Have a great day.
REMARKS BY U.S. AMBASSADOR TO INDIA, NANCY J. POWELL
ALL CHILDREN READING GRAND CHALLENGE AWARDS
Thursday, November 29, 2012
The Oberoi Hotel
New Delhi
(AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here today to participate in the launch of five new activities to strengthen early grade reading across India. The five organizations that we are honoring here today – Pratham Education Foundation, PlanetRead, Pragya, Sesame Workshop Initiatives India, and the American Institutes for Research – are winners of the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, a highly competitive global competition supported by the United States through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, in partnership with the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and World Vision.
We are excited to have former Chairperson of the Children’s Film Society of India, renowned filmmaker, and actress Nandita Das with us today. We all know that Ms. Das wears many hats – she is an award-winning actor, director, playwright, activist, and loving mother. Over the years, she has actively supported important social issues including human rights, gender equality, children’s rights, and rights of the disabled. Her mother, Dr. Varsha Das, is an eminent writer of children’s books and the former Director for the National Book Trust. And so, it is hardly surprising that Ms. Das too has a love of books and reading, and we are delighted to have her with us today.
We are also honored to have with us Australian Deputy High Commissioner, Dr. Lachlan Strahan. The U.S. partnership with Australia is strong and close. Our two countries share a traditional friendship, similarities in culture and historical background, democratic values, common interests, and similar views on most major international questions. Among other collaborations and international commitments, our two government foreign assistance agencies – AusAID and USAID – are working together to help developing countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals, move toward sustainable and private sector-led growth, reap the benefits of technological change and innovation, and escape conflict and instability. Dr. Strahan, I welcome you and wish this partnership a great success.
It's also my pleasure to welcome Mr. Jomon Baby from World Vision India and Ms. Michelle Halse from World Vision Australia, without whose support the All Children Reading partnership would not be possible.
Finally, I am also so pleased to see such diversity among the guests here today – including officials and representatives from the Government of India, private sector companies, civil society groups, international organizations, and academia. It is an honor to welcome you all here this morning.
Since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, the world has seen significant strides in education through the efforts of education ministries and their partners around the world. Developing countries have moved nearly 28 million more children into classrooms over the last decade by abolishing school fees, building new facilities, and relentlessly ensuring that every child born anywhere has access to school.
In fact, today more than 90 percent of children in developing countries are enrolled in some form in primary school. But our job as government leaders and development professionals is to always ask the question: to what end? Our responsibility does not end when a girl first steps through the doors of a classroom. We have to make sure that when she steps out of the classroom, she has acquired the tools she needs to reach her full potential.
Unfortunately, a focus on universal access has come to some extent at the expense of children receiving a high quality education everywhere around the world. Even as we have seen these record numbers of children enter classrooms, we have seen the quality of learning sharply drop. Today, over 60 percent of all school children around the world – nearly 200 million girls and boys – are learning so little that they are struggling to read basic words.
The Government of India has taken several positive steps towards making basic education available to every child in the country through the Right to Education Act. According to the latest reports, today over 96.6 percent of children in India ages 6 to14 years old are enrolled in school. However, quality of education remains a concern and a major challenge across the entire education system. As recent international assessments and national surveys have concluded, learning levels in India are very low at the primary level. The 2011 Annual Status of Education Report, conducted by Pratham, revealed that basic reading levels have shown a marked decline in many states across North India, with the number of children in class five able to read at a class two level dropping from 54 percent in 2010 to 48 percent in 2011. It is critical to provide children not only with a classroom but also with the right kind of instruction and environment to teach them to read.
If the gap in reading ability is not addressed and learning levels are not improved at the primary level, particularly by grade 2, children continue to lag behind in all subjects as they move through the education system. The future economic potential of millions of children depends on their ability to learn to read, and read effectively, during their primary school years.
USAID fundamentally transformed its approach to education to help address this crisis in quality. We're not going to measure our success by the number of children in school; we're going to measure it by the number of children who can read by the time they leave primary school. We are not going to measure our success by the number of teachers we train in international conferences. We're going to measure it by the effectiveness they demonstrate in the classroom as measured by child outcomes.
This was the vision behind the new education strategy which USAID launched in February. As part of the new education strategy, USAID has developed early grade reading assessments designed to help teachers understand the specific needs of their students and their classrooms. These tools are already making a difference on the ground, changing the way entire nations approach education. By focusing on literacy and measuring impact, USAID’s new strategy will help improve the reading skills of 100 million children by 2015.
To meet this goal, in November of 2011, USAID, jointly with AusAID and World Vision, announced a competition entitled the “All Children Reading Competition” focusing on identifying and supporting game-changing innovations with the potential to dramatically improve reading skills among primary grade children with low literacy rates.
Five of the 32 awardees of this competition are implementing activities in India and we are privileged to have them here with us today. All are highly credible organizations with an impressive track record in education. Each of these organizations proposes innovative and scalable activities both in and outside the classroom that will produce concrete reading outcomes over the next two years. I am sure that all of you will benefit from hearing directly from them about the innovative activities they are supporting. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate them for their awards and hope that all of us together create an early grade reading movement in India. I look forward to hearing more about the results of their activities over the next two years.
The United States believes the most strategic impact it can make in basic education is to address early grade reading as an outcome that is critical to sustain and ensure learning for children. I am happy that, through the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, local organizations in India with innovative ideas are being encouraged to drive this effort.
Once again, I welcome you all and wish you the best for today’s discussions and in your endeavors in strengthening early grade reading in India.
Thank you.
