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Mainstreaming an Effective Intervention: Evidence from Randomized Evaluations of 'Teaching at the Right Level' in India
... After the experiment on community volunteer mobilization, Pratham turned its attention to government schools, and refined the research agenda to "how it was possible to insert TaRL into a large poorly functioning government school system," which led them to plan the following experiment (Banerji, 2019;. It was found that the simple provisions of teaching and learning materials, and teacher training and mentoring did not change the behavior of teachers (Banerjee et al., 2016). Volunteers who supported teachers in regular classes did not organize remedial activities in basic reading and math; instead, they supported teachers in conducting regular classes. ...
... Volunteers who supported teachers in regular classes did not organize remedial activities in basic reading and math; instead, they supported teachers in conducting regular classes. However, the teachers in Bihar organized the summer camp with TaRL, which demonstrated a significant improvement in learning in a period of less than four weeks (Banerjee et al., 2016). Teachers implemented TaRL successfully in the summer camp but not during the regular school day. ...
... The areas in Bihar and Uttarakhand were selected because of the contrasting characteristics of initial learning levels, socio-political contexts and administrative capabilities(Banerjee et al., 2016). Pratham and researchers discussed what intervention for the government schools would bring the improvement of learning, and developed four types of interventions: (i) the distribution of teaching and learning material of TaRL; (ii) intervention (i) plus teacher training and mentoring by Pratham staff; (iii) intervention (i) and (ii) plus remedial activities by volunteer outside of school hours at the community (only for Bihar); and (iv) intervention (i), (ii) plus volunteer support for teachers within school hours (only for Uttarakhand)(Banerjee et al., 2016). ...
Agriculture in the East Asia and the Pacific region is very much exposed to the key climatic risks of typhoon, flood, and drought (FAO, 2011). Every year, significant crop damages have been attributed to natural risks, thus threatening the region’s food security. The Philippines, a developing country, and Japan, a developed country, are two of the countries in the Region that are very much vulnerable to these events. According to the World Risk Index report (UNUEHS, 2018), the Philippines’ risk to natural disasters ranked 3rd while Japan ranked 29th. Both countries have similar exposure scores, yet Japan was ranked lower in the risk index since it has better scores on coping and adaptive capacities. There are various risk management tools which can lessen farmers’ losses such as agricultural insurance. This research assessed the participation, efficiency, and effectiveness of major agricultural insurance programs of the National Agricultural Insurance Association (NOSAI) in Japan and of the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) in the Republic of the Philippines using Korten’s (1980) Model of Fit framework. A total of 88 farmers in Gifu Prefecture, and 70 farmers in Laguna Province were interviewed for this study. Descriptive, Gap analysis, Likert scale, and cost and returns were used to analyze the responses of the farmers. The results shed light on the big differences between the agricultural insurance of between the two countries. Based on the results and as depicted in David Korten’s Model of Fit, Japan’s agricultural insurance programs were effective, efficient, and high participation while the Philippines’ programs were effective but were inefficient and have low participation. The study recommends adopting a central agricultural cooperative, or a federation of agricultural cooperatives, or an association of all farmers that directly links them to markets and institutions to improve the agricultural insurance system.
Key words: agricultural insurance, disaster management, climate change, food security
... Moreover, the process of learning and the variation across subgroups may be very different in Low-Income Countries (LICs) from High-Income Countries. For instance, there is suggestive evidence that children with initially lower test scores learn less in LICs due to "curricular mismatch" because curricular standards are set substantially higher than children's level of preparation (Pritchett and Beatty, 2015;Banerjee et al., 2016, Kaffenberger and Pritchett, 2020aMuralidharan et al., 2019). Despite a shift in emphasis in the literature on education in LICs from enrollment to learning and a large body of evaluative research on how to improve test scores, there is currently little data on learning trajectories through primary school. ...
... One concern that has become apparent in the recent literature on learning in LICs is that of "curricular mismatch." This is the idea that children are taught according to a curriculum that is far too advanced for the average child (and maybe even the best performers), and therefore, children who are behind fall even further behind every year (See Beatty and Pritchett, 2015;Kaffenberger and Pritchett, 2020a;Duflo et al., 2011;andBanerjee et al., 2016 and. Muralidharan et al. (2019) have demonstrated this pattern quite strikingly for children in middle school over the first few months of the schooling year. ...
Using a unique longitudinal dataset collected from primary school students in Pakistan, we document four new facts about learning in low-income countries. First, children’s test scores increase by 1.19 SD between Grades 3 and 6. Second, going to school is associated with greater learning. Children who dropout have the same test score gains prior to dropping out as those who do not but experience no improvements after dropping out. Third, there is significant variation in test score gains across students, but test scores converge over the primary schooling years. Students with initially low test scores gain more than those with initially high scores, even after accounting for mean reversion. Fourth, conditional on past test scores, household characteristics explain little of the variation in learning. In order to reconcile our findings with the literature, we introduce the concept of “fragile learning,” where progression may be followed by stagnation or reversals. We discuss the implications of these results for several ongoing debates in the literature on education from Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).
... Improved students' learning and achievement. Four of the included studies(Banerjee et al., 2016;Kantavong & Sivabaedya, 2010;Martin et al., 2001; STS, 2017) report improvements in student achievement (including test scores) to demonstrate the effect of the program on students.Encouraged positive classroom behaviour and student engagement. Five included studies report improvements in student behaviours and engagement mostly through observational data collection(Muttiah et al., 2018;Opartkiattikul et al., 2016;Grimes, 2021; HEART, 2013;Owen, 2019). ...
Background
In the Asia‐Pacific region, around one‐third of the children who are out‐of‐school have a disability and given that teacher readiness and capability are key contributors for inclusive education, it is high time for a mapping of disability inclusive teacher professional development (TPD) interventions in this region.
Objectives
The key objective of this evidence and gap map (EGM) is to locate evidence on interventions for in‐service TPD focussing on education for the inclusion of students with a disability in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) in the Asia‐Pacific region.
Search Methods
A broad range of bibliographic databases and repositories were searched electronically to identify the evidence published between January 2000 and December 2021. Key search platforms included the British Education Index (BEI), Education Research Complete (ERC), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), SCOPUS, 3ie Development Evidence Portal (Evidence Hub) and the Campbell Collaborations Systematic Reviews and EGMs portal (Better evidence for a better world). In addition, potential program evaluations/impact reports, reviews, case studies, and program descriptions/summaries were sought through ‘snowballing’ based on searching bibliographies and reference lists of papers located during the search process, as well as specific searches of relevant grey literature.
