Abstract
Education is a critical sector in most countries regardless of whether developed or developing. Efforts to ensure quality and meaningful education for the citizens consumes significant government and state resources in supporting education and related researches that seek to improve education. A lot of research has been done, both in the past and ongoing, to find out ways of ensuring better education, and other aspects of teachings that can facilitate efficacy in cost and value creation to learners across all levels of education. The research cuts long, diverse areas of the education, each having its approaches and objectives. The following is a referee report on one of the research works done to find out remedies for education in India, especially in the poor urban government schools. The title of the research is Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India. The literature in the paper is evaluated and suggestions on improvement of the report are given.
Summary of the Study.
The paper presents a report on an investigation carried out in two regions of India meant to find out new measures that can be imposed in urban slums for enhanced quality education (Banerjee, Cole, Duflo and Linden, 2005). The investigation was prompted by the fact that previous attempts at improving the quality of education by providing sufficient learning materials were found to be less effective. The paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, suggests that remedial education for children in urban slum public schools would improve their quality of education by a significant level through literacy and numeracy enhancing programs apart from the normal class teaching programs.
Literature Development
The paper is organized as a research paper with the basics of topics such abstract, introduction, the programs, evaluation design, results, and effects of the programs, direct and indirect effects on the children, cost-benefit analysis, and conclusion. The paper begins by introducing previous and current statistical reports on various areas of education in India. The statistics presents details on the Millennium Development Goals on education as well as the characteristics and quality of education available to the poor in third world countries. From the previous reports and statistics, the paper suggests that mere educational inputs had no significant effects on improving the quality of education. Instead, additional inputs that would satisfy the unmet requirements in schools were necessary. It further disqualifies educational infrastructure and curriculum as determinants of the quality of education, especially in public schools with children from poor family backgrounds. Therefore, suggesting a more specific strategy that would provide better ways to enhance the potential of weaker students in their learning programs prompted the evaluation of two programs in an attempt of determining the most suitable for the initiative. The two programs are remedial education program and a computer-assisted learning program evaluated in Mumbai and Vadodara in Western India (Banerjee et al., 2005). The results of the two programs were found to have significant role in improving the quality of education for the children besides the normal teaching programs.
Empirical strategy and Measures Used
The study is composed of a well-structured analysis of the Indian education system. It takes an empirical approach to investigating and evaluating previous and current factors that significantly influence the quality of education. It uses past approaches and their significance in education improvement to introduce the benefits of having the remedial education and computer-assisted learning programs as remedies for improving education qualities. It compares the two programs as well as their enhanced roles, which could not be achieved using previous strategies that mainly involved addition of learning resources. Therefore, the study includes a clear explanation of how the two programs can be used to create a learner-friendly environment (Psacharopoulos, 2014). The programs focus on an individualized and comfortable learning process, and enhanced motivation for the children, especially in public schools in poverty-stricken urban regions. The study embraces an approach of cost-benefit to disapprove past strategies for promoting quality education by reducing class sizes and providing additional learning resources. However, the two programs were conducted on a limited scope of sample and education levels. It provides a new and simple approach to improving the quality of education, with the least cost implications. The study is important because it presents a basis for alternative ways that can be used to nurture and sustain educational curiosity amongst the school-going children, with less interference or complications on the existing system of education (Gulwani, 2014). The two programs are meant to strengthen existing programs by having a more simplified approach to individualized learning involving local personnel and computer-aided programs. Besides the initial capital, the programs are cost-effective with long-lasting transforming effects in the education system
The second section follows with a description of both remedial education and computer-assisted learning programs and how their capabilities enhance quality education. The remedial education program involves the recruitment of a young person from the immediate local society to assist the children on their core competencies in improving their numeracy and literacy skills (Banerjee et al., 2005). Once implemented, the program facilitates an individualized and learner-friendly environment for the children because their alternative teachers are from their local community. According to the paper, the remedial education program has the advantages of low-cost, not limited by space and can be scaled up.
The computer-assisted learning program uses educational software and educational computer games that will provoke and maintain the interest of the students while targeting some educational goals for the children. The program is most suitable for schools with less qualified instructors because it allows the students to independently learn by playing the computerized-numerical games.
The third section of the research report is an evaluation design that provides the academic tests and assessments for the two programs to determine the efficacy as educational remedies. The remedial education program was carried out in the cities of Vadodara and Mumbai with random assignment of young trainers to third-grade children in randomly selected schools. The program was effected in schools in 2001 through 2003, whereby, the third-grade children who had undergone the program, would be imposed by the same program in their fourth grade. It creates a two-year evaluation of the remedial education program (Banerjee et al., 2005). A comparison was then made between the group of children who received the benefits of the program in third grade and are in their fourth grade, with their counterparts in fourth grade who were not initially exposed to the program in third grade. The comparison was done on the assumptions that no reallocation of resources with the two-year span in each of the selected schools.
The computer-assisted learning program was conducted in between 2002 and 2003 on half of the government primary schools in the city of Vadodara alone. However, the random selection of schools could not be clearly imposed because some schools had no space or electricity, situations which could not allow installation of computers. A comparison, similar to that of remedial education program, was carried out by the different groups, that is, the fifty-five schools sampled for the computer-assisted learning programs and the fifty-six schools that did not receive the program.
