Bridging Learning Gaps is Operationally Complex, Says Azim Premji University CEO Anurag Behar

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Hi Anurag, thank you for joining me. So, we're going to talk about the efforts that Azim Premji University and Foundation put in in the context of addressing learning loss because of pandemic-induced school closures. Now, we all know that schools shut down across the country, urban India, rural India, and a lot of children faced challenges in getting back to normal life, so to speak.

And some of the studies that we've seen subsequently, including from ACER, show that there was a learning loss. But your own interventions, however, seem to suggest that if you were to bring in an accelerated intervention at student level, teacher level, curriculum level, you can actually correct this loss. So, the idea of this conversation is to try and understand how this happened and what were the tools you used, so to speak.

So, maybe you could first tell me about how you decided to approach this problem and how you actually started about building the approach or the response to this.

Yeah, thanks, Govind. So, you know, before we get on to that, let's just characterise what are we talking about. The schools during the COVID period were roughly, you know, I can't say they were shut, but they were sort of disrupted for about two years, from, let's say, March of 2020 to about December 2021 or Jan 2022. Now, this disturbance or this disruption of schools, and a large part of that, they were actually just shut. It led to two kinds of, let's say, losses of learning, two kinds of losses of learning.

One kind of loss of learning is that during that period, let's say a child was in grade three, or grade four, or grade five, or whatever. During that period, she's supposed to learn something. And since the classes are not happening, she's not learning.

So that's one kind of loss of learning. The other kind of loss of learning is that if children are not going to school for such a long time, and let's remember that we're talking about, you know, a very large number of children of the country who have very little home support for learning. So these are not kids from upper middle class homes who have books and material.

Very many of these kids are parents who may not have gone to school. So that's what we're talking about. So one kind of loss of learning is stuff that they did not learn because classes didn't happen.

The other kind of loss of learning is that because they did not go to school for such a long time, or going to school was disrupted, they forgot what they had learned. And it's not a, it's not an unknown phenomena.

In fact, across schooling, the loss, the phenomenon of summer loss, as it's called, which is during the summer break, is well known. But this is like, you know, a loss at a huge, huge case. Those are two kinds of losses of learning.

Now, during that two year period, there were kind of interventions that we did, you know, various governments did, other organisations did, as to how does one limit that, or how does one reduce that loss of learning, so to say, and I'll not get into that. Let's just get back to what you're taught, which is that, how then do you recover that lost learning?

Now, let's take that characterisation one level deeper. So what's happening here is that you had a kid who had just entered grade three, you know, grade three in, let's say, April of 2020. And in April 2021, she went into grade four.

By the time you hit April 22, she's in grade five. Right. Now, when she was in grade three, she let's assume she had reasonable, she had built some degree of what is called foundation literacy and numeracy, basic language and basic math.

But because of the disruption, not only did she not learn what was supposed to be happening in grade three, but she started forgetting how to read how to do basic math. There's a variation around this, you know, some kids will forget less, some kids will forget more, all that is there. So I'm just talking about the average.

So the first important thing when the schools opened was to actually have a method by which when you enter a classroom, whether it's grade five, you should be able to assess what is it that the children know. You can't start from the grade five syllabus, you actually because in the same class, let's assume class five, with 30 kids, you know, 15 kids have forgotten a lot, five have forgotten less, you know, three have not forgotten at all. Now, what are you going to do?

So the first most important thing is to be able to have, let's call it an assessment method by you're able to assess what is the learning, what is the learning that has been retained, and therefore, by implication, what is lost by the kids in the class and knowing fully well that kids have sort of lost less or more depending on the individual child. So now you have a sort of a group of kids lost a lot more kids in grade five, we've just forgotten altogether to read and to do math. On the other hand, kids who can sort of do a little bit here and there.

Now, once you've done that, now, just remember the same class. So you have the same class, the same room, the same teacher.

So just for the sake of the explanation, let's just divide these kids into three groups. In the class of 13, grade five, let's say 15 to 17 kids were completely forgotten how to read how to write how to do basic math. You another five, seven kids who remember somewhat another five, who sort of are reasonably good.