Selection Criteria
To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to contain sufficient details about TPD interventions that support early childhood educators and kindergarten to Year 12 teachers to understand the needs of students with disabilities and aid them to create inclusive mainstream classrooms and/or provide improved support for students with disabilities in special education settings.
Data Collection and Analysis
A total of 820 records were entered into the MS Excel file in which the entire data extraction process was managed. All records were screened against the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data were extracted independently by two reviewers and any differences were resolved through consultations. All included studies and their characteristics were extracted from the MS Excel file and uploaded to the ACER server in.csv file format. The interactive, online EGM is available here: https://datavis.acer.org/gem/disability-inclusion-TPD/.
Main Results
Fifty studies from 16 countries out of the 41 LMICs in the Asia‐Pacific region were identified, whereby Thailand had the largest number of studies with evidence (7) followed by China, Vietnam, and India (5 each). Two main gaps in research about professional learning were identified. First, only three studies reported interventions aimed at supporting mental health among students with a disability. Second, no studies were found that reported on how teachers could support positive student behaviour. These gaps are important because research has persistently suggested that experiencing disability is an important risk factor for young people developing mental health conditions.
Authors' Conclusions
This report illustrates the critical value of evaluating and publishing evidence from disability inclusive TPD interventions in LMICs, including any that are ongoing, or are components of highly resource intensive large‐scale education sector programs.
... De este modo, es posible agrupar a los estudiantes de acuerdo con su nivel de desempeño, o bien trabajar en forma individual personalizando la intervención. Un ejemplo de este enfoque es la propuesta de "Teaching at the Right Level" (Banerjee et al., 2016) 4, que consiste en centrar la enseñanza al nivel básico de habilidad en que se encuentre cada estudiante. Para ello, se realiza una evaluación diagnóstica previamente, se los agrupa en función de su nivel, (en lugar de utilizar la edad o grado en que se encuentren como criterio), y se propicia una propuesta de trabajo interesante para que cada estudiante pueda aprender los contenidos y capacidades básicas que necesite. ...
En esta nota de discusión se revisa la literatura en torno a las estrategias de aceleración de aprendizajes por medio de tutorías remotas y se presentan las características y resultados de diversos modelos susceptibles de replicarse a escala y de manera costo-efectiva.
... In fact, Bulman and Fairlie (2015) found positive effects of ICT interventions in developing countries due to their ability to substitute it for lower-quality traditional instruction. Consequently, the diversity of learner needs can be better supported than with the traditional curricular model (Banerjee et al., 2016). The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is one example of a learner-centered model that is often coupled with EdTech (CAST, 2018). ...
... In many countries, the reopening of schools has been paired with remedial programs and interventions, 19 targeted mostly to minorities and disadvantaged students. Based on experiences with extra tutoring in England 20 and Italy, 21 , with learning packages in India, 22 and with on education finance equity in the United Kingdom 23 and several states in the US 24 and on recent survey data from ECA countries, 25 there are three critical actions in this second stage: (i) Simplify the curriculum to prioritize foundational skills such as numeracy, literacy, and socio-emotional resilience. (ii) Implement standardized tests to identify the learning level of each student. ...
... The rate was higher among students going to private schools (65.1%) than to government schools (44.2%) [67]. These poor learning outcomes have been attributed to a high curriculum load, and an overt focus on rote learning and passing examinations than providing education at the level that students are at [11]. Higher education in India similarly reflects a focus on lecture-based learning, and admissions are largely based on competitive examinations [18]. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the transition of workflows across sectors to digital platforms. In education settings, stakeholders previously reluctant to integrate computing technology in the classroom now find themselves with little choice but to embrace it. This move to the digital brings additional challenges in underserved contexts with limited, intermittent, and shared access to mobile or computing devices and the internet. In this rapidly evolving digital landscape, we investigate how educational institutions (schools and non-profit organizations) working with underserved populations in India are managing the transition to online or remote learning. We conducted twenty remote interviews with students, teachers, and administrators from underserved contexts across India. We found that online learning efforts in this setting relied on a resilient human infrastructure comprised of students, teachers, parents, administrators, and non-profit organizations to help navigate and overcome the limitations of available technical infrastructure. Our research aims to articulate lessons for educational technology design in the post-COVID period, outlining areas for improvement in the design of online learning platforms in resource-constrained settings, and identifying elements of online learning that could be retained to strengthen the education system overall.
... One possibility is that every child had to be promoted in the new school year, and if teachers taught to the curriculum in the new grade, they could have fallen farther behind. An influential literature suggests that teaching at a higher level compared to where children are reduces how much children learn, and this is a potential channel for our results (Banerjee et al. 2016). Detecting these types of losses can take time and it is possible that the immediate effects on children's test scores following a disaster may under-estimate the longer-term deficits. ...
... In many countries, the reopening of schools has been paired with remedial programs and interventions, 19 targeted mostly to minorities and disadvantaged students. Based on experiences with extra tutoring in England 20 and Italy, 21 , with learning packages in India, 22 and with on education finance equity in the United Kingdom 23 and several states in the US 24 and on recent survey data from ECA countries, 25 there are three critical actions in this second stage: (i) Simplify the curriculum to prioritize foundational skills such as numeracy, literacy, and socio-emotional resilience. (ii) Implement standardized tests to identify the learning level of each student. ...
