School rankings have become de
rigueur in India over the last few years, goading the entire K-12 private
school industry into some sort of frenzied dance. With each passing year, not just the numbers
of agencies conducting the national school rankings increases, but the number
of categories also increase, reducing the entire exercise to a farce.
Why do schools fall for it? Well,
it makes an authentic story and provides bragging rights. Perhaps it also means
increased enrolments. But if the media blitzkrieg that follows is any
indication, it points to substantial commercial value. It is easy then to set
aside details such as metrics of evaluation, categories of assessment and
parameters of grading. In a win- win situation no one is complaining.
Most countries have one or may be
two well respected rankings which are used as a benchmark. For e.g. in the UK,
you may point to TES - Times Educational
Supplement for the grammars and private schools and the School League
Tables for the primaries published by the DfE. Both these ratings use a strict
code of evaluation, building on the rigor of evaluation each year, making it
highly aspirational for schools. In India, the ASER report evaluates state run
govt schools, and has maintained its leadership position because of its
neutrality and its ability to mirror the on ground reality.
Of the multiple rankings and
awards that have been set up by self-styled education agencies, not one of them
is about teachers. So the ‘Pearson Excellence in Teaching Awards’ came as a
surprise. For categories, they had teaching of STEM, English language and
Social Studies. Applicants had to respond to questions such as, “What
innovative methods do I use for teaching my subject?” In addition they were also
asked to provide evidence of their ongoing professional development,
publications and research work in the last 4 years. Entries were segregated as
private and govt schools.
The great surprise however was a separate
category for sports and arts teachers. As the jury, we reviewed some incredible
applications and guiltily realized how little recognition is given to these subjects
and their teachers.
Another oddity that became
evident was that there was not a single entry for ‘excellence in teaching’ from
any of the so called ‘top ranked’ schools and all entries were
self-nominations, there were no nominations made by schools. This could only
mean two things; none of the top ranked schools believed they had excellent
teachers; or; the metrics of evaluation used to rank these
schools did not have ‘excellence in teaching’ as a necessary competence for
being ranked a top school.
The incongruity of the rankings is
telling. And one may dismiss it citing
the demand supply excuse. But I want to pin my hopes on the emergence of at
least one well-defined assessment on ‘excellence in teaching’ which will be a
true justification for the school's ranking. The Pearson awards may not be TES, but
it is a strong and welcome start.
