---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shubhangi Sharma <s.sharma@unesco.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 6:03 PM
Subject: [se-ed] Discussion Summary: Replicating Innovative Indian Experiences for Implementation of Right to Education
To: Education Community <se-ed@solutionexchange-un.net.in>
Appointment of teachers and their in service training has to be very carefully and stringently carried out. The teachers to be appointed need to go through a criterion of selection where the passion to teach children, the need to expand in one's knowledge continuously cannot be too overemphasized, I would develop the selection process of teachers and the kind of in service training which emphasis's a code of practice which will be the teachers guide of best practices used.
From: Shubhangi Sharma <s.sharma@unesco.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 6:03 PM
Subject: [se-ed] Discussion Summary: Replicating Innovative Indian Experiences for Implementation of Right to Education
To: Education Community <se-ed@solutionexchange-un.net.in>
The PDF Version of this Discussion can be downloaded at: http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/education/cr/cr-se-ed-2202104.pdf (Size 264 KB)
Education Community |
Solution Exchange for the Education Community
Consolidated Reply
Issue Date: 11 March 2010
Posted 19 January 2010
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
- "Innovative approaches to universalizing basic education" (http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/en/Download-document/824-Innovative-Approaches-to-Universalizing-Basic-Education.html )
- "Legislation for the Right to Education" (http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/en/Download-document/571-Legislation-for-the-Right-to-Education.html
- "Advocacy Material on Children's Right to Free and Compulsory Education" (http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/en/Download-document/1157-Advocacy-Material-on-Children-s-Right-to-Free-and-Compulsory-Education.html)
- "Right to Education Bill" (http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/education/cr-public/cr-se-ed-08050901-public.pdf ) and
- "Role of Local Governance System in implementation of Right to Education Act" (http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/education/cr/cr-se-ed-decn-31080901.pdf)
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.
Responses were received, with thanks, from
1. Ch.Santakar, People's Group for Children's Development, Koraput
2. A. K. Choudhury, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Mission, Assam
3. Ananya S Guha, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Shillong
4. Shubhangi Sharma, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, New Delhi
5. Jitendra Shah, Indictrans, Mumbai
6. Namrata Ghosh, Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Kolkata
7. Smita Premchander and B. Chinnamma, Sampark, Bangalore and Koppal
8. Srabantika Bhattacharya, Youth Council for Development Alternatives, Bolangir
9. Neeraj Das Guru, ICRA Management Consulting Services Limited, Patna (Response 1) (Response 2) (Response 3)
10. Shruti Singh, Asian Development bank, Mongolia
11. Padmashri Mithu Alur, National Resource Centre for Inclusion, Mumbai
12. P.J.Mathew Martin, Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped, Mumbai
13. Umesh Chandra Gaur, Confederation of Community Based Organizations of India, New Delhi (Response 1) (Response 2)
15. Anjela Taneja, Actionaid India, New Delhi
16. Radhika Herzberger, Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh
17. Purnima Kashyap, Social Association for Awareness Training and Human Improvement, Jaipur
18. B.L.Kaul, Society for Popularization of Science and Progressive Educational Society, Jammu
19. Nayana Renukumar, Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad
20. Avinash Verma , CARE India, Uttar Pradesh
21. Shubhra Chatterji, Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Kolkata
22. Kannan Srinivasan , Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum
*Offline Contribution
Further contributions are welcome!
The Right to Education Act is a historic step that will place responsibility on governments, both at the central and state levels; governments will have to ensure not only that children are enrolled in schools but also that they receive quality education. This will require creating training facilities for vast numbers of teachers' to be recruited as well as refresher courses for teachers' already in the system. Ultimately the challenge is to ensure that each child after spending eight years in school receives meaningful education that is relevant to his or her life situation.
It is doubtful whether any government can on its own, no matter how committed and no matter how huge the investment is, accomplish this with the necessary swiftness in a diverse country such as India. There are children from tribal communities, minority communities, SC/STs, Children from labor class, and children with visible - invisible disabilities. All these segments need specific focus and attention. Educating teachers' for these complex needs is going to be a mammoth task to complete. Recruitment, proportional deployment and development of teachers', need to have a priority response to fulfill the legal obligation of the Act.
Government structures at all level, in the current scenario therefore need to project a range of possible out of the box solutions to the problems we face. To respond to the challenges of teacher recruitment and development, improvement of motivational level and skills of existing teachers, use of innovative methodologies and strategization with respect to engagement of organizations already working on education along with careful planning of areas of public-private partnership in Education, is a must. There is no dearth of experiments in education which have the potential for replication and scaling up, so long as they are based on the contextual realities. The need is to bring all the diverse experiences that have been tested in the field together in a sharable and understandable form so that suitable models can be selected for implementation in particular contexts.
Methodologies to adapt to change the educational Scenario
Instances of replicable teacher education methodologies created by NGO groups are in place across the country. For instance, the ABL Programme of Tamil Nadu has attained certain legitimacy according to a recent evaluation. The RIVER Programme of Rishi Valley and select practices of Montessori pedagogy for multi-grade and multi-level classrooms are similarly capable of up scaling in certain areas of the country. Both these methodologies (former adapted from the Rishi Valley's RIVER programme and select pedagogy for multi grade and multi level teaching) emphasize interactive classrooms, in which children work with an array of material. Also, active engagement of teachers' and students' in the process of learning through dialogue is sought. The role of both teachers' and students' is well conceived, planned and worked upon to make learning a worthy experience.
Curriculum is to be seen differently to fill in the gaps in educational quality. Viewing curriculum as a dynamic process and using the life experiences of learners as a meaningful opportunity for learning, as Naba Disha and Shikshasatra, the urban and rural programme of Vikramshila in Kolkata have attempted. These initiatives make use of artistic and creative activities as part of curriculum and pedagogy, hold out tremendous promise. Children learn to express their feelings and articulate their thoughts, a process that in turn serves to enhance their pace of learning.
Engagement of Youth as support to teachers' in the classroom transaction
At the block level, there is a lot of scope for building an academic support system for teachers with the help of fresh, energetic, trained and motivated youths. They are not meant to 'replace' teachers, but to support classroom transaction through demonstration, to help conduct of academic discussions and to build rapport with the community and parents. Youth can also serve as 'counselors' for teachers' and students' as the case of Doosra Dashak in Rajasthan suggests. Their presence can rejuvenate assemblies, build Bal Sabhas and energize playgrounds, which remain largely under utilized at the moment.
There can also be a strategy adopted to engage youth with graduate degrees for about two years' voluntary contribution. At the end of this experience, they could enroll in formal teacher education courses. The NCTE norm may also be relaxed for those holding masters degrees, in order to enable them to teach, at least up to primary level, provided they have been trained to handle the subject.
Appropriate Usage of official resources
The most effective way to best direct the official resources in the implementation of RTE act is to make sure that headmasters are given autonomy and freedom to run their schools with the support of teachers' and the larger community. There has to be recognition of good work done by civil society based organization in the field of education and government needs to enable them to support weak government institution and schools.