The Europe and Central Asia education team's vision is for education systems to empower all to reach their full potential. The COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity to restructure educational practices to incorporate valuable lessons from remote learning and develop new strategies for improving student learning and learning equity. This note presents design and implementation details for a learning recovery plan for the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. The learning recovery plan includes three stages: (i) Coping with the closing of schools through remote learning, instructional and psychoso-cial support, and compensatory programs for preventing learning losses; (ii) Managing Continuity where reopened schools focus on providing foundational skills in language, math, and science to reduce learning loss and to improve learning among minorities and the poor; and (iii) Improving and Accelerating learning, by making schools more resilient and equitable through educational innovations that include the lessons learned from remote instruction during the pandemic, and where the entire system is evaluated for results. Coping with school closures means that governments should ensure access to digital learning by minorities and students in poverty, and that the reopening of schools should be pursued as soon as it is feasible. Managing the continuity of learning means that reopening of schools-a key step in recovering learning losses because distance education is less effective than in-person instruction-countries should adapt the curriculum to prioritize foundational skills in numeracy, and language, and test students frequently to monitor progress and place students at their right level of instruction. Reopening schools should also include modifications to the classroom infrastructure, to reduce contagion and maintain student health, and provide equal access to digital and hybrid modes of instruction. Improving and accelerating education results past the crisis stage requires monitoring learning recovery to continuously revise policies, programs, and infrastructure to improve learning outcomes. It also implies investing in technology infrastructure to improve access to digital instruction, and to ensure learning equity. To that end, this stage of the learning recovery plan should: (i) Identify and treat students with low learning and improve their access to quality education; (ii) Define clear equity goals and allocate budgets and personnel accordingly; (iii) Implement teacher support and innovations for hybrid instruction; (iv) invest in internet access and in digital infrastructure and pedagogy ; (v) Promote a climate of educational innovation for improving hybrid/blended methods of education delivery and (vi) Continuously monitor and evaluate impacts to ensure the delivery of quality education and the improvement of learning equity. The disruption brought by the COVID-19 crisis affected the entire education ecosystem, creating the need for a revolution requiring immediate policy shifts and innovations to develop a new hybrid model of learning and working. This new model would redesign the curriculum, change the educational infrastructure, and retool the modes of delivery of learning by relying on strong partnerships with key stakeholders beyond the boundaries of education. Learning should include all, should be accessible everywhere, and should be affordable and relevant. The vision of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Education Team is for education systems to empower all people to reach their full potential. In line with this vision, the purpose of this guidance note is to provide decision-makers with some recommendations and policy advice on effective ways to respond to the education losses engendered by the COVID-19 crisis. These recommendations include specific measures for mitigating learning losses and preparing for school reopening. The note also discusses the opportunity to design and implement structural reforms to make education systems more resilient and, in the process, improve students' educational performance. Recommendations are also given for longer-term actions with the potential to transform education by strengthening learning and improving learning equity in the future. Summary Produced under the supervision of Fadia Saadah, Director, Human Development, ECA; with inputs from the ECA Education Team.
... To achieve this, TFP uses the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) 5 methodology, which is based on (i) dividing children based on learning needs rather than age or grade; (ii) dedicating time to foundational skills rather than focusing mainly on the curriculum; and (iii) frequently assessing student performance, rather than relying only on end-of-year examinations (Banerjee et al. 2016). TFP's coaches help our teachers implement TaRL; however, teachers may access similar coaching strategies in group settings through professional learning communities like learning action cells. ...
Teach for the Philippines (TFP) is a nonprofit organization whose objective is to provide all Filipino children with access to inclusive, relevant, and excellent education. Public education in the Philippines faces many challenges; one could say it is in a state of constant disruption due to a host of factors such as policy changes, inadequate infrastructure, technological shortcomings, or climate emergencies and natural disasters. TFP focuses on creating sustainable programs for teachers, anchored on responsiveness and adaptability, as well as preparedness, so that effective learning may proceed despite interruptions, whether foreseen or unavoidable. The organization works within the classroom and with policy makers to advance approaches that enhance the effectiveness of teachers, with the aim of improving learning outcomes. TFP’s practice is anchored on five strategies: (i) expand the definition of, while broadening the entry pathways to, the “education workforce”; (ii) increase school-based coaching for teachers; (iii) acknowledge the importance of teacher well-being; (iv) challenge the framework of evaluations and promote participant ownership of data; and (v) involve teachers in discussions on education policy.
... These interventions have been shown to be highly effective in several Sub-Saharan African countries including South Africa, Liberia, and Kenya (Piper 2009;Piper and Korda 2010;Piper and Mugenda 2014;Piper, Zuilkowski, and Ong'ele 2016). Another category of interventions that work well for girls (and boys) are those that help teachers to teach children at their current level of learning (e.g., teaching at the right level), either through diagnostic feedback or software as reported in Banerjee et al. (2016) and Imbrogno (2014). ...
What is the best way to improve access and learning outcomes for girls? This review brings together evidence from 267 educational interventions in 54 low- and middle-income countries – regardless of whether the interventions specifically target girls – and identifies their impacts on girls. To improve access and learning, general interventions deliver average gains for girls that are comparable to girl-targeted interventions. General interventions have similar impacts for girls as for boys. Taken together, these findings suggest that many educational gains for girls may be achieved through nontargeted programs. Many of the most effective interventions to improve access for girls relax household-level constraints (such as cash transfer programs), and many of the most effective interventions to improve learning for girls involve improving the pedagogy of teachers. Girl-targeted interventions may make the most sense when addressing constraints that are unique to, or most pronounced for, girls.
... The rate was higher among students going to private schools (65.1%) than to government schools (44.2%) [67]. These poor learning outcomes have been attributed to a high curriculum load, and an overt focus on rote learning and passing examinations than providing education at the level that students are at [11]. Higher education in India similarly reflects a focus on lecture-based learning, and admissions are largely based on competitive examinations [18]. ...
... 5 Up to grade 10 corresponds to a standard course of basic education in Eastern and Southern Africa. 6 The learning-profiles literature that informed the calibration is summarized in Kaffenberger and Pritchett (2020), and covers cross-country variation in learning profiles (Kaffenberger and Pritchett, 2020;Muralidharan and Singh, 2019;Pritchett and Sandefur, 2020); within-country variation in learning profiles (Akmal and Pritchett, 2019); the limited range of learning levels that gain from a given level of instruction (Beatty et al., 2018;de Hoyos et al., 2019); and the role of instructional alignment in learning profiles (Banerjee et al., 2007(Banerjee et al., , 2016Büchel et al., 2019;Duflo et al., 2011;Glewwe et al., 2009;Muralidharan et al., 2019). In calibrating the PPF model, we assumed that low-performing children would drop out first-i.e., that dropout would be endogenous to performance-and calibrated the model so that the top 43% of the initial distribution would replicate PISA-D results in grade 10 (the average grade for 15-year-olds). ...
