Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Fwd: [se-ed] DISCUSSION: Replicating Innovative Indian Experiences forImplementation of Right to Education. Reply by 10 February 2010.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Avinash Verma <avinash.care@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: [se-ed] DISCUSSION: Replicating Innovative Indian Experiences forImplementation of Right to Education. Reply by 10 February 2010.
To: Education Community <se-ed@solutionexchange-un.net.in>


Dear All,

I think this is really very good to replicate the innovative Indian experiences to implement the Right To Education (RTE) act. But is it possible in Indian context?

There are many agencies/organizations which are working in education but approach is different and very limited. I think education is a kind of thing that can't be imagine in segregation. Many sectors and organization should come together and jointly participate in this mission. Education department or the people related to education can provide education only but the other things that are linked with it are food, residence, income, clothes, life security etc. who will arrange all these things? In the absence of all these things we can't provide a complete education. So we should start the work in a collective mode for education.

Regarding innovative Indian experiences I would like to share some of my experiences when I was in Balrampur district of Uttar Pradesh. I worked here in a Educationally Backward Block (EBB) named Sheopura. I passed my three golden years in this backward block and worked with teachers and children. The major responsibility was to strengthen the system of teaching learning. The number of teachers is very low, either one or two teachers in a school. In this case how can we expect about the quality education.

Except that they are mostly para teachers and they don't have good qualification exposures. Any body can put a question mark on the quality of trainings provided by Block Resource Center (BRC) and District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) both. This is a flooded area and so their earning structure is also very weak. In such a case it was very difficult to work with them.

But we started the work and slowly we changed the schools. In the case of this block and district we used multilevel teaching and also preferred group works. We used local teaching learning materials (TLM) and many other local materials available near school reach. The major subjects in which we focused were Hindi, Math and Science. There were two levels in class II (L1 and L2) and the number of level increases as well as we moves from 1 to 5. In such case we used competency based teaching and also used the regular assessment chart to track the children according the competencies .All these things were new for teachers so we arranged some trainings on DIET, regular monthly meetings on BRCs and regular on site support. In this way we changed the scenario. One of the most effective platforms was morning assembly. We strengthened it and used for breaking the hesitation of teachers and children and it helped in classroom at the time of teaching. Except that teachers planning and regular onsite support was the main strategies that we used to develop good teachers as a good thinkers.

Over all my experience says that we should give space to teachers to think and to make their decisions to their own. Only text book based teaching learning is process that creates close minded teachers. We should strengthen our input through Nyaya Panchayat Resource Centre (NPRC), BRC and DIET levels. Their regular planning and review is also very important to support them.

Thank you so much!
Avinash Verma
CARE India,
Uttar Pradesh


From: Radhika Herzberger [mailto:radhika@rishivalley.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 4:02 PM
To: 'Education Community'
Subject: [se-ed] DISCUSSION: Replicating Innovative Indian Experiences forImplementation of Right to Education. Reply by 10 February 2010.

Moderator's Note: Dear Members, we are initiating discussion on learning from the innovative initiatives in order to implement Right to Education Act, the historical legal commitment by Government of India to provide for free and compulsory education to all children of the Country. As a community of practitioners interested in sharing, linking and learning, we all are aware of the importance of knowledge in helping us improve our interventions. India has a range of very innovative – creative experiments with a huge potential to learn from and replicate. This discussion would help us in sharing ways and methods to hold hands of the government in shouldering the responsibility to make available quality education to all children.

We are happy to announce that Dr. Radhika Herzberger, a well known name amongst the people working in the field of education in India and across the borders, has agreed to Guest Moderate this discussion. Dr. Radhika Herzberger teaches history and presently serves as Director of Rishi Valley Education Centre, a pioneering educational initiative in the Country. As an educational thinker, philosopher and practitioner she has in her credit a number of well acclaimed books written on various aspects of education. Her out of the box thinking and reflection on the challenges in education and the pragmatic approach to shape those ideas in the form of action has been widely received, studied and used by interventions all over.

We look forward to a stimulating discussion on the issue.

Shubhangi  

Dear Friends,

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 received the assent of the President of India in August 2009.  The main provisions of the Act can be found at; web link http://education.nic.in/Elementary/free%20and%20compulsory.pdf  (Size 1.48 MB)

The debates on the Right to Education, especially in Solution Exchange, has been on

The Consolidated Replies with respect to each of the discussion list some innovations in education, and discuss critical issues pertaining to the Right to Education (RTE)

We at the Rishi Valley School believe that education is the one most critical aspect of human development that impacts all social and economic development in a country and across the world.  Now that the right to education has been enacted, and the government is fully committed to finding the solution to reaching large numbers, we feel it is important to engage in a serious discourse on the quality of education that we provide to children, especially at the primary level.

We would therefore request inputs from the members of the education community on the following key aspects of quality of education: 
  • How can the government be supported to improve the motivation and skills of existing teachers in government schools?
  • Moreover, are there effective ways of bringing into the pool of teachers who are trained and motivated a large number of youths with graduate degrees (sometimes even 'teacher qualifications'), who are currently unemployed?
  • The Rishi Valley School's Rural Education Centre works with a methodology, which has been replicated and scaled up in both rural and urban locales within India, and has been nationally and internationally acclaimed (URL). There are many such methodologies worth replicating. Please share the teaching methodologies you have used and found useful in enabling high quality learning  teaching and monitoring systems, and which can be scaled up by government schools. 
  • Our belief is that school education must continue to be the responsibility of the state and the state must invest in improving its own capacity to deliver.  We would invite comments from members on how official resources are best directed in the implementation of the RTE Act:  
·   In government schools
·   Through NGOs and educational foundations
·   Through Public-Private Partnership (PPPS) with for-profit educational organization

Such a discussion will help reputed educational organizations to provide pro-active support to the government in implementation of RTEA, and help direct official resources towards high quality education, that is innovative and suited to local needs. Post discussion, it is also proposed to bring together a group of reputed educational institutions within the country to share the lessons from these approaches, and brainstorm to scale these up in different parts of the country as appropriate?  The new approaches can be incubated with NGOs working in partnership with government schools, and government resources can be allocated to these.

Regards

Radhika Herzberger and A. Kumaraswamy
Rishi Valley School
Madanapalle, Chittoor District
Andhra Pradesh
(www.rishivalley.org)




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