Public- private partnership and the role of NGOS
As regard public private partnership, it has to be carefully planned, to add value rather than be seen as a way out to transfer the State's responsibility. Building bridges with teacher unions on various education related issues is a must. The role of private player or adoption of PPP model in teacher training has potential, if done through setting up clear guidelines and regulatory mechanism. Giving NGOs supportive roles in the area of research, advocacy, and monitoring and addressing grievance issues could be of great value in raising consciousness. The work done by organizations such as Nalli Kali in Karnataka, Lok Jumbish in Rajasthan, Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh, Bodh and Digantar in Rajasthan, and MV Foundation in Andhra Pradesh, need to be incorporated by government in its macro endeavors, if real changes are to be made. These are just a few examples. Our country has several innovative practices, which require wider sharing and culling out of elements of replication.
Following suggestions can be considered for enhancing the skills and capacities of teachers' on the aspect mentioned above:
Strategies to improve motivation and skills of existing teachers-
- Involvement of community in the school affairs to support teachers can make out a lot of difference. Presently, teachers feel isolated and highly pressurized. Such support would motivate them to work better.
- Inputs through recurrent training on various aspects of child psychology, about the way children learn, can help reduce the authoritarian character of teacher- student relationship.
- The local level structure, in the form of Cluster Resource Centers/Block Resource Centers/ DIETs etc. need to re-look at their role and ensure on site support to the teachers in handling diverse and complexed classroom situations.
- Creative skills of teachers' are required to be honed. There are excellent facilities in the country, such as the programme run by Indira Gandhi National Open University, which could be used to enhance skills and widen intellectual horizons of teachers'.
- The follow up training of teachers' should revolve around creation of study materials, a process which accelerates their own learning process.
- Involvement of those experts who have already been into creation of innovative maternal and experimentation with new materials would inspire the training environment and motivate teachers' to engage more with their training.
- Such Institutional/individual resources should also be placed in government schools for a certain period of time to yield better results in terms of classroom transaction
Some other methods which can be deployed to help the existing teachers are:
- Formation of education committees consisting of women only. The experiment by Sampark, Bangalore to track attendance of children, to provide tutoring support to those who fall behind on learning and to act as pressure group on teachers to attend school regularly has yielded excellent results.
- Improvement in quality of in-service teaching with relevant training, content, classroom demonstration and follow up mechanism.
- Putting in places an appraisal system will motivates good teachers and create challenges for de-motivated ones.
- Involvement of Panchayati Raj to support teachers' through regular engagement and follow up.
- Teachers with different set of skills and motivation levels should be given suitable responsibilities to handle the individual motivation.
- Sharing of good work done by the teachers in public meetings and promoting it through media to highlight the achievement.
- Provision of active 'on site' support system for teachers' without fear of punishment.
- "Task analyses' by the teacher as a methodology has a lot of promises. This method engages the teachers' in evaluation of the topic not grasped by the child and accordingly change the presentation analyzing the problem faced.
- Introduction of "vertical competency based ladder" and development of integrated learning cards keeping in view the competences up to class V in Hindi language, math's and Environment Sciences is another technique to help teachers' and students' both. The adoption of the material developed under VCBL can be helpful in developing a tool for mainstreaming older children to age appropriate classes.
- Creation of a genuine platform for teachers' to share their ideas, views and help each - other learn from the exchange. Also, having regular refresher courses and orientation to guide and help teachers' to update them on latest technologies and techniques can improve the overall quality of the system.
Use of ICT also can be made to enhance teachers' skills and capacities through setting up of video conferencing centers in every district. Also the setting up of a master lab, equipped with broad casting apparatus, in the capital city of each state could create a culture of solving math puzzles and games in remote areas. In each state, members for each subject and each level of schooling should be identified who would conduct these programmes. They need not necessarily be school teacher but can be people from other professions as well. These mentors should meet with the teacher in their respective subject-grade once a month. Problems, teachers face in classroom teaching, could then be discussed in peer groups. Teachers should have the opportunity to view the pre recorded lessons on periodic basis to learn from.
Overall, improving the quality and inspection system in schools using 'social accountability tools', is important in the context of RTE. This can complement the presently weak system of school inspection, besides addressing other issues. A variety of tools such as 'community score cards', social audits, citizen charter and school score cards etc have a lot of promise to ensure the proper functioning of our educational system and also provide insights on the wider social impacts of the school.
The key is to ensure that schools have a happy culture, where students learn easily and where teachers interact with each other to create pedagogic materials, and to discuss classroom management styles. The whole new environment is needed in our schools to fulfill the promises made under RTE Act.
Activity Based Learning-A Report on an Innovative Method in Tamil Nadu (from Shubhangi Sharma, UNESCO, New Delhi)
Report; by Dr. S. Anandalakshmy ; Bala Mandir Research Foundation ; Tamil Nadu;
Available at http://www.ssa.tn.nic.in/Docu/ABL-Report-by-Dr.Anandhalakshmi.pdf (PDF 110 KB )
The report traces the long history of the method and delineates the main aspects of the Activity Based Learning,a Tamil Nadu initiative.
Half yearly Report October08 to March09; Available at http://pratham.org/images/Bihar-Oct08-Mar09II.pdf (PDF 118KB)
Half yearly report of read india campaign, an iniative of Pratham
The Right of Children to free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009
Document; by Ministry of Human Resource Development; Department of School Education & Literacy ; Authority; New Delhi; 27 August 2009;
Available athttp://education.nic.in/Elementary/free%20and%20compulsory.pdf(PDF Size1.48 MB)
The right to Education Act, 2009 to provide free and compulsory education to all children's of the age of six to fourteen years
Nali Kali- A not so silent Revolution for Joyful Learning (from Anjela Taneja, Actionaid India, New Delhi)
Report; by Macchiwalla. Tasqeen; Karnataka;
Available at http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/sereport/ser/seeds/seed_edu.pdf(PDF 393 KB)
The Karnataka government and UNICEF collaborated to create a virtual revolution in education in Mysore district.
Research Study; by R.Govinda; International Institute for Educational Planning/UNESCO; International Institute for Educational Planning, 7-9 rue Eugene-Delacroix, 75116 Paris, ; Paris; March 1999;
Available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001175/117580e.pdf (PDF 50.3MB)
A research study on school mapping in Lok Jumbish
Rishi Valley Education Centre, Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh (from Radhika Herzberger, Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh )
Rishi Valley Education Centre, Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh - 517352; Tel: 91-8571-280044/280086/280582/280622 ;office@rishivalley.org;www.rishivalley.org;
One of the leading residential schools in India, that provides a distinctive educational environment that enables young persons to grow .
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, New Delhi
Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi-110001; Tel: 91-11-23383936; Fax: 91-11-23381355 webmaster.edu@nic.in ;www.ssa.nic.in;
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is Government of India's flagship programme for achievement of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time bound manner
Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi (fromAnanya S Guha, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Shillong)
Indira Gandhi National Open University, maidan garhi, New Delhi-110068; Tel: 011-29571000; Fax: 011-29533417 feedback_admn@ignou.ac.in; www.ignou.ac.in;
One of the largest universities in the world, founded to impart education by means of distance and open education.
C-113, Shivagi Marg, Tilak Nagar, Jaipur 302 004 Rajasthan; Tel: 141-2620845,141-2620127.; Fax: 141-2624824;ddashak@gmail.com; www.doosradashak.org;
Programme is about the education and development of persons in the age group 11-20 years,mostly adolescents,to make them lever for larger social and economic development
Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Kolkata (fromNamrata Ghosh, Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Kolkata )
256B Prince Anwar Shah Road Kolkata 700045; Tel: 033-32926084/24229124; Fax: 033-24229176; info@vikramshila.org;www.vikramshila.org;
non profit non governmental organization working in the area of education with the mission of "making quality education a reality for all children"
No. 80, Shree Nilaya,2ndMain Road, Ist Block, Koramangala, Bangalore - 560 034; Tel: 080-25530196/25521268;sampark@sampark.org;www.sampark.org ;
organization working towards poverty reduction and women's empowerment.