We model learning losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential for cost-effective strategies to build back better. Data from Early Grade Reading Assessments in Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania, and Uganda suggest half to over a year’s worth of learning loss. In modeling losses over time, we found that learning deficits for a child in grade 3 could lead to 2.8 years of lost learning by grade 10. While COVID-19 has stymied learning, bold, learning-focused reform consistent with the literature reviewed in this paper—specifically reform on targeted instruction and structured pedagogy—could improve learning even beyond pre-COVID-19 levels.
... The India NGO Pratham evolved, adapted, and iterated over time methods of using a simple diagnostic tool to identify children's learning level for basic literacy and numeracy, then grouping students by ability level (not grade or age), and focusing instruction in each group on getting them to master the next skill and move up to the next level. This method of aligning instruction to children's abilities has been shown to work via volunteer tutoring with children separated from their regular classrooms (Banerjee et al., 2007), and in summer camps and classroom settings (Banerjee et al., 2016). ...
Learning trajectories vary amazingly widely across countries, regions, and individual students in dynamic ways. In this paper we develop a parametrized structural model of the dynamics of the learning process and use the model for suggestive policy applications. We first synthesize the existing empirical literature on learning profiles, which suggest a clear set of parameters that formally characterize the learning process. We then calibrate this model of the learning process to reproduce the distribution of observed learning outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. Applying our calibrated model to policy simulations, we find that expanding schooling to universal attainment of basic education without changing the dynamics of the learning process would produce very little additional learning. Adjusting other parameters in the model, however, has large, positive effects. Slowing the pace of curriculum, so that more children can keep up, increases average learning in grade 10 by the learning equivalent of 1.6 years of schooling. Expanding the student skill levels that learn from a given level of instruction to account for within classroom heterogeneity of learning levels increases average grade 10 learning by the equivalent of a full year of schooling. The parameters we use are flexible, to accommodate the learning process in different contexts, and future work could explore additional parameterizations and calibrations for informing plans to improve education systems’ coherence for learning.
... Assuming that teachers share reputational information about students across school years, the best time to update such expectations is at the beginning of a new school year. Thus, beyond their immediate effects, interventions like summer remedial programs (Banerjee et al. 2016) may help low performing students catch up with their higher performing peers while also helping to recalibrate teacher expectations. ...
Studies suggest that students’ prior performance can shape subsequent teacher evaluations, but the magnitude of reputational effects and their implications for educational inequality remain unclear. Existing scholarship presents two major perspectives that exist in tension: do teachers primarily use reputational information as a temporary signal that is subsequently updated in response to actual student performance? Or do teachers primarily use reputational information as a filter that biases perception of subsequent evidence, thus crystallizing student reputations and keeping previously poor-performing students stuck in place? In a field experiment, we recruited a random sample of 832 junior high school teachers from the second-most populous province of China to grade a sequence of four essays written by the same student, and we randomly assign both the academic reputation of the student and the quality of the essays produced. We find that (1) reputational information influences how teachers grade, (2) teachers rely on negative information more heavily than positive information, and (3) negative reputations are crystallized by a single behavioral confirmation. These results suggest that students can escape their prior reputations, but to do so, they must contradict them immediately, with a single confirmation sufficient to crystallize a negative reputation.
... Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) has been implemented by the TaRL Africa team [2] in collaboration with the Ivorian Ministry. Prior research has shown the success of this teacher training method in Indian and other African contexts [1,5]. This project is a collaboration with the TaRL Africa team to learn the feasibility of DIA to mentor more teachers in the teacher training method (TaRL) with technology. ...
... An influential literature suggests that teaching at a higher level compared to where children reduces how much children learn, and this is a potential channel here. (Banerjee et al. 2016) Second, detecting these types of losses can take time. If we had tested the children as soon as schools reopened, we would likely not have found the kinds of deficits that we do. ...
We trace the effects of a devastating earthquake that occurred in Northern Pakistan in 2005. Using a new dataset from a survey conducted four years after the earthquake, we first show that the distance of the household from the fault line was not correlated with pre-existing household characteristics, while it was strongly predictive of earthquake-related damage and mortality. Through emergency relief aid, households living close to the fault line reported receiving substantial cash compensation that amounted to as much as 150 percent of their annual household consumption expenditure. Four years after the earthquake, there were no differences in public infrastructure, household or adult outcomes between areas close to and far from the fault line. However, children in their critical first thousand days at the time of the earthquake accumulated large height deficits, with the youngest the most affected. Children aged 3 through 15 at the time of the earthquake did not suffer growth shortfalls, but scored significantly worse on academic tests if they lived close to the fault line. Finally, children whose mothers completed primary education were fully protected against the emergence of a test score gap. We estimate that if these deficits continue to adult life, the affected children could stand to lose 15 percent of their lifetime earnings. Even when disasters are heavily compensated, human capital accumulation can be critically interrupted, with greater losses for already disadvantaged populations.
... Not all experimental interventions focus on the micro level. Furthermore, some policies that start out local might be scalable, for instance when education policies or deworming treatments can be implemented at the country level, based on a local impact evaluation (see e. g. Banerjee et al. 2016 for an attempt at scaling up and Banerjee et al. 2017 for a discussion). Further, structural questions are not fully ignored even when the behaviour or decision-making of specific people is at centre stage. ...
The Economics Nobel 2019 for Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty has been received by economists with a wide array of reactions. This article introduces the experimental revolution in development economics and the work of Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer and then discusses a number of critiques that have been raised about it: methodological concerns relating to the internal and external validity of experiments in economics; a supposed focus of RCTs on the microlevel and a distraction of development economics away from structural issues; the scope of experimental research for poverty reduction; and normative concerns arising when experiments are used in development economics.
... The solutions obtained using this dataset can help Pratham automate the process of identifying students with reading difficulty, and for teachers to adopt the "Teaching at the Right Level" (TaRL [10]) approach. Additionally, this open source dataset will also benefit the ecosystem of academia and researchers working in speech and language, Speech-to-text for Indian languages and prosodic skills evaluation. ...
One out of four children in India are leaving grade eight without basic reading skills. Measuring the reading levels in a vast country like India poses significant hurdles. Recent advances in machine learning opens up the possibility of automating this task. However, the datasets are primarily in English. To solve this assessment problem and advance deep learning research in regional Indian languages, we present the ASER dataset of children in the age group of 6-14. The dataset consists of 5,300 subjects generating 81,658 labeled audio clips in Hindi, Marathi and English. These labels represent expert opinions on the ability of the child to read at a specified level. Using this dataset, we built a simple ASR-based classifier. Early results indicate that we can achieve a prediction accuracy of 86 percent for the English language. Considering the ASER survey spans half a million subjects, this dataset can grow to those scales.
