Google Project

World over, governments and citizens alike seem to agree that good quality education is one of the most powerful factors that can improve the quality of life. While education in the past meant largely the 3R’s, the needs of the knowledge society call for critical thinking, learning how to learn and problem solving skills to be imparted to students. Improving an education system almost certainly requires a multi-pronged effort. Parallel to these efforts, however, it is necessary to establish some method to objectively measure the level of student learning! Further, this method of measuring student learning must be valid, periodic, external and largely accepted. While the national efforts in India have helped in increasing the percentage of children attending schools, there is a large effort needed to improve quality of student learning.

Currently, Educational Initiatives with Google Inc., USA has embarked on a first-of-its-kind, ambitious and complex exercise to measure learning levels of government school children across 21 Indian states. The project involves assessment of student achievement in classes 4, 6 and 8 and will cover about 21 states and thus about 15 languages. The study aims to establish student achievement levels and to provide insights into comparative performances of different states, to create cross-learning and remedial opportunities.