Pathways to numeracy in rural India: policies, patterns and perceptions (P2N)

Start date: 1 November 2019
End date: 1 May 2021
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Global Challenges Research Fund
Value: £180,733
Primary investigator: Professor Caroline Dyer
External co-investigators: Dr Benjamin Alcott (University College London) Dr Suman Bhattacharjea (ASER Centre, Pratham Education Foundation)

P2N is funded under the ESRC’s NGO Secondary Data analysis programme and focuses on early years numeracy in India.
Provision of quality early learning is a central focus of worldwide efforts to improve educational outcomes, and is specifically targeted in SDG 4.2. P2N investigates how children's maths skills in the early primary grades reflect their early learning trajectories, and in what ways these trajectories, in turn, reflect curriculum, educator,and parental expectations regarding children's learning in the early years.

It adopts a mixed-methods approach that draws on existing qualitative and quantitative sources of secondary data supplemented by new semi-structured interviews with key policy stakeholders. Its case study sites are the states of Assam, Telengana and Rajasthan. P2N explores key policy and curricular expectations about the development of early numeracy, and includes a mapping analysis of textbooks; its assesses whether children in early years education (ages 4-8) are reaching expected numeracy levels, and how this varies by (a) child gender, (b) home conditions, and (c) ECE/ school provision; and it analyses the extent to which early numeracy depends upon (a) earlier markers of pre-numeracy and cognitive development, (b) child gender, (c) home conditions, and (d) ECE / school trajectories.

Impact

P2N develops an evidence base that supports effort and advocacy for high quality early years numeracy in India and is of particular interest to national and global policy actors and development partners working towards achievement of SDG 4.

Publications and outputs

Evidence Briefs produced by the project team in the pre-project phase supported by the ESRCs Impact Acceleration Account are available from: https://palnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019_PAL_Left-Behind-in-School_Evidence-Brief-_1-in-the-LeedsPAL-series.pdf.