Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct/most appropriate options:

When the children of the poor cannot read and write, when they do not play and dance in school, can the poor speak and demand change? We gather data on enrolments, retention, learning, infrastructure, and teacher training to understand the state of our public school system. But is data enough to inspire transformative change?

The case of Rajasthan is intriguing. Media writings in recent years have variously highlighted the marked fall or improvement in learning outcomes, depending on the dataset being referred to — the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) which is led by the non-governmental organization, Pratham, or the National Achievement Survey (NAS) which is led by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). According to ASER 2019 data, Rajasthan was among the bottom five States in learning levels, while in NAS 2017, Rajasthan was among the top performers. Valid as this debate is, it has limited resonance for the ultimate end-user of a government school, i.e. the parent. Much like the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) in India in 1999 which highlighted the very poor state of government school infrastructure — shocking the education community in India — these debates do not involve school users.

Data on school education is collected to measure and monitor, fix flaws, and reward achievements at the State and the national levels. Its end users are school administrators, government agencies, researchers, and civil society activists. Despite near-consensus among policymakers and those who produce the data, that parents are one of the key constituencies of school data, and intense efforts to disseminate data among them, it is rarely used by poor parents. For them, schooling is about examination outcome, which is a proxy for learning, English language skills, and a chance for secondary and graduate-level degrees. Data on school infrastructure at the district level, or learning levels at the State level cannot galvanize the masses; at worse it can come across as a descriptor of the way things are in a government system — immutable, and hopeless.