Pratham Education Foundation, Y.B. Chavan Center, 4th Floor, Gen. J. Bhosale Marg. Nariman Point,Mumbai,Maharashtra-400021;Tel:022-22819561;Fax:022-22819563 mumbai@pratham.org; www.pratham.org;
largest non governmental organisation working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India.
Sikshasandhan Campus,2nd Floor, ND-7, VIP Area, IRC Village,Bhubaneswar-751015; Tel: 0674-556109.; Fax: 0674-550656 sikshasandhan@gmail.com; www.sikshasandhan.org;
Sikshasandhan working in the field of education has formed a consortium consisting of seven voluntary organizations operating mostly in tribal areas.
R 7, Hauz Khas Enclave, New Delhi 110016; Tel: 011 40640500; Fax: 011 41641891; indiasite@actionaid.org; www.actionaid.org;
ActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency operating in over 40 countries, working with poor and marginalised people to end poverty and injustice together.
201, Narayan Apartments,West Marredpally, Secunderabad; Tel: +91 (40) 27801320; Fax: +91 (40) 27808808 mvfindia@gmail.com; www.mvfindia.in ;
MV Foundation is working towards abolition of child labour in all its forms and mainstreaming them into formal schools
Association for Promotion of Creative Learning, Patna(from Anjela Taneja, Actionaid India, New Delhi)
Nargada Village, Danapur Cantt - Shivala Road, Patna; Tel: 06115- 225618 ; schoolofcreativelearningpatna@yahoo.com ; www.creativelearning.in ;
APCL established to promote creative learning in society. Developed a unique teaching/ learning methodology
Central Office & Urban Resource Centre,SP-41, Road No 6,RIICO Institutional Area, Kukas (Amer), Jaipur -303101; Tel: +91 1426 247456/7/8; Fax: +91 1426 247456 centraloffice@bodh.org;www.bodh.org;
The school, initiated in 1987, was the result of a unique partnership between the Gokulpuri urban slum community and a group of likeminded men and women
East & West Educational Society, Arogya Mandir Hospital Compound, Nala road, Patna- 800 004; Tel: 0612-2721744; enw1@rediffmail.com;www.eastwestindia.org;
A civil society's initiative for ensuring quality education of all children. Another major area of activity is rights of children, which of course, includes health & education
Social Association for Awareness Training and Human Improvement, Jaipur (from Purnima Kashyap, SAATHI, Jaipur)
SL-13, Income Tax Colony, Near Nahar Hospital, Durgapura, Jaipur; Tel: 0141-2724898, 3270602; Fax: Fax No. saathingo@yahoo.co.in;www.saathiindia.org;
SAATHI is a Non Government organization committed to the empowerment of the poor and the marginalized farmers along with children and women.
E-10, BDA Colony, Shankar Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, Bhopal Madhya Pradesh; Tel: 0755- 267 1017, 255 1109; www.eklavya.in ;
A non-profit, non-government organisation that develops and field tests innovative educational programmes and trains resource people to implement these programmes
Todi Ramjanipura, Kho Nagoriyan Road, Jagatpura,Jaipur 302 025; Tel: 0141 2750230, 0141 2750310; Fax: 0141-2751268 admdig@datainfosys.net; www.digantar.org ;
Digantar Shiksha Evam Khelkud Samiti has been working in alternative education for rural children since its founding in 1978.
Ch.Santakar, People's Group for Children's Development, Koraput (Orissa)
It was great to begin a discussion on such a vital topic today .Today is celebrated as Basant Panchami and Maa Saraswati is worshiped in Orissa. The reason of me quoting the importance of the day is to highlight the importance of teacher-student relationship on implementation of any method or process in the schools .To celebrate this festival in schools , teachers generate a great amount of faith on the children that they could do a variety of things .They can decorate the stage , can contact the particular artist to make the idol of Saraswati ,can make arrangements for proper functioning of the proposed plan and even can distribute invitation cards to selected people with the most suitable ways of approaches . And the children have proved that they too could do even more than the teachers could have done in many places. This confidence shown during the celebration is also need to be realized by the teachers while interacting with the children in classes'.
A little initiative in this regard in minimizing the power of ego in the teacher of the superiority in the mind of teacher could workout to be wonders .The child was born in an environment of greater consciousness. Hence the child should not be considered as someone who is ignorant .But should be treated as someone who has the capacity to explore a new world that the teacher might not have thought of. This realization in the teacher could bring him closer to the children and becomes easier in interacting with children for the purpose of learning from each other so as to benefit each other .The teachers need to be made aware of this truth more than any other skills. As without this kind of attitude the teacher would not be able to share the skills and tools of learning that he had acquired in training programmes. It is easy to work with a small group of teachers even if it is in hundreds and thousands. But while dealing with lakhs of teachers all across with a national plan , the first and foremost training need to be given to the teachers in this regard .The topic could be process of eliminating ego of superiority or ways to respect the child .Unless as has been observed the Teaching Learning Material will be hanging in classrooms gathering dust ,teachers will be busy in getting trainings and children would die young without even getting a touch of the great learning that was given to the teachers .Agreement between teachers and students to learn should never be disturbed with any disturbances in the agreement between the teachers and their employer .
A. K. Choudhury, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Mission, Assam
How can the government be supported to improve the motivation and skills of existing teachers in government schools?
Response: Motivation of one in a work is linked with one's own conviction upon the outcome of the work. For ensuring motivation in teachers, therefore there arises an urgent need for creation of an atmosphere in the educational field, where the teachers can work undisturbed towards the aim of their schools. The head masters of the schools must prepare year-wise comprehensive goal and plan, transparent to the system as well as to the community. There is, at present a practice which is growing more day by day is that teachers are engaged by system in a lot of non-academic activities outside the schools. This frequent withdrawal of teachers from classrooms has a direct bearing with their motivation and performances. Capacity building & performances must go hand-in-hand. In one hand, the skills of teachers are to be developed and in the other an atmosphere has to be created where the schools are subjected to non-negotiable desired norms. Creation of an atmosphere, where the community as well as the teacher refer their school/s as 'My/our school' has to be facilitated by having dialogues with the Government, schools & community. The Right to Education Act, in its most comprehensible terms needs to be shared with communities.
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?
Response: The selection of teachers must be free from personal, political agenda. The Selection criteria should be as such that it can find out the worthiest ones. Pre-service training must be one of the required qualifications. However, there may not be possibility of having fresh, trained, motivated youths as teachers, unless the teacher's posts are vacant. Under Right to Education Act, the rationalization of teachers perhaps may be ensured. However, an effort should be there to build an academic support system with fresh, energetic, trained, motivated youths in every block. These groups of persons will only be meant for providing classroom support to schools through demonstration, taking classes, academic discussions and for building rapport with community/parents.
Ananya S Guha, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Shillong
Motivation of teachers is something that is often being talked about. The questions are:
· What is this motivation?
· How can it be achieved?
