Joyful learning? The effects of a school intervention on learning outcomes in Karnataka S.N. Rajesh Raj a , Kunal Sen c , Vinod B. Annigeri b, *, Arun K. Kulkarni b , D.R. Revankar b a Department of Economics, Sikkim University, Sikkim, India b Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Development Research, Dharwad, India c IDPM, University of Manchester, UK 1. Introduction India’s educational achievements in the recent past have had a mixed record (Kingdon, 2006). While there has been significant recent progress in school participation, especially among children of primary school age, drop-out rates remain stubbornly high, and India still is home to around 40% of the world’s illiterates. Perhaps the most disturbing feature of India’s educational landscape is the low levels of learning attainment of children in primary and secondary levels of schooling – for example, around half of the children in Standard III could not read a Standard I text in rural areas (ASER, 2010). Das and Zajonc (2010) find that 42% of children enrolled in standard IX in Rajasthan and 50% in Orissa fail to meet a basic international low benchmark of mathematical knowledge. Based on the data on test scores for these two states, they also find that the distribution of learning attainment in Indian school- children is highly skewed – while a small proportion of the school- going children are high performers and their learning attainment is comparable to the top performers in most OECD countries, there is a large proportion of the school-going population whose level of learning attainment is abysmal and among the worst for countries where similar data are available. Low learning attainment implies low cognitive skills, and since cognitive skills are a good predictor of how well the child may do in labour markets when she reaches adulthood, the low learning outcomes of a large proportion of school-children, especially in rural India, would act as an important constraint to these children obtaining well-paid jobs, especially as the demand for skilled workers increases relative to demand for unskilled workers with economic growth and in a rapidly modernizing economy as we see in India currently. The role of cognitive skills in individual earnings and economic growth is now well-recognized – as Hanushek and Woessmann (2008, p. 657) note, ‘‘individual earnings are systematically related to cognitive skills. The distribution of skills in society appears closely related to the distribution of income. And perhaps most importantly, economic growth is strongly affected by the skills of workers’’. Therefore, the low learning outcomes among India’s school-going population can act as a significant constraint to future economic growth, and can have an adverse effect on the distribution of income. Low educational attainment is particularly pronounced among children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds such as scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) as well as among girls. For example, using the PROBE-data-set from five North- Indian states, Dreze and Kingdon (2001) suggest that SC children have an ‘intrinsic disadvantage’ with a relatively lower chance of going to school even after having controlled for household wealth, parental education and motivation, and school quality. With International Journal of Educational Development 40 (2015) 183–195 A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Joyful learning Primary education Scheduled castes Scheduled tribes Learning skills Impact assessment A B S T R A C T We study the effect of a novel schooling intervention, known as Nali Kali, in the state of Karnataka in India targeted at government schools in rural areas, and especially at children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. We use a rich primary data-set of a sample of school-going children who were exposed to Nali Kali teaching by a set of teachers trained in Nali Kali methods by the state education department. We find support for the positive effects of the Nali Kali programme on learning outcomes. Our study provides suggestive evidence that schooling interventions of the government that are well- designed and that have the confidence of the teachers who implement these interventions can work in positively impacting on learning outcomes of poor rural children, including those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 836 2460453; fax: +91 836 2460464. E-mail address: vinodann@yahoo.com (V.B. Annigeri). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Educational Development jo ur n al ho m ep ag e: ww w.els evier .c om /lo cat e/ijed u d ev http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.09.003 0738-0593/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.