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: Kannan Srinivasan <kan_srini2002@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 6:14 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>


Moderator's Note: Dear Members, this is the last response of the day and also the last response we are posting on this discussion. Dr. Radhika Herzberger has expressed her interest in sharing some of her ideas and thoughts after going through all the inputs which we might post tomorrow.  We thank all who contributed to this discussion sharing the experiences of their organizations and suggesting ways to hand hold government in implementation of RTE Act. We would shortly post the consolidated reply taking all your inputs into consideration.

Now we would request members to respond to the query raised by Amita Tandon on status and challenges of educating children in urban slums which we posted yesterday evening. We are sure that this query would also receive the similar amount of attention and focus from the members' as given in previous cases.

Shubhangi

Dear All,

I have worked directly under Mrs. Ahalya Chary one of the founding members of Rishi Valley when I was working for Environmental Society Madras for an Environmental Education Project funded by Government of Japan. I agree strongly with Radhika. Some of the disciplines will be better explained by field visit such as Environmental Sciences. Same is true with Public Health and Rural Studies. As suggested we will have to see how we can take advantage of the ICT for our benefit by exploiting the strengths. For an example, when I have done an evaluation of Teaching Learning Material training under district primary education programme (DPEP) using Teleconferencing for Indian space research organization (ISRO), some of the training methodologies were tested using Video Conferencing for training Primary school teaching at the District Institute of Education and Training(DIET)(My paper K, Srinivasan (2007): Level of participation among the audience attended primary education training using group observation method. (Published in: i-manager's Journal of School Educational Technology, Vol. Vol. 2 No. 4, No. Vol. 2 No. 4, March - May 2007 (2007)).

It has proved to be a successful model. Same way there are solutions which are used as complements to the classroom teaching such as "Moodle" (Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System or a Virtual Learning Environment. It is a free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites) and others are very useful and makes the learning enjoyable. We will have to see how can we use them in the school level is a challenge. I have used a tool called "A Tutor" for teaching Public Health students. You may see my paper on this at Kannan, Srinivasan (2009): ICT in Education: A Study of Public Health Education. (unpublished.) :http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/13768/

Thanks for the opportunity.

Regards,
Kannan Srinivasan
Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology,
Trivandrum 

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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