What I'm referring to is curriculum, let's sort of break it down, which is, then the then the teacher needs to have, let's say material material, meaning worksheets, and some stuff, which actually starts from the very basics for these kids, the kids who have just completely forgotten, you're, in fact, teaching them pretty much at grade one level. So for the sake of description, you have material, reading stuff, or basic letter, or, you know, sentence, simple sentences, stuff on which they can write, which is really great one kind of stuff. For the second group, which is somewhat forgotten, remembering of it, you have something which is, let's say, a grade two or grade, you know, and then you have others who sort of remember most of it.

That's perhaps the simplest way to understand and it's not from a conceptual perspective, it's not a complicated thing. Because what's happening is that you have a grade five, where essentially, you have kids who are at grade one, grade two, grade three, grade four. So conceptually, you're not doing something dramatically new.

It's just that you are assessing where those kids stand. And then you're able to get the material in, which is relevant for that level of learning. So conceptually, it's not complicated.

It's operationally very hard. Operationally is very hard because just there are 30 kids and how do you deal with it, you know, because they're all at completely different levels of learning. So that really was the key issue.

How do you operationally tackle that? And therefore, that requires, you know, that requires training the teacher adequately, resourcing the teacher adequately. And most importantly, the government system, and because I'm referring mostly to public schools, the government system, instructing the teacher that is the right method to do it, you know, I mean, the most extreme cases could have been, and unfortunately did happen in certain states, is that, you know, you just ignore the entire loss of learning and just start from grade five syllabus, right?

So yeah, so conceptually, not very hard, but operationally very complex.

And we are talking about six and a half million children from what I can see. And I'll come to that in a second. But what is the methodology or method that you use to first assess where the child stands today? Is it a, I mean, is it just one test which tells you that? Or is it something more comprehensive?

So Govind, that six and a half million children that you're referring to is related to the schools that we were working with. Okay. But the same situation is there across all the schools in the country.

So we are talking about 200 million or 240 million children, right? So that's just stuff that we were working with, right?

Again, conceptually, the assessment tool is not complicated. It's exactly what you said, that if you have an assessment tool, and it's like a test paper, which is very graded. So normally, if you're a grade five test paper, you're assessing the child at grade five or some competency was just slightly below grade five. But here you have a test paper, and I'm just calling it a test paper, you know, just for the sake of simplicity. Here you have a test paper, which essentially has some questions, which are at grade five level, some at grade four, grade three, grade two, grade one.

So depending on what the child is able to answer, then you are able to understand where she is. I mean, let me give you an example. It's like saying, you will have a full paragraph of text. And you will have the question will be, can you please read this paragraph, understand and rewrite it in your own words? That's grade four kind of competency, grade three, grade four kind of competency. Then you will have some set of questions, which are like saying, can you just read the sentence and say, what is the name of the father?

Can you just write that? You know, you can see that it's grade two level. So again, conceptually, it's not something complicated.

Operationally, to be able to develop that, to be able to administer that to each child, then to be able to draw the conclusions from that. And on that basis, regroup the children, and then manage the children continually. And for quite a period of time, that is what is really hard.

So take us through that. So as you are now imparting essentially two levels of learning, one is to catch up. And the second is really what you should be learning right now. So let's say it's class four, or class five, as the case may be. How does that work in terms of the child's own participation, the teacher's participation, the time spent with them? Is it more time? Is it accelerated time? Is it an intense time?

So one more thing, it's not two levels of learning, it's multiple levels. I mean, okay, so I mean, let's say if you make it concrete, I mean, if I were to look at grade four or grade five, right, there will be at least three or four different levels, kids in three or four different kinds of groups, a very small percentage, where you can more or less be at the grade, more or less be at the grade, a significant percent, which is significantly behind, let's say, a year behind, or a year and a half behind another group, which is like two years behind another group, which is sort of beginning.

I should have pointed out earlier, this problem is particularly grave in the primary grades, particularly grave in primary grades, because and you know, there is an acute crisis of foundational literacy and numeracy as it is. So we should, for a moment, keep that aside. But if you're in grade seven, and you can sort of, you know, if your imagination will just take you there, if you're in grade seven, in grade seven, if you have understood, I mean, if you have literacy and numeracy, that you're not going to forget, because you've done it for many, many years now, right?

In grade seven, what's happening is, you have to say, look, you know, oh, my God, in grade seven, you're going to learn about light and about heat and about something. Let's not learn about light and heat altogether.