· Are the teachers doing their work with interest or desultorily,
· What about salaries, how do we make standardized salaries, commensurate with qualifications and abilities?
I feel that unless these issues are addressed all talk of motivation and skills will be unceasing prattle.
The private/ government schools dichotomy continues to exist. Teachers get a professional degree but this is not put to use. After acquiring a B.Ed degree, there must be mechanisms to ensure that the practice teaching, teachers have learnt, are applied to real classroom situations. Both the state government and the concerned schools must be active players in this regard.
The creative skills of teachers must be honed. This emphasis should be built in all teacher training curricula. The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has excellent programmes on teaching of English as a secondary language, teaching of primary mathematics, guidance etc, in addition to B.Ed, Diploma in Primary Education, Certificate in Primary Education, and Certificate in Elementary Education etc. How many know of these excellent programmes? These must be shared through online projects of the IGNOU, which is already in existence.
Shubhangi Sharma, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, New Delhi
Ms. Herzberger has raised a very important issue for us to deliberate upon. As the Right to Education Act became a reality, the stakeholders in education across the country have been put under larger responsibility to ensure that act gets implemented without diluting quality of education which is of utmost importance. Here, in response to the 3rd and 4th question, I am reminded of the Activity Based Learning (ABL) programme which is an innovative, interesting and corroborated classroom transaction programme for standards one to four that was introduced in the state schools of Tamil Nadu. Incubated initially in approximately 260 schools of the Corporation of Chennai from 2003 to 2006, it was extended from June 2007 to government and government aided schools across the state under the direction of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Department of Education, Government of Tamil Nadu, India. ABL, adapted from Rishi Valley's RIVER programme and select practices of Montessori pedagogy for multi-grade and multi-level classrooms. It has been extended to 37500 government and government aided schools in the state.
A study of the programme was conducted between June 2007 to April 2008 which was the officially commissioned Baseline and year-end survey done by School Scape in collaboration with SSA Tamil Nadu. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. With able leadership, support from the education department, from the teacher to the secretary, and the ministry, this intervention has become an example of how a quality programme could be introduced into the government system, within the existing framework. Many states have learnt and applied the method of up-scaling and the pedagogical approach to enable the country to move towards providing primary school children, the classroom environment that would enable meaningful learning to take place, while improving achievement levels simultaneously.
The evaluation was conducted taking the following aspects in account at the time of base line as well as during the process of year end survey
- Teachers, Observers and Children
- Physical Environment
- Teaching- Learning Materials
- Class Management
- Child Participation
- Teacher-Child Relationship
- Assessment
- Planning and Monitoring
On every aspect evaluators noticed worthy improvement. As the ABL initiative has spread across the country and some of the state teams have been trained by the resource faculty from Tamil Nadu, some of the key findings of this important programme evaluation are worth noticing for the sake of replication. One of the important finding of the study was that the average achievement of children increased significantly in all subjects and Gaps in achievement within gender, location and social groups was narrowed down which was an encouraging sign. Another important finding included more children shifting from low achievement range to very high and excellent achievement range classes and number of excellent achievers increased by 20% to 40% in all three subjects and both classes. Also, the dispersion in children's achievement was reduced:
The processes adopted under ABL are widely studied and talked about. The role of teachers' and students' both was well conceived, planned and worked upon which is the need of the hour. The promise of this initiative is its adaptation potential in any setting, context and learning situation. The implementation of RTE would require similar methods to engage children and teachers; in the process of dialogue, activity and interaction.
In response to Ms. Radhika's first two questions, I would say the following:
How can the government be supported to improve the motivation and skills of existing teachers in government schools?
Teachers, more than anything, require motivation and an environment conducive to work and interact with children. The pleasant surrounding jointly made and used TLM to ensure interactivity and group learning in the well planned and managed classroom environment is the key. It not only saves time but also ensure a highly charged learning situation. The principles of ABL method are based on the premise that children learn better when engaged in the process of learning rather than remaining at a level of mute spectator, which is to be kept in mind. They can support teachers and work with them to create materials which are helpful in accelerating their learning process. The trainings of teacher should also revolve around creation of a lot of such material which support the learning of both teachers' as well as students'. For that purpose, government need to open up, learn from the places where such methodologies are being practiced and involve those actors in the process of training of teachers' who could inspire and work with teachers'. Probably having such resources in government schools for a certain period of time can yield better results.
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?
There are of-course ways to make sure that youth get involved in the process of education as a support to teachers'. In a number of places this is being tried and tested including Rishi Valley itself. In Doosra Dashak, the programme I was associated with a few years ago, we trained and worked with young people to enable and inspire them to handhold teachers' in regular course of their work and also take up the responsibility to replace teacher at the time of crisis. Teachers' found this arrangement quite enabling and encouraging and also provided children the opportunity to interact and work with young minds who could understand and engage them better. Youth can also serve as counselors for teachers' and students' at times and bring in an element of creativity into the classroom. What is needed is to offer an environment where youth feel inclined to participate in the process of education of children and share their experiences, skills with them. A lot of young people in rural as well as urban areas possess qualities which can rejuvenate the school environment, prayer assemblies, bal sabhas and play ground which remain largely under or un utilized in our schools.
Overall, I also agree that the primary responsibility to deliver education with quality is the responsibility of the state but state can't deliver it alone. There are obvious advantages in involving civil society, reputed people oriented educational institutes and other players who have something unique to offer specially in terms of ensuring quality and inculcating creative spirit amongst teachers as well as students.
With due respect to the innovations at Rishi Valley , and appreciating more strongly the assertion they make of education being learning with real life, I feel this list should think ( rethink? ) on the following issues :
- What are the generic lessons that we learn from Rishi valley that can be replicated
- Can the experiences be encapsulated in lively media( text, audio or video) that can be shared in multiple languages
- Can the above be done in a non-commercial way ( i.e. with freedoms : not just free of cost, but more importantly with freedoms to localize and extend and redistribute
- Could Rishi Valley have anticipated the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on a scale as it is now? My generous assumption is No. Hence the conclusion that we should now make ICT as the base for wiser communication
- I would also like to say that ICT is not just a tool for dissemination or communication of what has been done so far, i.e. replication. It changes the very problems to be handled and not just in quantitative terms but qualitative terms. Now ornithology, biodiversity or water problems , etc, taken up very ably by Rishi valley schools, can be and must be taken at larger scale , greater depth, richer interconnections with geographic information system (GIS) as base, and as collaboration across geographies which is possible now . It should be in-built.
- All publication worth the while must be made available as open education resources, by arranging for one time payment of the cost.
Namrata Ghosh, Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Kolkata
In response to Ms. Herzberger's well chosen theme and Shubhangi's response to this topical issue, I too would like to share the experiences of my organization Vikramshila that emanate from the field, that are based on our 2 core activities one in urban slums called 'Naba Disha' and another in the rural heartland, Shikshasatra, which we have found to be effective, innovative and highly replicable.
Vikramshila's genesis in 1989 was as an education resource organization with the twin aims of addressing the issues of equity and quality in education. Over the years we grew resolute in our belief that most gaps in educational quality can be filled through Curriculum design (relevance of curriculum) and Implementation (teacher's capacity and teacher's ability to exercise agency).