... These interventions have been shown to be highly effective in several Sub-Saharan African countries including South Africa, Liberia and Kenya Piper and Mugenda 2014;Piper and Medina 2010a). Another category of interventions that work well for girls (and boys) are those that help teachers to teach children at their current level of learning (e.g., teaching at the right level), either through diagnostic feedback or software as reported in Banerjee et al. (2016) and . ...
... Our findings have considerable policy implications. Improving students' attainments is a priority for all policy-makers and practitioners, who tend to focus on a variety of inputs such as (i) reducing class size (Krueger, 1999;Bedard and Kuhn, 2008), (ii) improving quality of teachers (Glewwe et al., 2010;Chetty et al., 2014;Duflo et al., 2015) and schools (Lavy, 2002), 31 (iii) extending term length (Pischke, 2007;McMullen and Rouse, 2012), (iv) improving peer group quality (Zimmerman, 2003;Duflo et al., 2011), (v) providing financial and non-financial incentives (Benhassine et al., 2015;Levitt et al., 2016), or (vi) employing more student-level differentiation (Banerjee et al., 2016), using frequent data to tailor classroom instruction and instilling a culture of high expectations (Abdulkadiroglu et al., 2011;Fryer, 2014). All such interventions are, however, very costly and their effectiveness is uncertain. ...
In a 1-year randomized controlled trial involving thousands of university students,
we provide real-time private feedback on relative performance in a semester-long online
assignment. Within this setup, our experimental design cleanly identifies the behavioral
response to rank incentives (i.e., the incentives stemming from an inherent preference for high
rank). We find that rank incentives not only boost performance in the related assignment,
but also increase the average grade across all course exams taken over the semester by 0.21
standard deviations. These beneficial effects remain sizeable across all quantiles and extend
beyond the time of the intervention. The mechanism behind these findings involves social
learning: rank incentives make students engage more in peer interactions, which lead them
to perform significantly better across the board. Finally, we explore the virtues of real-time
feedback by analyzing a number of alternative variations in the way it is provided.
... Grossman, Humphreys and Sacramont-Lutz (2015) finds that the high take-up by marginalized populations of new low-cost technology that allows constituents to engage with their local politicians could not be replicated when scaled to comprehensively cover half the country. A more promising outcome is reported in Banerjee et al. (2017) and Banerjee et al. (2016) who build on knowledge gained through previous failed attempts to effectively scale up the "Teaching at the Right Level" program. Further, Duncan and Magnuson (2013), in a review of the impacts of pre-school programs, note that the results from programs implemented for large and representative populations are generally much smaller than those found for small-scale pilot programs. ...
We investigate the impacts of a widely used sanitation intervention, Community-Led Total Sanitation, which was implemented at scale across rural areas of Indonesia with a randomized controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness. The program resulted in modest increases in toilet construction, decreased community tolerance of open defecation and reduced roundworm infestations in children. However, there was no impact on anemia, height or weight. We find important heterogeneity along three dimensions: (1) poverty—poorer households are limited in their ability to improve sanitation; (2) implementer identity—scale up involves local governments taking over implementation from World Bank contractors yet no sanitation and health benefits accrue in villages with local government implementation; and (3) initial levels of social capital—villages with high initial social capital built toilets whereas the community-led approach was counterproductive in low social capital villages with fewer toilets being built.
... al (2012) linked teachers' attendance to their salaries & discovered that attaching the incentive to a simple behavior, resulted in a 21% increase in teacher attendance which led to higher student outcomes. A large-scale intervention to encourage "Teaching at the Right Level" by reorienting teaching to the level of the student has been showing positive results (Banerjee et al, 2016). In Uganda, World Bank is conducting research to measure effectiveness of teachers by controlling the class-size and providing guidance to teachers for improved performance along with non-financial rewards (World Bank, 2016). ...
In this paper we propose a behaviorally informed intervention to address the 'learning crisis' plaguing government schools in Indian. The proposed intervention is aimed at encouraging government school teachers to create and employ lesson plans to increase their effectiveness and improve student learning outcomes. We use behaviorally informed tools such as enhanced active choice, defaults, anchors, and checklists. As well as behavioral insights on social norms and present-bias to inform our intervention design.
... To improve average education levels, policy options include reducing or eliminating school fees, shown to increase enrolment and attendance rates in many countries, [51][52][53] and carefully targeting infrastructure investments in alignment with needs-eg, building schools in areas with limited access or building latrines, especially for girls. Policies that can improve learning and educational quality include ongoing teacher trainings that incorporate regular followup visits and support, 53,54 improving diagnostics to inform teaching tailored to students' levels, 55,56 and grouping students by ability. 57 To improve survival and the aspects of functional health status studied here, many effective interventions exist for the major infectious diseases: insecticidetreated mosquito nets and artemisinin combination therapy for protection from malaria, 58 antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS, 59 directly observed treatment of tuber culosis, 60 rotavirus vaccine to prevent diarrhoea, 61 and pneumococcal vaccine and antibiotics for lower respiratory disease, 62 among many other costeffective interventions. ...
Background:
Human capital is recognised as the level of education and health in a population and is considered an important determinant of economic growth. The World Bank has called for measurement and annual reporting of human capital to track and motivate investments in health and education and enhance productivity. We aim to provide a new comprehensive measure of human capital across countries globally.
Methods:
We generated a period measure of expected human capital, defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status using rates specific to each time period, age, and sex for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016. We estimated educational attainment using 2522 censuses and household surveys; we based learning estimates on 1894 tests among school-aged children; and we based functional health status on the prevalence of seven health conditions, which were taken from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016). Mortality rates specific to location, age, and sex were also taken from GBD 2016.
