work, but to do justice to our kids, we should analyse the realities that our students and teachers are facing. From my experience, I feel that the government has not gone through the feedback or report submitted by the external evaluators on the schools visited. An evaluator has enough scope there to note down his observations on a school’s visit, which may help the government know some startling facts about the schools.