In both the activities mentioned above the aim is to ensure school readiness after which they get mainstreamed into formal government schools. Curriculum is viewed as a dynamic process - one that goes much beyond the 'syllabus' and involves using life experiences of children as meaningful opportunities for learning; one in which the learner is at the heart of the learning process. It is also considered a working document and as such the teacher has the liberty to set its pace according to the child and to go back and forth in its delivery. When curriculum evolves into such a process, it automatically ensures that the alienation encountered by the majority of children in our schools no longer exists and both the children's and parents' expectations from the school are met.
In addition, creative and artistic activities are also a part of the curriculum and pedagogy, as these activities; for instance juggling, drama, fine arts, crafts, yoga, balancing, logic puzzles etc, requires and generates concentration and cooperation- skills that are essential for going through life , even on a day to day basis. In addition, the massive rise of self esteem that the children receive upon mastery of an intricate task is beneficial for generating self confidence in them. These activities go way beyond functional literacy to develop creative and critical faculties. Both projects while being restricted within the walls of the state curriculum, use its special discretion to interpret the text in such a way as to make it relevant to the lives of the children. The teachers put strong emphasis on contextualizing the text and link it rationally and logically to the realities of these children.
In order to deal with this issue of multi lingual classrooms the teachers apply the selective method in approaching the principle of language. The four main components of Language – Listening, Speaking, reading and Writing are approached in this method by first concentrating on the Listening and Speaking skills of the children through which they have already acquired a vast vocabulary from their homes and peers. This vocabulary is then put to use by the creation of vocabulary dictionaries. Word lists and vocabulary dictionaries made by the children themselves are used by teachers to then introduce them to the idea of the same word in a different language.
Moving beyond Functional Literacy creative and artistic activities together with sports, juggling, yoga, clubs and groups are greatly emphasized and form a core part of the curriculum at Bigha as well as Naba Disha centers. The curriculum encourages drama and fine arts as a part of the education of these children. Drama and other arts encourage reflective thinking, analysis and critical understanding of issues affecting the lives of the children and enable them to question inequalities and deprivations. They begin to express their feelings and articulate their thoughts. The issues of migration, eviction, natural disaster, relief camps, local and village histories have been set in drama by these children.
We have also witnessed that the increased awareness of the community- including mothers, fathers, community elders and local youth and their participation in the education of their children is an essential and critical aspect in ensuring effectiveness in the child's learning. The project has provided opportunities to engage with major events of the in the children's community through, for instance, cultural festivals and community mobilizations on issues of health, nutrition, sanitation etc. Initiating 'Amar Boi' (My Book) that consists of regular diaries written by children has been a medium through which children trace their family histories and identities, migration routes, maps of the locality and so on. In this effort, the community elders are interviewed by the children and thus they begin to take interest in the children's initiatives and education.
Working within the perimeters of the state curriculum, the projects have invented and reinvented alternate pedagogies and learning transaction processes that ensure that education does not divorce the children from their realities as is often the case in formal schools. This is essential to address the issues of equity, quality in education, in fostering greater equality of opportunity and inclusion in education.
Smita Premchander and B. Chinnamma, Sampark, Bangalore and Koppal
We would like to thank Radhikaji, Dr. Kumaraswamy and the education community for starting this discussion. The RTE Act has many provisions that we must debate quickly, and come together to take action taking forward innovative approaches for scale up.
Let us first share Sampark's initiatives in education:
Support for School Education:
Sampark supports 1600 children to attend school, with the belief that NGOs should not duplicate mainstream education services. The support has four features:
- To children from families in extreme and relative poverty is to buy books, materials, dress, shoes etc., so that these children can go to school.
- Microfinance and income generating activities for parents so that they can afford to send the child to school, decreasing their dependence on the children's earnings.
- Formation of education committees in each village, and in each microfinance cooperative. These women's committees follow up on children's attendance, and monitor and provide for tutoring support to those who fall behind on learning. Sports events are organized regularly for children, which increases the community's involvement in schools, and motivates children both for sports and studies.
- The same committees act as pressure group on teachers to attend school regularly and to monitor progress of children.
The impact of this support has been a sustained reduction in school drop-outs, being only 10 to 12 of the 1600 children supported.
Support for Retention and Performance, Public Private Partnership (PPP) project:
Sampark has made a partnership with a private firm to provide support to ten schools, with over 3000 children, to ensure no children drop out of school. Additional teaching support has been provided to children appearing for the 10th exam in March, so that high pass-out rates can be achieved. The Department of Education has accepted teachers training and introduction of computer based teaching modules that will improve the inputs and learning from Class 8 to 10. The private firm has some agricultural operations in the district and needs to ensure elimination of child labour. The partnership has worked well so far, with the company being very responsive to local needs and supporting the collaboration with the Department of Education, coordinated by Sampark.
We hear that the government has already planned to start 2500 schools with PPPs. We believe that NGOs should be an integral part of these partnerships, with the community capacity building and empowerment tasks being cared for by the NGO.
We believe that the PPPs offer an opportunity to scale up already existing lessons and initiatives that these should be taken on board quickly by the government. Not doing so will result in rediscovering the wheel at best, but also the attendant risk of making costly experiments in areas where sufficient learning already exists.
I am regular reader of all debates and discussion of the forum since last four five months. I want to share my views based on my work experience of working with government schools of 18 G.P of five district of Western Orissa.
How can the government be supported to improve the motivation and skills of existing teachers in government schools?
Some observation:
- Capacity building of teachers is a major component in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Round the year 20 days is fixed for training &capacity building for all teachers.10 days for training and 10 days there is provision for regular review/sharing of teachers at cluster level which is a part of capacity building of teachers. As per schedule events of Teachers training happens on a regular basis. It is my experience that there is no post training follow up of given training. No body takes accountability to see whether it has been implemented or not. Sometimes quality of teachers training is also a big question.
- Moreover implementation of training contents (exam Activity based teaching) at classroom and school is almost nil in village schools of interior village schools.
- School supervision is very poor. Officials meant for visit and handholding support cannot give sufficient times to teachers at remote area.
- There is no doubt; to be a good teacher self motivation is most important. But teachers who are motivated sometimes do not get support from seniors, management, do not get proper environment. Lack of facilities, overload of other works, lack of seriousness, Lack of interest of community all are the causes for poor condition of the government schools, lack of motivation among teachers.
- Teachers who are good sometimes do not get recognition, rewards, good working atmosphere.
- Different categories of teachers are existing in our structure with discriminated salaries but bearing the same responsibility
- There is no rationalization in distribution of teachers .In rural pockets ratio of teachers is always less than urban. So teachers are overloaded in some cases.
- Same time service of the teachers (permanent) is so secured they became lethargic; less bother about the quality, innovativeness whatever service they give that is beyond question.
So all these are constrains for quality education/ motivation of teachers. Right to Education Act is a hope for all. Again question arise whether it will be implemented properly.
So can we ensure-
- Quality of in-service training which includes relevant trainings contents, classroom demonstration and follow up mechanism. Most of the training is general in nature and there is no process of need assessment, post training follow up mechanism.
- It is crucial to build awareness among the community, Village Education Committee (VEC) and strengthening their capacity (which is again in pen and paper) so that they feel this is our school not Government School and takes responsibility of creating a good atmosphere for children –Teacher. The two days capacity building programme for the VEC members is only an eye opener on school community relationship and co management of schools for quality education. The VEC need to be trained on the holistic approaches towards holistic approaches in long term basis.