Findings:
In 2016, Finland had the highest level of expected human capital of 28·4 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years (95% uncertainty interval 27·5-29·2); Niger had the lowest expected human capital of less than 1·6 years (0·98-2·6). In 2016, 44 countries had already achieved more than 20 years of expected human capital; 68 countries had expected human capital of less than 10 years. Of 195 countries, the ten most populous countries in 2016 for expected human capital were ranked: China at 44, India at 158, USA at 27, Indonesia at 131, Brazil at 71, Pakistan at 164, Nigeria at 171, Bangladesh at 161, Russia at 49, and Mexico at 104. Assessment of change in expected human capital from 1990 to 2016 shows marked variation from less than 2 years of progress in 18 countries to more than 5 years of progress in 35 countries. Larger improvements in expected human capital appear to be associated with faster economic growth. The top quartile of countries in terms of absolute change in human capital from 1990 to 2016 had a median annualised growth in gross domestic product of 2·60% (IQR 1·85-3·69) compared with 1·45% (0·18-2·19) for countries in the bottom quartile.
Interpretation:
Countries vary widely in the rate of human capital formation. Monitoring the production of human capital can facilitate a mechanism to hold governments and donors accountable for investments in health and education.
Funding:
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
This chapter explores the evidence base that informed the work of donors. It examines the analytical work undertaken in developing countries, mostly financed by multilateral and bilateral agencies. Three trajectories in this body of education research can be identified: (i) large-scale surveys showing broad trends and patterns; (ii) randomized controlled trials claiming to show “what works” in education; and (iii) political economy research. I highlight the strengths and limitations of each of these research tracks, examining to what extent studies were able to inform project design or steer mid-course correction to improve learning. The discussion shows how the predominance of one approach blinds practitioners to the specificities and complexities of the two levels (micro and meso) critical for learning. This also displaces much-needed resources for knowledge generation in the areas that impact learning. In sum, the educational ecosystem in a country, which includes numerous institutions at the micro and meso levels interacting and working together to make a school system function, is a black box.
In spite of the relatively high literacy rates around the world, reading comprehension outcomes remain weak. Reading comprehension is a key foundational skill to progress into higher educational levels, and to later on reap the economic and educational benefits of literacy. However, the current literature in developing countries has focused more on emergent literacy skills than on reading comprehension and the developmental processes through which it improves. This paper provides two key contributions to the literature on reading comprehension in developing countries. First, I provide suggestive experimental evidence that an intervention in public primary schools in Tecpán, Guatemala, which provides teacher training, coaching on the delivery of a new and evidence-based instructional approach, and high-quality reading materials, was effective at improving reading comprehension levels, although the effects were mostly concentrated among first graders. Secondly, I leverage the early literacy theory of the “Simple View of Reading”, to empirically test hypotheses about the developmental processes through which reading comprehension improved in this context. In all, these results have important implications for reading interventions in developing countries, as they highlight that reading comprehension is a multi-layered developmental process that requires special attention to each student’s gaps in the building blocks of literacy.
This report offers unique insight into the extent of the learning crisis by providing an in-depth picture of which children are most at risk of not acquiring foundational learning skills. The analysis of 32 low- and middle-income countries and territories uses newly released data from surveys undertaken in 2017-2021 as part of Round 6 of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS6) to examine the equity perspectives of the crisis, exploring learning outcomes among different subgroups of children, with a focus on the most vulnerable. Simulations are also carried out to preview the extent to which learning loss has occurred as a result of the pandemic, as well as determine
the impact of different strategies to overcome these losses. Finally, the report examines timely concerns of remote learning readiness in the event of school closures and draws links between this pressing matter and learning outcomes.
Jolanta Gałecka proposes a slightly different view on poverty – as a limiting factor for the circumstances related to the compulsory nature of education, taken for granted. Giving some examples of innovative educational projects from her own experience, she describes in detail one of the most interesting projects in an Indian slum that she had the opportunity to observe. In this project, over 10 million children had the opportunity to experience the joy of reading. They were often children who did not go to school only a few months ago. In environments where families cannot afford to 'waste' a few hours a day at school – which is exactly how their parents often perceive this time, going to school is not always the norm. During the 6 or 8 hours that would be spent in school, you can earn a few cents, which is often more important than a boring and "who-knows-what-for" school education. In such conditions, the assumptions, indisputable in the developed countries, such as compulsory education, universal usefulness or the
necessity of education, and the general acceptance
of the obviousness of school, disappear. If someone
wants to have children go to school, he or she
has to look at school from a completely different
perspective – look at the children, their needs and
the environment from which they come. As a result,
some projects are being created that are also
worth imitating in European schools. One of them
is the pedagogical approach of Geeta Dharmarajan,
the founder of the Katha organization, invented
over 30 years ago and developed in the student
community and in cooperation with it. Katha has
been teaching children the joy of reading, the joy
of development and the joy of being in school for
33 years. The joy of reading, or rather the will to
provide it to all the children in India, is a consistently
implemented keynote of all activities carried
out by Geeta. The real key to success, however, was
not to provide books (Katha has already published
over 300 different titles), but to understand the
needs of local communities and work closely with
them.
This paper presents evidence on the impact of technology-aided instruction on literacy using an AI-based multi-sensory technology platform across a large cross-section of government schools in India. The study focused on reading and comprehension in the English language. The intervention enhances the instructional effectiveness of the teachers and the learning ability of the children within the existing instructional environment without any new instructional design or pedagogy or content. Besides, the intervention is implemented by existing teachers and not outside volunteers.
A total of 1 million children and 15,000 teachers across 5,000 government schools in the states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Gujarat and Karnataka used the technology for the 2016-17 academic year. Using a randomized control-treatment assessment, the study finds a 20-40% overall gain in learning outcomes in the treatment sample. Gains within individual states and grades vary. Learning outcomes rose across the entire range of proficiency levels in a grade. Ongoing self-administered assessments report even higher impact in the 50-60% range. In addition, teachers also reported improving their skills as a result of using the technology, suggesting that the intervention can also alleviate teacher shortage and inadequate teacher training.
The paper also reports briefly on the growing adoption of the program in several countries outside India. The results hold significant promise for disrupting the low and stagnating literacy levels across government schools in India and other similar environments.
