How can incentives to teachers improve learning outcomes?
By Devang Bhandari
(The author would like to thank Aanchal Govindani, Anand Raj, Kamesh Shekar, Krithiga Narayanan and Venkata for their inputs)
For the past 15 years, the learning outcomes in the educational institutions of rural India have failed to improve. It’s time that the focus is put on where it matters the most, that is teachers. By creating an enabling structure and rethinking teacher’s incentives, India has the potential to make significant impact on student’s learning outcomes.
Learning outcomes continue to be sub-standard
Although India’s per capita expenditure on education has increased over the past several years, the learning outcomes have remained static even as enrollment ratios have increased.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) surveys over the past 15 years have indicated minimal improvement in students’ learning outcomes in rural areas. For instance according to the 2017 ASER survey, less than half of rural teenagers (14 – 18 years) are able to comprehend basic English sentences (46%) and solve basic arithmetic problems (43%).
The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 is path breaking but may not be sufficient
The National Education Policy (NEP) clearly recognizes the lack of improvement in learning outcomes and hence is aiming to bring systemic changes to the entire education system in the country. Some of the key initiatives under this policy include, redefining of roles and responsibilities of Department of Education to resolve conflict of interest. The Department will be the apex state-level body for policy making and monitoring only. The education operations and service delivery will be with an independent body, Directorate of School Education (DSE). The NCERT and SCERT will be the key bodies to set the academic standards and curriculum that will be focused on skill development. SCERT will also develop School Quality Assessment and Accreditation framework (SQAAF). The proposed school cluster will be semi-autonomous body that will consolidate school operations within a certain kilometre radius to bring in higher efficiency in delivery. An independent State School Standards Authority (SSSA) will be set up to evaluate basic parameters including safety, security, infrastructure, number of teachers across subjects and grades, governance processes etc. Finally, for evaluation of learning outcomes, a new assessment centre, PARAKH, will also be set up to run National Achievement Survey (NAS) and states will be encouraged to run their own State Achievement Surveys (SAS).
While the NEP policy has been effectively designed, its impact will depend on state-level implementation. Further, while it is correctly looking to bring in fundamental changes to the education development and delivery, it has not given sufficient emphasis on one of the most important stakeholders within education, namely teachers. No doubt, it is looking to augment the teacher training as well as the infrastructure that will aid in better teaching. Further, teacher education itself is expected to undergo rapid changes. However, there are certain key elements impacting teachers that require further consideration.
Teacher’s incentives or lack of it
Globally attracting and retaining teachers is a significant challenge due to poor incentive structures (Crehan, 2016; Han and Yin, 2016; UNESCO IICBA, 2017) which ultimately leads to high teacher absenteeism (Ramachandran et al., 2018; UNESCO IICBA, 2017). According to a 2015 study conducted by Karthik Muralidharan, teacher absenteeism in rural India is as high as 23.6%. Teacher’s incentives include both monetary and non-monetary elements. Monetary elements include both the salary levels and structures as well as promotions & career path which are heavily skewed towards seniority instead of performance.
If structured appropriately the monetary incentives can have a direct impact on learning outcomes. For instance Karthik Muralidharan’s 2011 study on teacher’s performance linked compensation resulted in 6% and 9% improvement in language and math test scores, respectively.
Non-monetary incentives include recognition and effective monitoring & evaluation, performance of administrative duties, teachers having to teach outside of their specialization, lack of adequate support from the parents, structure of employment terms and accessibility to the schools (Ronak Jain & Mansi Kabra 2015).
On the teacher’s administrative duties itself, while the RTE Act mandates 200 of teaching days, the actual no. seems to be lower due to such activities. In a study done, Researching Accountability in the Indian System of Education (RAISE) (Caroline Dyer et al. 2020), it was noted that 75% of the government teachers and 83% of principals were involved in non-teaching activities during the class time. Further according to 2018 findings by National University of Education Planning & Administration, teachers spent only 19.1% of the time actually teaching.
Weak governance has further exasperated the problem
Governance is looked through the lens of the roles and responsibilities carried out by relevant authorities. NEP 2020 explicitly noted that the Department of School Education performs all duties that leads to conflict of interest. It has thus recommended segregation of responsibilities between authorities.