- Though there is provision of school supervision but in remote area it is in pen and paper. There is huge gap between policy and practice. Strong supervision by government officials and neutral assessment of teachers is necessary.
- There should be some kind of appraisal for teachers which will motivate good teachers as well as create pressure for de-motivated one.
- Involvement of Panchayati Raj can create differences which is a gap in present context. Law can provide basic facilities but systematic efforts at all level are needed to bring positive changes. Then only parents will be motivated to send their children to schools and children will stay at school without any compulsion.
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?
We must accept that quality teacher is the prime component for quality education .So if no of teachers per school is assured by government and good candidates are selected having proper teachers training and in service training is qualitative, there is proper monitoring and supervision for teachers, regular assessment - is there any need for creating a resource pool?
If the youths work as a resource pool and help in specific activities like classroom demonstration, bridging gap between parents and school with payment, again this will caret another categories of teacher like Para teacher, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
Unemployed youths can help teachers in classroom management, demonstration, to bridge the gaps between teachers and parents .But our experiences says systematic training and proper follow up mechanism is much more important. When we are thinking for government schools on a large scale how far concept of resource will be applicable that is questionable?
We should always keep in mind that the motivation is not absolute; it is with reference to the assignment. It means that those who are not motivated in teaching may be motivated in doing some other things. The key to the success is in identification of interest of those who are not motivated in teaching and accordingly channelize their energy productively for development of education.
There are teachers who have good motivation with or without skills. Different training programmes can be helpful in developing these teachers for all productive purposes in education system. Different strategy is required for rest types of teachers who lack motivation with skill or without skill.
My stand on this issue is clear that motivation of teacher cannot improve through training. Different training programmes can improve and benefit the system by improving some skill sets of the motivated lot only.
Teachers who have good skill sets and poor motivation to teach can easily be identified. They always complain the system. These are the teachers who enjoy everything except teaching. They would tell you their handicap that they are being engaged in non academic work etc but in actual, they try their best to get engaged in all such types of non academic work. These teachers are very eloquent and can deliver good speeches and always interested in getting engaged with different programmes as monitors and trainers and they are always misunderstood as motivated teachers. It is due to this reason most of the training programmes fails. These teachers never identify themselves with the different training programmes they are attached with as trainers. They are one who knows the avenues which serve best of their interest.
Some of above type of teachers are as follows;
- Teachers who have good skills set but absolute lacking of motivation in teaching. These teachers are very few in number. They are leaders of teachers at different level. They can be given responsibility of monitoring and implementation of programme as they would otherwise also can not be used in classroom teaching. These teachers can be good managers. These teachers should be given space and respect. Regular monitoring of their assigned responsibility and respect to their suggestion within a framework in regular interaction sessions would be helpful in improving situation. This should be done at the component in-charge level not at the district coordinator level. The component in-charge should have good relationship with these leaders with a clear cut view that these teachers can never be mainstreamed in classroom teaching.
- Another kind of teacher is those who are weak at skills and lack motivation. These are the teachers who make the voice of leaders louder on issues related to incompetence of governments' efforts by aggressively supporting their leaders. They are potential leaders who have strong hold at cluster level. If they are interacted at the individual level they will accept all the good things but in group they will oppose all changes as the illogical opposition is base of their power seeker behavior as politician who wishes to impress its audience. The implementer should have good relation with these teachers to avoid nuisance and create support at the cluster level. We need to them assign little different work suited to their best skill sets by motivating them to do something different. They can be engaged in as advisors to the teachers. The implementers need to praise their every small contribution and share his good works with the teachers on which he has command. Their ego will be satisfied. These teachers can be channelized slowly to the mainstream.
- Third kinds of teachers are those who lack motivation as well as skills. Their lack of motivation is largely because of poor skill sets they are having. By virtue, they are good followers as they have no other options. One can create pressure on them through their leaders itself. The leaders also find them as soft targets of change. In this way one can channelize the energy of the leaders in some less productive but useful work.
Another ways to improve motivation is praising of good work done by the teachers by writing good specific comments in the service books, sharing of good work done by the teachers in public meeting and in promoting media to highlight the achievements. Active onsite support system without fear of punishment can also make education system efficient. There is very interesting thing about the punishment. In most of the cases the leaders who are disturbing the system are seldom punished. Only those who are either motivated or who absolutely lack motivation and skill both get punishment. So the punishments either put brakes on efficiency or in second case have no impact on efficiency.
Last but not the least and the most difficult is to bring the transparency in processes of implementation of programme. It is the most important thing which motivates teachers.
All the above has been written on the basis of good work done in Vaishali district of Bihar as UNICEF first extender engaged in implementation of programme at whole district level to make impact on education system through model setting and advocacy. It later create base of many changes in education in Bihar like "Sankalp Programme" (on out of school), establishment of strong child forum like Meena Manch and child cabinet and remedial teaching with handholding of the children of excluded community, setting up of small library in the school etc.
Shruti Singh, Asian Development bank, Mongolia
I think the motivation of the existing teacher in the government school or in common parlance school would be taken care at two phases:-
- First at the time of the teacher teaching education and B.Ed study the emphasis should be given to the commitment and motivation factor. Likewise various session of participatory learning technique need to be taught which they can replicate during their inclusion into school and thus it would not a burden for them as a routine procedure rather act as dynamic and interesting activities to be carried forward.
- Secondly, during the recruitment process those applicant getting into the system through various high profile contacts or through other mode need to be removed. During the recruitment and selection process due attention should be paid on the interest area and the commitment on the part of the applicant so that they don't go for jumpship. Also the detailed orientation of the ethic and other vital issue along with the significance of the organization and the beneficiaries should be dealt in detail. however, their should be enough scope to be provided to the existing teacher for capacity building of the innovative teaching methodologies and technique through the forms of workshop, conference and training periodically.
Money is always an attractive medium and the basic reason for the teacher opting for private schools rather than government school. However, the remote country side area lack trained and experienced teacher and if at all available they rather look to move to the urban area. These need to be addressed at the earliest because at that very place the government schools are operated only. Hence due encouragement should be given to bring the participation from private school to make it more competitive to enhanced high level of education system. Various non profit organizations and other institution can take part in providing these services through vocational training courses. The medium of e-learning should also be emphasized deeply and implemented into those remote rural areas to cater the demand and the retainment of the existing teachers.
Neeraj Das Guru, ICRA Management Consulting Services Limited, Patna
In Bihar there are three existing ways to create pool of teachers
- In Bihar the Diploma in Education as pre service teacher training is going on in the 12 District Institute of Educational Training (DIETs) and Primary Teacher Education College (PTEC) and two private colleges. All these training institutes are preparing about 850 teachers. There is plan to expand the programme in the other 12 DIETs, PTEC and which have affiliation from National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) in the state.
- The other way to prepare teachers is through different B. Ed courses. There are four types of institutions providing this degree to the potential teachers.
· The Universities: In this category presently only two institutes under Patna University are conducting such courses.
· The Correspondence Mode: IGNOU, Nalanda Open University, Magadh University and Mithila University are running such courses
· Government B.Ed Colleges: Out of 5 government B. Ed. colleges. The only center at Turki (Muzaffarpur District) is functional; rest 5 colleges do not have NCTE affiliation. Though there are staff working (?) and getting salaries from the government.