In recent years, there has been widespread interest around the potential for technology to transform learning. As investment in education technology continues to grow, students, parents, and teachers face a seemingly endless array of education technologies from which to choose—from digital personalized learning platforms to online courses to text message reminders to submit financial aid forms. Amid the excitement, it is important to step back and understand how technology can help—or in some cases hinder—learning. This review article synthesizes and discusses rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of technology-based approaches to education in developed countries and outlines areas for future inquiry. In particular, we examine randomized controlled trials and regression discontinuity studies across the following categories of education technology: (i) access to technology, (ii) computer-assisted learning, (iii) technology-enabled behavioral interventions in education, and (iv) online learning. We hope this synthesis will advance academic understanding of how technology can improve education, outline key areas for new experimental research, and help drive improvements to the policies, programs, and structures that contribute to successful teaching and learning. (JEL H52, H75, I20, O33)
The promise of randomized controlled trials is that evidence gathered through the evaluation of a specific program helps us—possibly after several rounds of fine-tuning and multiple replications in different contexts—to inform policy. However, critics have pointed out that a potential constraint in this agenda is that results from small “proof-of-concept” studies run by nongovernment organizations may not apply to policies that can be implemented by governments on a large scale. After discussing the potential issues, this paper describes the journey from the original concept to the design and evaluation of scalable policy. We do so by evaluating a series of strategies that aim to integrate the nongovernment organization Pratham’s “Teaching at the Right Level” methodology into elementary schools in India. The methodology consists of reorganizing instruction based on children’s actual learning levels, rather than on a prescribed syllabus, and has previously been shown to be very effective when properly implemented. We present evidence from randomized controlled trials involving some designs that failed to produce impacts within the regular schooling system but still helped shape subsequent versions of the program. As a result of this process, two versions of the programs were developed that successfully raised children’s learning levels using scalable models in government schools. We use this example to draw general lessons about using randomized control trials to design scalable policies.
This study used longitudinal data on 444 teachers and 3,435 students to examine teacher performance in Ghana. The study is divided into two parts. The first part of the study examined factors that mediate the causal effects of a kindergarten teacher training program on classroom quality and student outcomes. Specifically, it examined whether teachers’ knowledge of the learning content, teachers’ implementation quality of behavioral and instructional practices and teachers’ professional well-being were significant mediators of the treatment effect. It utilized a causal mediation approach, which allowed the average causal mediation effects to be parametrically and nonparametrically identified under a set of minimum conditions. The study found that implementation quality was a significant mediator of positive treatment effect on classroom quality across time. This effect persisted even when teacher knowledge and professional well-being were accounted for. The study also found small marginal mediation effects on student outcomes, including a positive mediation effect on literacy and a negative mediation effect on executive functioning in the presence of all mediators. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence to design future interventions that place more emphasis on the influential pathway of implementation quality to yield positive impacts, particularly in early education contexts. The second part of the study examined teacher profiles that provide diagnostic information about teachers’ instructional strengths and weaknesses. It applied stage-wise cluster analysis to reveal different subpopulations of teachers and study how they relate to student outcomes. The study found six profiles of teachers with varying professional well-being and classroom practices, including two that were significantly associated with positive student learning across all four domains of numeracy, literacy, socioemotional development and executive functioning. Overall, the results allow easy identification of growth opportunities for each profile of teachers that helps provide formative feedback and targeted support to facilitate high quality teaching and maximize positive student learning outcomes.
This study examines the link between initial school performance on subsequent learning for marginalised children in the Complementary Basic Education programme in Northern Ghana. Specifically, we focus on whether initial low performance of girls and boys differentially affects learning trajectories. Drawing on longitudinal data, we find a significant association between initial and subsequent low performance as students transit into formal education, even after taking account of other potential factors. Boys are more likely than girls to improve from low attainment as they move into formal school. As such, girls are at particular risk of maintaining low levels of learning, and therefore warrant greater support within both complementary and mainstream schooling contexts.
To improve learning-outcomes teaching quality matters. However, research into teaching in low- and middle-income countries (L&MIC) is limited, particularly in mathematics and the rapidly rising low-cost private sector (LCPS). The purpose of this research is to study mathematics teaching and learning in Karachi’s LCPS by exploring four related aspects: who attends Karachi’s LCPS-school; the values that underpin LCPS teachers’ instructional and professional practices; the instructional practices teachers use to teach mathematics; and the institutional environment that supports or hinders the development of mathematics teaching practice. Five key components of effective teaching underpinned by communicative pedagogies are explored in this study in relation to LCPS teachers’ practice: planning and preparation; a conducive classroom environment; effective instructional practices; independent practice and summative assessment; and teachers’ role as professionals. Employing a mixed-method case-study approach, this study uses primary data gathered through lesson observations and interviews conducted in five pilot and two in-depth case-study LCPS-schools, and secondary quantitative data. This thesis employs a pragmatic perspective on the school effectiveness and improvement research framework and argues for its greater use in identifying good practice in L&MIC. LCPS teachers are unqualified, untrained and poorly paid but driven by a strong sense of moral purpose underpinned by a transformational view of education. They exhibit a continuum of practice from novice to expert with the latter reflecting the same components of effective practices found in HIC literature. My findings show LCPS teachers can be supported to become expert through a systematic programme of professional development and a supportive accountability framework. Therefore, this study argues for support to be provided to LCPS teachers on developing students’ conceptual understanding, embedding formative assessment and promoting mathematical communication. It concludes with recommendations for policymakers to engage with the LCPS at a systemic level to promote equity and improve learning.
Este artículo aborda la relación entre los conceptos de Accountability Social y Accountability Educativo. El análisis de las similitudes, diferencias y tensiones entre estos dos conceptos distintos puede fortalecer la participación ciudadana para la mejora educativa al identificar la gama completa de actores y procesos en la toma de decisiones que influyen en el éxito o fracaso de la política educativa más allá de los maestros.
Al implementar mecanismos de Accountability Social (AS) en el campo de la educación, nos encontramos con dos particularidades: 1) son muchos los actores que participan en la educación, dificultando la identificación precisa de responsables y responsabilidades, y 2) en el campo de la educación existe el concepto de Accountability Educativo (AE) que se refiere a la serie de mecanismos para hacer responsables a las escuelas y a los maestros por sus resultados educativos, por medio de la generación y difusión de pruebas estandarizadas que motiven al cambio y la mejora continua. ¿Son compatibles las aproximaciones de AS y AE?, ¿Cuáles son sus diferencias y semejanzas?, ¿Qué efectos generan estas diferencias en la construcción de soluciones a la crisis de la educación?