Beyond the structural issues, weaker governance is also the outcome of lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities of the front-line education inspection officers. This leads to significant bandwidth issues. In an average share of time study done by Centre for Civil Society in 2019 on tasks of 133 Assistant Basic Education officers in UP it was discovered that only 8.7% of their time goes in academic inspection. A majority of non-academic inspection time was spent on supervising building construction and collection of information. Thus, despite the segregation of responsibilities across authorities the inefficiency in the system exists due to non-academic focused work.
Karthik Muralidharan’s 2015 study on weak governance showed a positive correlation between increase in monitoring and reduction in teacher absence which ultimately led to positive learning outcome. Further Duflo’s 2012 Study indicated a combined positive impact of introducing performance linked pay structure as well as increasing monitoring by approximately 6%.
We need to completely rethink the teacher’s incentives and governance structure
I propose following policy recommendations to address the challenges associated with teacher’s incentives and governance structure -
1. Monetary incentives: Performance Linked Pay
Teacher’s salary is the largest part of government’s education expenditure budget (approx. 80%). The 7th pay commission has awarded hike in teachers’ salaries across levels by almost 16%. Despite this the learning outcomes have not improved. I, thus propose a change in the compensation structure of teachers where a component of their existing compensation, say 10% to 15%, is linked with learning outcomes of basic skills across grades. However, due care is required in considering the right metrics for linkage with incentive structure as well as the independence of the assessment. Independence of the assessment will also require alignment of adequate incentives for the assessor to mitigate any unintended consequences.
2. Monetary incentives: Promotions & Career path reconsideration
The traditional career path for teachers has been linked with seniority and has a much longer time horizon for the next milestone promotion. Given the changing nature of assessment, school accreditation framework setting and independent National Assessment Center, PARAKH, I propose to revamp the career architecture of teachers across levels where individual and school performance is factored in promotion consideration including fast track promotions for high performing teachers as evaluated basis the proposed scorecard. I further propose to redefine Principal’s roles and responsibilities that provides better them higher autonomy in evaluating teacher’s performance. However, adequate governance will need to be instituted to ensure the autonomy is not misused.
3. Governance effectiveness
Since Directorate of School Education at a state level will now be independently responsible for Operations and service delivery of schools in the state, I propose to redefine the role and responsibilities of education inspection officer to enable high time towards academic inspection. Also increasing strength of additional inspection officers should be looked at to ensure at least quarterly inspection.
4. Setting up of Education Services Agency (ESA)
NEP 2020 specifically acknowledges the significant non-teaching time, and specifically reiterates teachers to not participate in administrative activity going forward. However, it does not provide any high-level mechanism to address this. Through this policy framework I propose to redefine teacher’s role and responsibilities to specifically exclude such activities. Similarly, above I have proposed to redefine the roles of responsibilities of education officer to improve governance effectiveness.
I, however realize that streamlining of roles and responsibilities of teachers and education inspection officers does not mean that the non-academic task will reduce. Further, it is critical that while teacher’s monetary incentives are linked with learning outcomes, they are equally given a conducive environment to succeed. Hence, I propose to set up an ESA that can structurally absorb specific responsibilities across teachers and inspection officers. I further envisage segregation of role within this unit to effectively support BEOs and DEOs as well as teachers in local school clusters.
However, new policy recommendations do have the potential to create unintended consequences. Hence while developing detailed proposal, due care should be given to ensure the following are mitigated –
Implementing a performance link incentive can result in higher pay out without any improvement in learning outcome due to pressure from the teacher’s association or principal and teacher collusion.
The administrative unit may reduce efficiency across teachers and education inspectors due to set up of formal protocols etc.
The intrinsic motivation of teachers to teach may reduce if the policy execution results in additional burden.
Given the performance-based evaluation and strict protocols, attracting teachers may become difficult.
Principal’s autonomy may result in abuse of power creating difficult environment for high performing teachers to survive.
Conclusion
NEP along with all other previous education policies have recommended the expenditure on education to be at approx. 6% of GDP. Historically we have been at 50% lower than this target. However, in the end it is important to evaluate not only how much is being spent but the way it is being spent. Despite two decades of consistent effort by various governments, learning outcomes have failed to improve. The current environment with the recent release of NEP in 2020 is highly conducive to completely revamp the teacher’s incentives and governance structure. It is time that we build an enabling environment for our teachers to succeed.
The author is currently pursuing PGP in Public Policy from the Takshashila Institution. Views are personal and do not represent Takshashila’s policy recommendations.