What is happening inside classrooms in Indian secondary schools? A time on task study in Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

The Government of India launched 'Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan' (RMSA) in March 2009 which is along the lines of 'Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan' but with the focus on secondary education. The key objectives of the scheme are to enhance access to secondary education and to improve its quality. It envisages achieving universal access to secondary level education by 2017, and improving quality of education imparted at the secondary level by making all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms. The objective of this study was to document and analyse the current use of classroom time and identify good practices to improve classroom teaching in Mathematics and Language in secondary education in support of the implementation of the RMSA scheme. This study has been carried out as part of the World Bank’s support to RMSA with concurrence from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. This study builds upon an earlier study on time-on-task which was carried out by the World Bank for elementary schools in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in 2006-2007. That study was instrumental in providing valuable insight on time spent and the nature of teaching in elementary classrooms. The current study aims to achieve the same in secondary schools.