Por medio de un análisis comparativo, y profundizando en el caso mexicano, se concluye que tenemos que ver más que la punta del iceberg. La perspectiva de AE es insuficiente, y a veces contraproducente, para el mejoramiento educativo porque posee una serie de sesgos que se centran en los síntomas más que en las causas de los problemas estructurales relacionados con el bajo nivel educativo. Estos sesgos incluyen 1) la reducción de los criterios de éxito de las políticas educativas a los resultados de las evaluaciones estandarizadas, 2) el poco interés en el monitoreo y seguimiento a políticas que se enfoquen en las características de los estudiantes y los factores socioeconómicos en comparación a la responsabilidad que adquieren los maestros en los resultados educativos, 3) la concentración de consecuencias en la última cadena de interacción -maestros y escuelas- que afecta a la comunidad educativa en su conjunto, y 4) dificultades para movilizar a la ciudadanía en torno a la demanda de una mejor educación. La escuela y los maestros son los principales proveedores de los servicios educativos, pero su desempeño no es la única causa del éxito o fracaso educativo.
Por ello, necesitamos construir una visión ampliada de Accountability Social en Educación (ASE), basado en una perspectiva de Derechos Humanos, donde todos asumamos nuestra responsabilidad, dentro y fuera de las escuelas que permita al menos tres cosas: 1) generar criterios de éxito amplios y justos para valorar la política educativa, utilizando diversas metodologías de evaluación y usando los resultados para generar retroalimentación formativa; 2) identificar mejor responsables y responsabilidades, centrándose en aquellos factores que favorecen la equidad y calidad: aumentar la motivación de los alumnos por aprender, disminuir el peso de las desigualdades socioeconómicas y generar escuelas y maestros más solidarios; y 3) el involucramiento de ciudadanos para lograr mejores aprendizajes, asegurando el involucramiento de todos los actores, la construcción de relaciones de confianza mutua, y complementando el acceso a la información local con el seguimiento de políticas a lo largo de la cadena de decisiones.
This article addresses the relationship between the concepts of Social Accountability and Educational Accountability. The analysis of the similarities, differences and tensions between these two different concepts can strengthen citizen participation for educational improvement by identifying the full range of actors and processes in decision making that influence the success or failure of educational policy beyond of the teachers.
We encounter two distinctive features involving social accountability mechanisms in the field of education: (1) There are many actors who participate in education, making it difficult to identify precisely who is responsible for key decisions, and (2) In education policy one encounters the concept of educational accountability, which refers to a series of mechanisms to hold schools and teachers accountable for educational outcomes by adopting standardized tests on a widespread basis to motivate change and steady improvement. Are the approaches of social accountability and educational accountability compatible? What are their differences and similarities? What are the effects of these differences when it comes to formulating solutions to the crisis in education?
Through a comparative analysis, and looking at the Mexican case in depth, it becomes clear that we have to examine more than the tip of the iceberg. The educational accountability perspective is insufficient and at times counterproductive for educational improvement because it has a series of biases that are centered on the symptoms more than the causes of the structural problems related to low education levels. These biases include (1) Reducing the criteria for assessing the success of education policies to the outcomes of standardized tests, (2) Identifying teachers as the main actors responsible for educational outcomes, without considering other associated factors, such as student characteristics and socio-economic factors, (3) The concentration of negative consequences in the last chain of interaction—teachers and schools—which disproportionately affects students and teachers, and (4) Difficulties in mobilizing citizens around the demand for a better education. The school and the teachers are the main providers of educational services, but their performance is not the only cause of educational outcomes.
This is why we need to construct an expanded vision of social accountability in education, based on a human rights perspective all of the actors assume our responsibility inside and outside the schools, to facilitate: (1) The generation of broad and fair criteria of success for evaluating education policy, using various evaluation methodologies and the results to generate formative feedback; (2) To better identify those responsible and their responsibilities, focusing on those factors that improve equity and quality, increase students’ motivation to learn, reduce the burden of the socioeconomic inequalities, and help produce more supportive schools and teachers, and (3) The involvement of citizens to achieve better learning, build relationships based on mutual trust, and complement access to local information with policy monitoring throughout the chain of decision-making.
Access to education has been the central tenet of the Millennium Development Goal 2, which focused strongly on increasing enrolment yet failed to promote education quality and equity and address contextual complexities that sustain exclusion. As a consequence, many children are not learning. There is growing recognition that effective, efficient and equitable education for all will not be achieved without better accountability. The present paper details innovative methods for strengthening the learning process through better social accountability. The paper defines and tests in rural schools of Afghanistan and Pakistan a community-based system dynamics protocol using participatory group model building (GMB) techniques. We tested the protocol with two groups of teachers and one group of children, with the three produced causal loop diagrams highlighting factors that influence learning in the classroom from the perspectives of the participants. The sessions showed interest, engagement, quick mastery of how GMB methods work and clear understanding of how the current classroom system hinders learning for many students. Researchers found that large autonomy and initiative could be left to the workshop participants, keeping the facilitator’s role to one of explaining the method and asking clarification about causal relations.
What constraints arise when translating successful NGO programs to improve public services in developing countries into government policy? We report on a randomized trial embedded within a nationwide reform of teacher hiring in Kenyan government primary schools. New teachers offered a fixed-term contract by an international NGO significantly raised student test scores, while teachers offered identical contracts by the Kenyan government produced zero impact. Observable differences in teacher characteristics explain little of this gap. Instead, data suggests that bureaucratic and political opposition to the contract reform led to implementation delays and a differential interpretation of identical contract terms. Additionally, contract features that produced larger learning gains in both the NGO and government treatment arms were not adopted by the government outside of the experimental sample.
This paper examines dimensions of inequality including labour market inequalities and discusses public policies needed for reduction in inequalities. It discusses both inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunities. In terms of income, India is the second most unequal country in the world after South Africa. Wealth inequalities are also high in India. Most of the inequalities will have a labour market dimension. Labour market inequalities can be found across sectors, wages and earnings, quality of work, labour market access and between organised and unorganised sectors. On public policies and inequalities, the paper discusses redistribution measures, macro-policies, sectoral policies and impact on employment, social policies such as education, health, hunger and malnutrition, social protection, corruption, gender disparities and climate change. The paper argues for fundamental changes to human capital and universal basic services. Investments in social infrastructure, health, education, affirmative action and provision of public services can lead to the creation of an egalitarian society.
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