Let's do heat next year. It's that kind of reformulation in some senses. So I'm, I know my friends in education will castigate me for that, because I'm oversimplifying it a bit.

But nevertheless, you know, the issues in middle, which is six to eight and beyond are relatively less, the greater complication was in the in the primary grades.

So now let's come back to your question, which is that. So you identify these kids, now you group those kids, you also have what I was calling learning material, you know, just let's just call them worksheets or books or stuff, which is relevant for that, that that that level of learning for those kids, that's something that you have, it's just very hard, there's no way around it.

It's very, very hard. So you put them in different groups, the kids who are most behind clearly need a lot more attention.

And then, I mean, let's say, if, for example, I will talk about one strategy, one simple strategy was, do not think of your school. And let's think of a primary school, grade one to grade five, do not think of your school is organised around grades. Don't do that.

Because you have some kids in grade five, who just don't know how to read and write and do base math, some exactly in the similar level in grade four, some exactly in the similar grade, grade three, and pretty much everybody in grade one is like that. It's better to group them together, instead of saying, I'll group grade five together.

So that's a that's a critical operational strategy. Because then what's happening is you're reconfigured your school, not around grades, but around what the children actually know. And from where you have to teach them, right, that is a very critical strategy.

So you have the material, you regroup the kids, and very clearly the kids who are most behind, right, they need the most attention. And even within that, you know, again, it's perhaps obvious, but the kids who are in grade one and don't know how to read and write and do math, they have a much longer sort of possibility, they've got the next two, three years, but the grade five kids who don't know how to read, write, and who don't know how to do math, because they've forgotten it, they need the most amount of attention. So yeah, so assess, identify, group, but don't group in grades, regroup them according to what really they understand what they know, administer, and then use your material, and you're to stay with it.

And clearly, those who are falling most behind need the most attention.

As you went along, were you testing to see whether this strategy was working at all? And, and then course correcting, if so, or, or were you so sure? I mean, were you sure that this will work? And therefore, you did not really have to do much course correction subsequently.

So Govind, I mean, it seems as I'm just repeating that particular line, you know, educational perspective from a conceptual perspective, what I'm saying is nothing new, nothing dramatic, no great insight, nothing. I mean, it's just the basic thing, right, that you go into any class, any group of children, you must teach the child from where the child is.

In fact, one of the big problems in our schooling system is that we tend to assume that any class forget about the pandemic shutdown and all, any class, all children are knowing exactly the same thing. So you start, you start teaching them same thing exactly. So it's the basics of education that you must teach children from where they are.

So therefore, conceptually, we are not talking about anything new. We know this is exactly what works in this unfortunate circumstance of after shutdown, and also in normal classrooms. It's the operational part that's hard.

And when I say operational part, it's hard is the teacher handling such classes or the school handling such classes, which are reconfigured like this is very hard. The pressure is very hard, because just think of it, which is that if you have a grade five kid and the kid doesn't know how to read and write and do math, not for any fault of hers, you're saying, look, I will do all that stuff and catch up on grade five before she goes out, right into grade six.

So that pressure is very hard. In fact, the best of states that I have, I came across and I, you know, I will say that when we are talking about our work, our work is entirely in collaboration with state governments. So to whatever extent we were successful, we is not Azim Premiji Foundation alone.

It is a state system. Some of the states did magnificently well, right? So some of the states did a really good job of saying, look, we will focus on recovering the lost learning, because it makes no sense if you've not recovered the lost learning.

I mean, let's say a kid doesn't know how to read and write and do basic math. And you say, okay, fine, we'll, you know, we'll go back to the grade five book. Makes no sense at all.

So some states were clear. They said, look, we will focus on recovering lost learning, and let's recover it to some reasonable level with every child. And only then do we expect to return back to the syllabus for grade five or whichever grade we're talking about, right?

Unfortunately, some states didn't do that. You know, some states sort of, you know, tended to mostly ignore the situation. And they said, look, irrespective of where the kids are, we will just return back to the CS syllabus. So you can imagine the complication and the irrationality of it.

So working with the teachers, because obviously, they've played a critical role in this, and their own adjustment to this process. Obviously, it was difficult. But can you tell us some of the operational challenges that you faced? Or, and how did it become smoother? Because I'm assuming it did over a period of time.

