YeSSE 2023

This part of the report takes up a few contemporary themes in school education. In the past edition, we had taken up school education after the pandemic, early childhood education, and NEP implementation in the initial years.

This year’s themes cover curriculum and pedagogy, learning poverty, teachers, and focussed schools.

The first chapter, on curriculum and pedagogy, addresses a key aspect — what and how our students are taught. This lies at the core of education.

The second chapter (Learning poverty) analyses one of the most important parameters in education – learning poverty that combines the result of out-of-school children with those in school who do not acquire grade-appropriate learning or even Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) skills. This single factor represents a lot that is not right about school education. Overall, it brings out shortcomings of parameters, such as enrolment that focusses on putting children in schools. Unless we can reduce learning poverty, education will fail to achieve its potential in changing lives and nation-building.

It’s important to put teachers at the centre of education for delivering quality. This is covered in chapter 3.

In the last chapter, we discuss focussed schools of two types – large viable schools and schools for meritorious students.

These chapters in part one of this report will complement the numbers, figures, and trends at the States and Union Territory levels in part two of the report.