This year’s Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer are amongst the pioneers of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), an ‘experimental approach to alleviate global poverty’. Essentially, it transports societal economics from desks and theories and brings it on-ground, where it is ideally expected to make an impact. In fact, the husband-wife duo of Abhijit and Esther practiced their study in Indian hinterlands, collaborating with non-profit organizations like Seva Mandir and Pratham, and conducted RCTs to scientifically evaluate various targeted anti-poverty programmes in India. This radically new approach sparked Educational Initiatives’ implementation of the Mindspark program in Rajasthan, associating with the state government to test the impact of classroom-based ICT program amongst the most underserved and resource bereft children of rural India.
The implementation of the program was sponsored by Global Innovation Fund – where Michael Kremer and Esther Duflo the winners of Nobel Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences were among the founding Board Members. This grant was on the basis of the Mindspark program demonstrating strong results in a J-PAL RCT of the program in Delhi urban slums. The proposal was to do a pilot in government schools to show the blueprint of how EdTech can be integrated into the govt school system to improve learning outcomes at scale.
The ground reality
Despite high enrolment rates in recent years, improvement in reading outcomes and arithmetic ability remain alarmingly low. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 reveals 56% of students in Class VIII struggle to solve simple numerical division problems, whereas 72% of students in Class V do not even know how to divide. The report, released by NGO Pratham earlier this year, clearly indicate that learning levels of students in India are well below age-appropriate levels.
In response to this widespread learning crisis, the Government of India has allocated a great deal of funding to support classroom-based ICT programs that promote computer literacy and develop innovative curricula in electronic formats. Yet, there is little evidence to date that suggests a strong correlation between public investment in education and learning outcomes.
EI’s primary objective in implementing the Mindspark program was twinfold- to understand the roadblocks that have created such a scenario, and attain practical insights acquired from real-life implementations of EdTech-based solutions at a scale that imitates real situations.