Yeah, I think, let me start from where I was, ended the last response, which is that it became smoothest when the school education system in that particular state was unambiguous about its communication, absolutely unambiguous about its communication and instruction that let us focus on recovering lost learning, leave the current year syllabus aside. I think, in systems, if you have clarity of direction, that helps a lot. And because if you have the clarity of direction, you know, from the teacher and the principal and the block education officer, everybody is aligned behind that.

So I think that clarity of direction and alignment was very important. The second thing that helped was just good material because again, if I take you back to that situation, where you have, where you have a group of 15, 17, 20 kids, some of them are six year old, and some of them are 10 year old, but they're learning the same thing, right? Now, do you have the material which is graded and then can take the 10 year old quit quickly, you know, back to relatively closer to her learning or her grade standards.

So did you have really have good material? I think that was the other thing that helped. Lastly, training. I mean, teacher training and support was very important. Because if teachers are not used to handling groups of this kind, mixed groups of this kind, then how are they going to handle it? And therefore the training and also, when one says training, it becomes sort of mysterious.

Oh, what is this stuff that you're training them on? It's very often, not anything mysterious, it's just often giving them the, shall we say the confidence and the comfort that address each child, try and address each child and her learning needs, you know, take it easy, take it easy. Because if you do things at the pace at which the child is really learning, then things will be easier later.

And if you do it rapidly in the desire to complete syllabus or to get on with it, you're going to create further problems for yourself. So the training is also not some mysterious stuff. It's just how do you handle this kind of a situation is more of what it was.

So, from your vantage point, did you have like a monitoring room or something which was tracking various metrics from a teacher? And what teachers were doing or where they were? Because clearly, you work with many, many schools and teachers as well, and across multiple states and districts and villages and towns within that.

Monitoring room sounds very fancy. So there was no monitoring room as such. It's just a constant process. You know, I mean, if you're doing this all the time, and again, let me point it out. It's not our effort. I mean, we working with the state systems, the state systems and people fully involved.

And we are continually, let's say, assessing how it's going, right? And again, how it's going, because operationally, you need to keep tweaking it. Operationally, you need to keep tweaking it.

So you're continually involved, continually engaged, continually assessing where things are going at somebody at the classroom level. Where is it going? What is the teacher needing support of? Is the material sufficient? Right? And so on and so forth. Yeah. It's just an operationally very hard thing.

Yeah. And what about parents? Did you face any, I mean, was there resistance? Was there active participation or encouragement?

No, there was no resistance at all. I mean, there's absolutely no resistance. I think, you know, I mean, pretty much all parents were familiar with the problems that the COVID pandemic had posed for the children's education.

So I think they were, and I can't remember even one incident where we had any kind of, I mean, again, the school system had any kind of a problem with the parents. In fact, I could think of the reverse, where I do remember a few incidents where parents were very upset as what is this you guys are doing? Two years have been shut down.

Now my kid comes and doesn't know this and you're, you know, not paying adequate attention. So it is exactly the reverse. I don't can't remember a single incident.

Great. So if we were to now look at how this phased out, so the programme started in 22 Jan and it closed in 23-24, the academic year of 23-24, which is last year. Now at that point, did you feel that at least in the sample set that you're working with, you had reached a level of let's say equilibrium? And if so, what was that level like even for the way you would have tested it?

Yeah. So I think, I think one thing that let's sort of put a marker on here is that even before the pandemic, without school shutdowns, etc, we are familiar that too many of our children or too large a proportion of our children in grade five or grade six or grade four, can't read, write well, or as you would expect them to do in that grade. We know that.

So now when you cut to 23 or 24. One basic thing is, I mean, you can't expect that we have compensated for decades of, you know, issues. That's not happening.

But are you at least back? I mean, first of all, the kids who lost the learning, specific kids, right? I mean, the specific loss of learning that kids have, have you recovered that?

I mean, that's question one, forget about some national average, right? So this child forgot all this, should have known all this, is she back? That's one kind of a thing.

And that's what we really were focused on. And I think in, you know, there's a very wide variation, very wide variation. But the fact is that wherever state systems did this kind of an approach, what I've described to you, and wherever good ground level support was available to state systems in many places by our own organisation, by some other organisations in other places, the recovery of learning was dramatically higher.

I mean, the last study that we did was it was three times higher. So that's not a small thing, right? I mean, three times higher.

