Assessing Quality of Education in Indian Schools on Six Key Performance Areas

Abstract

This paper describes initial findings from the first year of a five-year study on the Adhyayan Quality Standard (AQS) self-review and validation process for assessing the quality of education in Indian schools. The AQS is benchmarked on "what good looks like" internationally and contextualized for India. School performance is judged on six Key Performance Areas (KPAs) by a multiple stakeholder self-review team whose assessment is peer validated. Analysis of preliminary data is provided for all six KPAs from the first round of the AQS process in 34 schools in India. In depth analysis of the two KPAs on Teaching and Learning, and The Curriculum examines strengths and areas for improvement across schools from different geographic locations and differing management structures. Findings distinguish granular aspects of the schools' performances. Conclusions suggest that while a variety of topics are taught, greater attention is needed to: provide quality literacy and numeracy programs with appropriately challenging work for students, extend learning beyond the classroom, and develop the quality of relationships among students and between teachers and students. AQS and the process of school selfreview with external validationThere are several models for school self-review internationally. Ehren, Altrichter, McNamara, and O'Hara [4] and Faubert [5] indicate there is little research on effective use of data from school evaluation for improving the quality of education, and existing research focuses on education in countries from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The AQS was developed around six KPAs based on a variety of inspection regimes including Ofsted [6] and research reports (e.g., Barber and Mourshed [7]; Mourshed,

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“…Our gracious hosts were the Adhyayan Foundation which is a leadership initiative for quality schools which has now reached close to 300 schools, and more than 300,000 students across 27 states and 9 languages in India [15]. Adhyayan and its members have created and refined a selfreview process for schools using quality standards that have been agreed upon as "what good schools look like" across a number of key performance areas [16]. The Adhyayan Foundation is working on a quality schools diagnostic framework for inclusion, and we were in-vited to collaborate on the diagnostic tool.…”