Odisha is one of the most backward States of India with high concentration of marginalised social groups; Scheduled Tribe (23%) and Scheduled Caste (17%). While there has been significant progress in enrolment of marginalised social groups, the proportion of students acquiring grade specific competency levels has declined.
The education system remained input driven with little evidence of a shift from traditional pedagogy, teacher delivering didactic presentations with little interaction or group work, and little consideration of ability group differences in classroom.
Recognising the paradox of more schooling and little learning, Government of Odisha with the support from DFID, implemented OGIP (2013-2016) to improve learning outcomes of the marginalised social group students of Grade IX-X. Under OGIP “Learning Hub” was piloted in two Tribal Districts of Odisha (Mayurbhanj and Koraput), based on hub-spoke model covering 102 schools (17 Hub and 85 Satellite schools) with focus on (i) Strengthening institutional capacity (ii) convergence between assessments and teaching (iii) culture of collaborative learning.
This paper draws upon learning assessment test conducted on five subjects to evaluate if the learning hub generates learning gains among Grade IX-X students. For the purpose of evaluation 70 schools in both treatment and control locations were randomly selected. The End-line assessment showed an average increase of 7-9 percentage points across project sample and around 6.6 percentage point improvement particularly for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students.
Findings of the paper indicate that scaling up of initiatives like Learning Hub can offer significant ways to improve learning outcome among marginalised groups. This would require institutional reform to recognise the broader range of capabilities and aspirations of students.
An important policy implication is that the capacity building of teacher for continuous formative assessments along with systematic management and tracking of learning through learning ladders will be crucial for sustainable development.