So I mean, let's say, if you're recovering 10% points, in places where you have no ground level support. In other places, we recovered 30% points where the ground level support was there. And of course, both have to go together, the state system must, you know, indicate instruct to follow this approach that I was talking about.

Right. And there is adequate ground level support. So in those cases, the recovery was significantly, significantly higher. I don't think that we, I mean, we are now in 2025. So it's very hard to sort of separate what's going on, what is the effect of what, you know, after such a long time.

But anecdotally, we don't, our assessment is that we have not recovered all the learning, right? I don't, we don't think so. But it's very hard.

I mean, these effects are so complex, right? It's very hard to sort of attribute that this was the lost learning because of the pandemic, which has now not been recovered, very difficult to do that. But our, and I mean, the reality is that we'll be working very closely with a lakh teachers every month.

That means, roughly a lakh classrooms every month. So we have a reasonable, I mean, even when I'm saying it's anecdotal, it's a very large number of anecdotes. And, you know, I don't want to paint a picture that good work has not happened, or significant recovery is not, it has happened, it's happened.

But I mean, have we recovered everything? I would think not.

Yeah, and I think that comes to the, brings us to the point about the marker that you talked about. And if I can spend a little time on that, because that is the larger issue in a way that we are, I mean, there is a headwind problem here, which is that children are, even without a pandemic induced closure, we're already suffering from, let's say, some kind of lost learning for various reasons. And that continues to be the problem even today as we are.

So my larger question is, if this approach of really reconfiguring and recalibrating the very classroom in as you did in these two years, with along with the state governments who are obviously very willing and perhaps leading it, worked at that point, is that something that can be done? And is there something in this which can be used as a template for, you know, or even the largest sort of education gap challenge that we face today, whether it's primary or pre-primary?

Govind, you are absolutely right. You're absolutely right, which is that, and you know, this is the, this is a phrase that one should never be using. But you won't look for silver linings out of all this, all the tragedies and the problems that came in the wake of the pandemic.

It's not a silver lining, but it's something that should give us confidence that we know how to do it. We know how to do it. And when I say we know how to do it, it's not just technical knowledge, it's the operational capacity of our state systems that we can actually do it.

So we put our mind to it, put our hearts to it, we go behind it, it can work, it works, it will work, right? And it's not something deeply mysterious, this matter of, you know, making sure that almost all our children gain foundational literacy and numeracy. It's not some very mysterious stuff.

We have to, we understand the methods, our systems have the capacities, we just need to energise them and set them in a certain direction. And I also think, you know, I must also mention, this experience, strangely enough, this experience has given, I would think, confidence to teachers as well. You know, because a lot of the stuff that was talked about earlier was in some senses an abstraction.

But today, they've seen that, you know, they've gone through so much. And they've somehow been able to recover, you know, so much that was lost. So, you know, the sort of disposition is very different, that they think they, a huge number of teachers think that they can actually do it, because they've done it now.

So, is there any other lessons here than in the very approach to the way students are taught? So, assuming, let's say, if we again, go by some of these ESSER reports, and of course, there are, which you pointed out right in the beginning, in the same class of, let's say, 20, there's no homogeneity in terms of learning or retention, because there would be 10, who are back, maybe five who are ahead, and five who are somewhere where they should be. So, if this is the prevalent situation, then does that mean that, particularly at primary level, we should reconfigure the way we teach? Or should these things only be interventions as and when required, like we had during COVID?

So, Gopin, we should reconfigure the way we teach, learn, etc. And, you know, again, this is not something that educationists have not been aware of, or people, education is a too grand a word again, you know. So, people involved in education, teachers have not been aware of, or they've not been wanting, or our policies have also not been wanting, right?

I mean, we've been saying this stuff for a long time, right? Very long time. So, we know, we've not done it adequately.

What this episode demonstrates is that what we've known should be done, should actually be done, and we can do it. And so, we just go ahead and do it.

Right. So, if, just to come back to that ACER study, which is the latest one, and, you know, I'll just pick a couple of points. So, it said that the proportion of standard five children who could do basic numerical division, that's three digits by one digit had declined from about 28% in 18 to 25.6 in 22. And that's obviously through the COVID period, but it increased to about 31% in 24, which was higher than what it was in 2014. Now, I don't know. And this, this is, of course, in the case of maths. Now, does this extrapolate elsewhere? Is this a good figure? And how does this apply to the work that you're doing?

