Tales from an education bureaucrat

Today, I attended a panel discussion on education for the masses organized by IIM Calcutta. While a large portion of the discussion revolved around the usual platitudes, I was fascinated by the experiences shared by the articulate Mr. M - senior IAS officer and Principal Secretary of the Govt. of Maharashtra.

Mr. M's talk revolved around 3 major themes

1. The RTE has done more harm than good with respect to learning outcomes. It focuses on only strengthening the hardware, not the software
2. The education sector needs de-regulation. Competition is the only way to improve quality
3. The government just cannot do a good job of teaching in a country as large and complex as ours

During his time in the education ministry, he had felt that the government school teachers were extremely capable. The only thing they lacked - accountability. He felt that one way of improving accountability was frequent assessment and so, he decided to pilot a fortnightly baseline test in government schools (run by corporations and zilla parishads) to measure learning outcomes. 

To begin with, he called a meeting of his block level education officers and asked them to test every single student in select schools on a 20 mark baseline test designed by experts to test literacy in math and language. As bogus reporting is very common in the education sector, he warned the officers to report the data as-is. He also assured them that no action would be taken - no matter what the results were. During the first instance of the testing, the average literacy rate came out to be a mind-boggling 90%! Suspecting rampant bogus reporting, he sent out several verification officers to re-test a few students and compare their scores. His hunch was correct.

So he once again called together the block officers and warned them that anyone caught cheating would be suspended with immediate effect. The baseline test was administered once again. This time, only 18% of students passed as literate (scoring greater than 15/20 on the test). The remaining 82% were either illiterate or semi-literate.

Mr. M diligently continued to administer a variant of this test every fortnight and observed its impact on key metrics. Attendance (of both students and teachers) increased dramatically. Dropouts decreased. And test scores improved. In just 1.5 years after launching this rigorous assessment project, over 90% of the 600,000 students under the scheme passed the test as literate.

Buoyed by the success of this initiative, Mr. M tried to roll it out across all government schools in the state. But he faced intense lobbying from teachers. The teachers union challenged the order in court as being discriminatory - if government school students were to take the test, even private schools should be forced to implement it. The union won the case and a stay order was issued against the initiative on the grounds of it being unconstitutional.

After the panel discussion, I caught up with Mr. M over chai. He seemed like an earnest, well-meaning and exceptionally sharp man open to trying new ideas. He once again reiterated the fact that government should de-regulate education and encourage competition. But his years in the bureaucracy seemed to have dulled his optimism. He said that education doesn't seem high on the agenda of any government. So unless there is sustained lobbying led by powerful groups outside the political ecosystem, it is unlikely that this will happen in the near future.

PS: I left the event with mixed feelings. I was encouraged (as I have been on several occasions in the past) by the quality and intent of our IAS officers. But I also felt a sense of helplessness and frustration at where our conversation ended. When will we see such issues being debated on the floor of the Parliament, and not only by a motley group of 20-people at the posh Taj Vivanta?

Anil Kumble - Indian Cricket's MVP

Last month, I was at an event at the Mumbai Literary Fest where Ramachandra Guha made 2 strong (and mildly controversial) assertions

1. Anil Kumble won India more matches than Sachin Tendulkar
2. Anil Kumble would have made a better captain than Sourav Ganguly

He put this down to cricket’s caste system whereby bowlers are generally less celebrated than batsmen. While Guha’s statement drew hushed whispers from Sachin’s home audience, I was quite happy with this endorsement of my childhood hero. Growing up, there was just something about Jumbo that drew me to pick this Sportstar poster (left image) to adorn my bedroom wall over the plethora of great Indian batsmen. 

Maybe it was because he came from my home state, Karnataka. Maybe it was because he held a degree in Mechanical Engineering from one of Karnataka’s best engineering colleges, RVCE. Maybe it was because he acted and bowled like a tear-away fast bowler (something Indian cricket fans sorely missed) – glaring at the batsmen and wiping out tails. Maybe it was because he once bowled with a broken jaw.

While the second assertion made above is tougher to verify, I decided to spend some time digging through the data to verify the first assertion.

Methodology

I looked at all of India’s test victories in the period 1993-2008 in which both Sachin and Kumble played. For each game, I identified the top 3 batsmen and top 3 bowlers in the team who contributed to the victory. For rank-ordering the batsmen, I simply looked at the total number of runs scored in the game (first + second innings). For rank-ordering the bowlers, I assigned 3 points for each top order wicket, 2 points for each wicket-keeper’s/all-rounder’s wicket and 1 point for each tail-ender’s wicket.

I then calculated a cumulative score to assess each player’s value by assigning 3 points for games in which they were the best batsman/bowler, 2 points for games in which they were second-best and 1 point for games in which they were third-best. The assumption made for this scoring system is that scoring runs and taking wickets are both equally critical to success in test cricket (hence the same scale). While one could argue that the 3-2-1 scale itself is arbitrary (i.e the relative importance of a player’s performance is not always linear), I believe it is at least indicative of the importance of a player to the team.

Results

Sachin and Kumble played together in 40 Indian victories – 28 at home and 12 away. Their contribution to the team in these victories is given in the tables below. As per my cumulative score scale, Kumble beats Sachin 90 to 50. Surprisingly, Kumble’s contribution in Away wins is also superior. 

I also did the same analyses for Sachin, Dravid and Kumble. They played together in 29 Test wins. Shockingly, Kumble’s contribution (63) equals that of Sachin and Dravid combined (64)!

I am convinced that Anil Kumble was India’s MVP in the ‘90s and ‘00s. This is not to say that Kumble was a greater player than Sachin. Sachin was the world’s best batsman in his time and would have been the first to be picked in any World XI. Kumble would probably not even make it to a World XI above Warne and Murali.

However, in a country gifted with abundant batting riches but a paucity of quality bowlers, our test team misses King Kumble more than we miss God Sachin. And it is time we recognize his contribution to Indian cricket. 

PS: One could argue that batsmen only get one chance for a mistake while bowlers can make several leading to greater variability in performance, but maybe that only goes to reinforce the importance of good bowlers in tests. Furthermore, one could argue that India’s poor bowling resources gave Kumble more opportunities to pick up wickets. But again, that only reinforces how critical he was to our success.

PPS: In a future blogpost, I will analyse drawn games in which Sachin performed well, but India failed to close out the win due to a poor performance by Kumble and the bowlers.

Backup data and analysis: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6d369yzydqz0va/Sachin%20vs%20Kumble%20vs%20Dravid.xlsx?dl=0