school score card
A Performance Monitoring System for Schools in India
M G Bala Prasanna[prasanna_mgb@yahoo.com], Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, India

Education is one of the most crucial components of human development and change for sustainable development. Increased and systematic use of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) is advocated for education sector for improving teaching/learning processes in educational institutions, educational planning and policy-making and monitoring of educational attainments. The Government is responsible for providing quality education to all the children in the age group of 5-14 years. Quality can be ensured only through transparent and qualitative assessment of schools on various indicators. Hence, there is a need to develop and deploy a tool like School Score Card to assess the performance of schools.

As a result of Education Policy 1968, there has been a considerable emphasis on expansion of educational facilities throughout the country. While these achievements are impressive by themselves; the problem of access, quality, quantity, utility and inadequacy of financial outlay accumulated over the years have now assumed serious proportions. In order to promote equity, it will be necessary to provide equal opportunity to all not only in access but also in the environment for achieving the target.

Andhra Pradesh, the state in southern India, will not be just a literate society, but a ‘Knowledge’ society, capable of meeting the present day challenges. It will be a state in which every person will be able to realise his/her full potential through access to educa-tional opportunities, regardless of the region to which he/she belongs.

To achieve this vision, the primary goal for the state will be to steadily increase overall literacy levels from the current 60.5% (2001) of the population to over 90% by 2010. To reach this target the state will have to significantly improve the literacy levels of groups with traditionally low levels - rural women, minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes. This will call for the strengthening, transforming and expanding of elementary schooling, including the revamping of their management, curricular and teaching methods.

To create knowledge databases at mandal (zonal) level on access to schools, infrastructure facilities, enrolment, retention, availability of teachers, their performance, their regularity, training, conduct of tests, performance of students, monitoring and supervision, participatory appraisal by school committees, supply of text books and other incentives is another objective. “School Score Card” is a front-end interface for children, parents, teachers and administrators to know the status of schools and their grading, that is, how they compare with other similarly placed schools in the district. This tool adopted colouring scheme to grade the schools, so that user can easily identify status of the school. Dark Green represents “Excellent”, Yellow represents “Good”, Orange represents “Average” and Red represents “Poor”. This application is an administrator’s tool to know status of school on various parameters.

Objective

School Score Card is a web-based application developed by Centre for Good Governance with the following objectives:

• To convert available data into information to assist planning and policy making;
• To assess status of schools based on indicators relating to enrollment and retention of students, infrastructure facilities, student-teacher ratios etc.;
• To assess the quality of each school in comparison with other similarly placed schools in a district.

Measuring the achievement levels using ‘School Score Card’

Score Card Indicators

In School Score Card basically 5 parameters are used to analyse the school performance.

1. Enrollment ratio
2. Pupil attendance
3. Performance of students
4. Availability of teachers
5. Infrastructure facilities

According to the enrollment of the students or number of students registered for the current academic year the school is given a different score in this section. The attendance of the students also plays a major role in giving a grade to the school. And the results or performance of the students is also considered as a prime factor in giving a grade a school. Performance of students is dependent on the availability of teacher and depending on the infrastructure provided by the school. Calculating all the above parameter an overall grade or score is given to a school. A Score Card is generated for a particular school by the department.

Grading of Schools using ‘School Score Card’-Methodology

1.Enrollment Ratio


2. Attendance School Level

Data required :

• Total enrollment
• Number of students with more than 50 % attendance in the month.
• Number of students with less than50 % attendance in the month.
• Number of students not attended at least one day in the month.

3. Performance

School Level: Data required
Total enrollment
Number of students with more than 80 %
Number of students with more than 60% and less than or equal to 80%
Number of students with more than 35 and less than or equal to 60% result
Number of less than 35% result

Grades for village, Mandal and District regarding schools are calculated as above mentioned in Enrollment

4. Teachers

School Level:
Data required:
Total no of teachers available
Total no of sanctioned posts

If all posts are filled up then Grade is given as “Excellent” otherwise grade is taken as “Poor”.Grades for village, mandal and district regarding schools are calculated as above mentioned.

5. Infrastructure

Data required: Classrooms, Toilets, Girls toilets, Drinking water, Electricity, Compound wall, Playground, Library

In this indicator 7 parameters are taken. One Weightage was given for having each facility and zero weightage was given for each not having facility.

A framework of transparency This School Score Card is a framework of transparency in school administration that enables the public policy-makers and administrators to easily know the status and performance of government schools by placing them in a comparative perspective. While the first phase is a ‘Web based application’ in which infrastructure and attendance details are updated once in a year, attendance and results details are updated periodically by various schools. In the second phase, the same can be linked with GIS, mapping of schools to villages through geographical representations.