Okay. So, I was saying, I was saying that I'm unfamiliar with the details of the, this year's ACER report. Sure. I think the, the thing is that these are all marginal differences that we are seeing, right? I mean, between 19 and 24 or whatever. It doesn't, what it doesn't take away is that we have a fundamental and huge learning crisis.

You know, I mean, whether it is 21%, I forget the numbers, 21% or 23%. It's a huge learning crisis that we are facing, absolutely huge learning crisis that we're facing. And I mean, that, to go back to your earlier question, we actually know how to address it.

We need to put our mind behind getting that done. The national education policy, I think you're familiar, it takes on the foundational literacy and numeracy challenge as the first key challenge, right? And unfortunately, when NEP 2020 was, you know, it was sort of approved, you immediately had COVID, immediately had COVID.

But I think the directions, the push that's there for foundational literacy and numeracy, which is absolutely desperately needed in NEP 2020, it's there. What it tells us, we can make it happen, right? So I won't, you know, I won't go to, you know, a point study between 19 and 20 and 23 and 24 and take any great heart from it. It is that we are still way behind where our children should be, in all grades, actually.

Right. Anurag, you travel a lot, including to many of the schools that you work with across the country. So what's, I mean, I'm sure you come across encouraging stories, heartwarming, you know, instances of people who are obviously fighting and doing something despite all the other challenges. Anything that comes to your mind from your recent, most recent travels?

Yeah, so I was in a school, and I mean, like, yeah, a few weeks ago, I was in a school, and I'm, so I went to the school, and there were three classes. There was no teacher, the teacher, but all the kids, all the kids, they were, you know, bent down over their notebooks, and they're writing stuff. And, and, you know, I spent a bit of time in the grade in grade four.

And, you know, I, what are you doing? I asked, and they were basically doing, they were doing math, but combined with language. So it's like saying, it's like a, you know, oh, you know, there were 47 monkeys, and the 47 monkeys, somebody threw a stone and 15 went away, right?

And if 15 went away, and 20 came in, and they wanted to eat bananas, and they had, you know, 45 bananas, how many bananas, that's, now what's happening there is that you are actually not just doing math, but you're doing language, right? Now, the remarkable thing was, the absolutely remarkable thing was that all these kids, or all may be too strong, but most of the kids were able to do this. And that is true of grade four, grade five, and grade three, all these, all these grades.

And the teacher is not there. Right? And the teacher has been sent for some election duty somewhere.

And so it is incredible, absolutely incredible. So I was there for a bit, and then the teacher came back. And one did not need any further demonstration of what I heard from my colleagues later, that this man was just incredible.

Through the COVID period, I mean, through the COVID period, he would actually go from mohalla to mohalla, you know, collecting the kids in open, and actually teaching them. So in some senses, he did his best to make sure that even during the school disruption, school closure, the children continue to learn. And then, of course, subsequently, when the when the schools sort of opened up, he did everything that we were talking about.

And he did just marvellously well, right? But this, I mean, in this kind of a classroom would any teacher anywhere will be proud of. But remember, this is a government school.

Yeah, I'm just saying that, remember, it's a government primary school, in, you know, in some, I don't want to name the state, but some place where you issue from the nearest airport, you learn to drive eight hours to get to that place, seven, eight hours to get to the place. And that's the kind of place I'm talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're saying that these students or children were self driven to do their homework or their studies, despite the fact that there was no teacher present in that classroom for a fairly substantial period of time.

Correct, correct. And the self drive with kids of that, that that age, and, you know, sitting quietly in a classroom quietly, meaning they were having fun. It's not because, you know, all those 60 odd kids were like that.

It's because the teacher has developed the school culture, the classroom culture, develop the interest and keenness of the students in that manner. So it's not just the not just the way the kids have learned math and language, which is truly to the credit of the teacher. But even more so, how is it that he has developed this culture in the classroom, where even when he's away for, you know, three hours, these kids are just focused on doing that. It's a, it's extraordinary, extraordinary education, education in its broadest sense, you know, not merely writing and reading and math.

Anurag, that's a great anecdote and story to end our conversation on. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you, Govind. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.