The paper then uses test score tables in section four to illustrate a statistical analysis and results for both programs in Vadodara and Mumbai. Normalized scores for each of the variables that is, grade, year and city are presented in tables for comparison. Among the comparison aspects are the levels of competencies and pre-intervention differences, which were determined by exposure to the programs and other factors such as absenteeism, transfers, and drop outs, which would affect the attrition pattern description. Although the research design used a randomized sampling of schools, the treatment and comparison for all samples were satisfactorily equal (Banerjee et al., 2005). A cumulative distribution function presents the percentage of children’s raw scores on mathematics and verbal tests across the various groups with significance effects from the programs.
Interpretation of the Results.
The paper then interprets the possible effects that were attributed to the remedial education and computer-assisted learning programs. The study begins by finding a link between the programs and the education attendance of the children. Until the third year, there was no significant relationship between both programs and their children’s preferences for school attendance. It was the computer-assisted learning program that proved to have a positive relationship with attendance in its third year of assessment. The second impact of the programs was tested on remedial education program on test scores for the different groups. Statistically, there was a positive correlation in posttests scores and treatment and comparison groups in the remedial education program.
With the computer-assisted learning program, math test scores greatly differed on treatment groups than in comparison groups through the entire period of investigation (Banerjee et al., 2005). Its influence on language score was insignificant relative to that of numerical scores. Contrary to the initial belief that the remedial education program would benefit all categories of children, the results of the study show that the children with poor educational background benefited more from the program than their counterparts. Besides, the program demonstrated its ability to affect positively math competencies in grade one and two and language competencies in grade two. The computer-assisted learning program had a significant positive effect on math competencies only. However, it was across all levels, unlike the remedial education program. Further evaluation of the children beyond the end of the program demonstrated a long-term and permanent impacts of the programs on the children’s education abilities. Of more importance, the study presented key estimating equations that were useful in determining the direct and indirect impacts of both programs on children across all grades with considerations on the class size and peer effect.
Besides, a cost-benefits analysis of the programs was included in the research paper. The programs are meant to improve the quality of education with additional financial implications for the government, especially in hiring of teachers and young trainers, and installation of computer infrastructure in schools (Banerjee et al., 2005). The results suggest that the class size has no financial implications. Therefore, it should not be used as a means of estimating costs for the programs. The cost of computer-assisted learning program is mainly in purchase, installation, and maintenance of computers, and is varied depending on the availability of electricity. The study, however, does not include specific challenges that the programs can face in their implementations, use and maintenance. It does not discuss how the existing or normal teaching program can effectively accommodate new programs without burdening the teachers and students.
Suggestions for Improvement
The interpretation and conclusion provided in the study provide a more simplified approach that seems easy to adopt and implement in an average economic situation. The data collection and presentation, however, appears too complicated for a simplified alternative remedy compared to previous researches (Kremer, Brannen and Glennerster, 2013). Although the study uses quantitative techniques in its research design, it has the weaknesses of generalization and assumptions, thus, unsuitable in some contexts. However, the two programs were conducted on a limited scope of sample and education levels. It provides a new and simple approach to improving the quality of education, with the least cost implications. The study was conducted on assumptions that there were no resource allocation in between the study period, but fails to elaborate on its significance on the derived results and conclusions. Again, it does not offer precise recommendations or chronological steps that can be used to apply or implement the two programs, the possible challenges and solutions at the individual, school and national levels. The study focuses on comparing and contrasting the remedial education and computer-assisted learning programs, which are still in test, rather than comparing with the existing programs to show the outstanding characteristics of the new programs that make them suitable as modern remedies for improving the quality of education (Spodek & Saracho, 2014).
With such weaknesses, the study needs further review to provide more specificity in its data interpretations. Precise recommendations on how the two programs can be implemented in schools to achieve their intended goals in education should be provided with the necessary contextual variables that might influence their expected outcomes in the education system (Psacharopoulos, 2014). A research paper on education should focus on all sides, that is, that of the learners, teachers and any other key stakeholders such as the government. It should provide the implied positivity and negativity of a new development or adjustments on existing education programs, showing the outstanding features precisely. At this level, the study just offers a possible remedy for the education system but fails to address its suitable implementation process or any suggestions for further studies on the same topics. Although the study has presented possible solutions in the Indian education, there is more to be done to make the two programs feasible in improving the quality of education.
References:
Banerjee, A., Cole, S., Duflo, E., & Linden, L. (2005). Remedying education: Evidence from two randomized experiments in India (No. w11904). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Kremer, M., Brannen, C., & Glennerster, R. (2013). The challenge of education and learning in the developing world. Science, 340(6130), 297-300.
Gulwani, S. (2014). Example-based learning in computer-aided stem education. Communications of the ACM, 57(8), 70-80.
Psacharopoulos, G. (Ed.). (2014). Economics of education: Research and studies. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Spodek, B., & Saracho, O. N. (2014). Handbook of research on the education of young children. London: Routledge.