· Private B.Ed. Colleges: There are 21 B.Ed Colleges who have (NCTE) affiliation.
- Considering the number of requirement of teachers in Bihar at elementary level and at secondary level, the demand is beyond the feed to the system through the pre service training programmes. Due to the limited seats in the different B. Ed. colleges and Institutions running Diploma in Education courses a large gap has been created. So as per the NCTE guidelines there is limited scope to fill the gap. Huge expenditure in infrastructure and human resource development in government institutions and increase in private partnership is the solution within the norms of NCTE.
One can also think about two year voluntary contribution by the graduate youth who opt teaching as their career and after that if they wish to continue they could be given some honorarium and enrolled in on-service correspondence course of Diploma or Degree courses. Once they clear the exams they may be regularized.
The NCTE norm may be relaxed for those who are M.A. in Education for teaching at least up to primary level after some on job training.
Padmashri Mithu Alur, National Resource Centre for Inclusion, Mumbai
My experience in innovative methods of teaching has focused on children with different kinds of difficulties in learning, where it has been necessary to introduce imaginative and creative ways of motivating children to grasp concepts. One of the methods I have used is an age old method called task analyses. This is when a teacher is confronted with a child failing in a particular topic or a child not grasping a particular issue task analyses has been introduced. This term describes a process where a teacher evaluates the subject (Which is not being grasped by the child)and the way it is being presented and creates a change in the presentation for instance if the child is not grasping the difference between a valley and a plateau the teacher goes out to the field with the child and creates different geographic structures like mountains, valleys, plateaus, rivulets and the child helps and then the teacher returns to the text book, moving from three dimensional teaching to one dimensional. This maybe a simplistic example, but the method of analyzing one's (teacher) own task and then changing it goes to the root of the belief that no child fails, it is the teacher who has to understand how to put across knowledge differently until the child has understood.
Appointment of teachers and their in service training has to be very carefully and stringently carried out. The teachers to be appointed need to go through a criterion of selection where the passion to teach children, the need to expand in one's knowledge continuously cannot be too overemphasized, I would develop the selection process of teachers and the kind of in service training which emphasis's a code of practice which will be the teachers guide of best practices used.
Neeraj Das Guru, ICRA Management Consulting Services Limited, Patna
From Bihar, some teachers from Nalanda district, and the officers of the Bihar Education Project visited Rishi Valley. With the help of United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Bihar, the teachers of Nalanda district developed cards based on the textbook used in class I and II in the state. The process initiated in Nalanda district under PEEP (Primary Education Enhancement Project) supported by UNICEF. Later the teaching learning process was tried in some of the schools in Vaishali district also.
Due to too many logo and arrangement of these logo cards in the classroom, the experiments could not attract the attention of the system. Most of the officers found it very difficult to understand. Others rejected the process on the basis of reports in the air.
Later as a result of Sankalp programme (programme dedicated to mainstreaming of out of school children under SSA with support from UNICEF Bihar and Pratham) a lot of Residential Bridge Course (RBC) centers have been initiated for 10 + never enrolled and dropout children. But these centers lacked appropriate learning material which could serve the target group at different understanding and competency levels. The Rishi valley experiment showed the way.
Bihar UNICEF conceptualized vertical competency based ladder (VCBL material) and developed integrated learning card keeping in view the competencies up to class V for three subjects; Hindi language, Mathematics and the Environment science. The whole course divided into milestone in such a way that if a child completes one milestone he /she would achieve one such designed competency up to grade V. The activities are divided into teacher centered, partially teacher centered, self learning, evaluation, project work and book related exercise. To avoid problem of understanding due to lots of logo, no logo allocated to the sub activities. Although the logo of sub activities make it more scientific for the educationists but it was found that it has no use for children in reality. This made the process easier. Even the teachers found it easier to implement. The less learned teachers were proved boon as they had very little to unlearn.
Little improvement in this VCBL material would be very helpful in developing a tool for mainstreaming of older children studying in lower classes to age appropriate classes which is a major task under RTE. In Bihar as per DISE 2007-08 about 19 % children are not studying in age appropriate classes.
The experiment (field testing of the material) was done in 3 Residential Bridge Course centers in Nalanda District with strong mentoring by the three teachers who were also the part of the material development process. These three centers closed after 3-4 months as their time completed. But the 3-4 month experiment taught a lot to the team. Teachers of the formal school, instructors who implemented it and the children enjoyed learning at their own pace in joyful manner. It attracted attention of community as well as Delhi Public School. The students were very happy and wished to continue their studies.
New improved material to scale up the process in the RBC as well as Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhayalaya (KGBV) is ready. We are going to develop three centers as resource centers which will be developed as on-site training centers. The training of instructors for the other RBC will start after 20th of Feb 2010. By August 2010 we will introduce the teaching learning process in all the RBCs in the state.
I agree with Srabantika Bhattacharya. There is a need to provide incentives and recognition to the teachers of SSA. There are two solutions for this.
- To have refresher course or orientation to guide and help the teachers of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to update themselves with latest technologies, especially in technologies for accessibility.
- To make a platform for exchange of ideas and sharing the views between the government policy makers and the consumers of SSA along with the teachers.
This can enable successful implementation of skills of teachers in SSA, whether they are in private or government or non-profit organization. While doing these programs there could be recognition for teachers and provision of incentives. Of course the discussion forum will provide variety of solutions to the problems existing today in India in Education of the children with disabilities.
Umesh Chandra Gaur, Confederation of Community Based Organizations of India, New Delhi
To teach someone is a very noble cause. But in the present times people regard it as a profession. Private schools provide high salaries to their teachers but in the Government Schools it is not so much. After 12th standard every year many student chose this profession for their career. In the recruitment process in the private and government schools, many people apply since they believe that "kam ka kam or Aram ka Aaram". These types of teachers don't take pre-service training as it is one of the required qualifications.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 received the assent of the President of India in August 2009. I want to question how can this be possible? No one wants to go to urban and rural areas to educate the children or the people due to lack of facilities.
This could be made possible only by the Government help. The Government should make a council for every state which can take care of the matter. In addition to this, non-profit organizations (NGOs) and Voluntary Organization (VOs) of every state should come forward to make this Act successful. As a Chairman of a Confederation of Community based Organization of India, I think that this is only possible when we look forward to this matter seriously and honestly.
Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy, Hand in Hand Micro Finance Limited, Chennai
I am not an Educationist and my suggestions may not be scientific. Here are my humble suggestions.
How can the government be supported to improve the motivation and skills of existing teachers in government schools?
- Through Policy changes
- By suggesting Methodology for impartial appraisals of all teaching fraternity covered by the government
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?
- How about Central Teacher's Recruitment Board?
- Recruit the un/trained unemployed and build capacity as needed
The teaching methodologies used and found useful in enabling high quality learning teaching and monitoring systems, and which can be scaled up by government schools.
In the schools run by our organization, Hand in Hand, the methodology used is Activity Based Learning (ABL) and it is indeed showing results and in my opinion seems to be alright.
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.
This might be said in a broader sense but in my personal opinion the responsibility is with four parties.
- The government,
- The teachers,
- The parents and most importantly
- The students themselves.
There should be forums that bring in all these stakeholders together for realistic & constructive discussions and for taking the way forward.
A mere Parent - Teacher association may not fully do the justification.
Comments on how official resources are best directed in the implementation of the RTE Act:
In government schools
- By making the Headmaster responsible for the implementation and communication concerned with her/his school or
- By appointing a dedicated window manned by a senior teacher / staff member in the school for this purpose (the limitation is many schools in the country hardly have any infrastructure for such methodologies but it has to be somehow done). If a school does not have even a teacher to answer what is the use of calling such an institutional school?
Through Non-profit organizations (NGOs) and educational foundations
- By recognizing selected NGOs and Educational Foundations and enabling them
Through Public-Private Partnership (PPPS) with for-profit educational organization
- By carefully selecting such partnerships and enabling them.
In all the above three cases sufficient capacity building rim
- Legalities,
- Time frames,
- Responding methodology and most importantly
- Suitable interactive & relationship building / maintenance skills need be developed.
This has to be done in a Uniform way across the country. Periodic reviews of the system and wherever needed overhauling be done without any hesitation.
Anjela Taneja, Actionaid India, New Delhi
There are so many tangled threads in this issue related to teacher management that attempting to intervene at only one front is bound to fail since it would not cover the gamut of problems that affect the system. At the outset it may be essential to list some of these "non-methodology" issues:
- Overall Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) of the country hovers over the current SSA Norm, but even the average exceeds the new RTE one. Consequently, PTRs being what they are, it's unrealistic to really obtain high quality outputs.
- Roughly 1 in 10 teachers across the country (by the government's own estimates) are para-teachers (however, it may define it). The real figure of professionally untrained teachers is even higher.
- Many teachers are woefully under-paid.
- Many of the existing teacher vacancies have not been filled.
- There are no incentives or basic facilities for teachers to undertake rural posting- or posting outside their own village.
- The Cluster Resource Center (CRCs) are not performing the role expected of them. There is no oversight or support to the teachers on-site.
- Community participation- monitoring systems have not really been set up properly despite lot of legal spaces for the same in existence.
- Teacher training systems have not been set up, or if they had been once set up, have been dismantled over the decades.
- BRCs and DIETS have also failed to deliver what was expected of them- having been understaffed and underfunded and often (in the case of the DIETS in particular) cut off from the mainstream of education programmes.
- Yes, there are few indigenous teaching methodologies. Yes, even fewer of these are sensitive to the local context.
How can the government be supported to improve the motivation and skills of existing teachers in government schools?
· It is essential to look at the various stakeholders who could assist the process. In addition to the stakeholders listed in your OP, it is essential to likewise build bridges with the teacher Unions on issues other than just their salaries.
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?
· In my opinion, this sounds dangerously close to another proposition to bring back para-teachers who are (going by your own text) usually unqualified to teach. If the intent is to create a teacher cadre of professionals- something essential to fix the problems described above, there is no quick fix except to build the said cadre (with opportunities for professional growth) and not convert teaching into the last refuge of the un-qualified.
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.
- There is no other body with the experience of delivering education on a large scale and from Class I-12 in diverse settings and for children from marginalized groups except the government. There are good experiences when government teachers themselves have delivered and delivered well. Nalli Kalli & the early Lok Jumbish are examples in point.
- The only experience of things having been done on scale outside the government is the Eklavya's Hoshangabad Science Teaching Experiment. It too has since ended having come into contact with existing reality of functioning in a government system. In addition to Rishi Valley itself, there are also some experiments undertaken under Janshala (Bodh Shiksha Samiti & Digantar, both Jaipur, Rajasthan). The experience of ABL in TN is another possible experience to learn from. Some of the other organizations that I have been in touch with which have a good resource on issues of pedagogy issues are Shikshasandhan, Orissa, Bhasha, Gujarat & APCL, Bihar. However, having worked in one of the premier pedagogy NGOs in North India, I once again reiterate that approaches that worked in our smaller NGO schools do not necessarily work in the government system. Size does Matter.
- Some of the experiences of monitoring systems of educational systems that are replicable include MV Foundation (AP & especially other parts of the country) and some of the work supported by us (ActionAid- including but not limited to, Madhya Pradesh Shiksha Abhiyan, MP; AMIED, Alwar, Rajasthan; and East West Society, Bihar; CARD, Samastipur, Bihar & APCL, Bihar).
How official resources are best directed in the implementation of the RTE Act:
- The principal role of NGOs and CSOs should be to monitor the functioning of the education system. There is a clear role for NGOs in supporting research, policy advocacy and monitoring and addressing the underlying governance issues.
- The recent entry of PPP into secondary education in the form of Model Schools has been opposed violently across the country. It is better not to open the Pandora's Box by suggesting entry into PPP for elementary education covered under the Act. However, Prof Krishna Kumar, NCERT Director, has spoken about the possibility of PPP in teacher training. There is some value of regulating and streamline the process of delivery of teacher training by private teacher training institutes (that are mushrooming already) to get their involvement in pre-service and in-service training. However, this would entail setting up clear guidelines and regulatory mechanisms to ensure contract compliance under the PPP.
For the full response, please contact Resource Team
Radhika Herzberger, Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh
I am writing in response to Mr. Jitendra Shah, who recommends that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offer an alternative solution to the problems of Indian education: "Hence" he says, "the conclusion that we should now make ICT as the base for wiser communication". Mr. Shah's use of the word 'wiser' is probably a typographical error; he probably meant to write 'wider'.
I agree with Mr. Shah that ICT would certainly enable us to disseminate our achievements more widely. However, my agreement is only partial. ICT offers as he points out, access to the world class curricula, the possibility of connecting academic disciplines and, most important of all, the potential of scaling up to meet the needs of large populations. But how successfully the educational material is transmitted to students will depend on committed teachers, cognizant of the difficult futures students today are likely to face. There are other problems associated with the use of ICT
- ICT is expensive: The cost of connecting schools to an ICT network are exorbitant. The erratic supply of electricity, especially in the countryside where more than 50% of the Indian population continues to reside, would have to be factored into the already high cost of education.
- ICT increases the dangers of a centralized, top-down approach to education: In the hands of an ideologically committed government, educational policy can become prescriptive, where decisions are made by the state in disregard of the community and regional ethos.
- The ICT driven model of education is abstract, i.e. removed from tangible reality: In the worst case scenario, bird watching (ornithology) and conserving bio-diversity can become indoor activities. Students may learn about them, but for the distance between knowledge and action needs to be bridged before conservation becomes reality transcends ICT capabilities. The effort required for conservation of natural habitats (what the eminent biologist E. O. Wilson calls 'biophilia') will not has to acquaint students with nature, if their senses are not cultivated and alert to the destruction of eco-systems around them?
Since I am not making an argument against ICT but rather an argument for using it effectively in order to upgrade existing government schools, I shall outline, what we in Rishi Valley see as a feasible role for ICT.
The suggestion sketched below should be viewed in the context of the Right to Education Bill (RTE) and Public Private Partnership (PPP).
- Set up video-conferencing centers in each and every district in the country;
- Set up a master lab in the capital city of each state. If this can be done in more than one city per state, all the better; but we could start with just one such centre. This lab must be equipped with broadcasting apparatus (video + audio), computer enabled smart board, etc.
- Identify mentors in each state, in each and every subject, and for each level of schooling. Competent mentors need not be restricted to teachers but can be drawn from different professions.
- Establish video contact on a regular basis between the mentor group and teachers assembled in the district centers, according to a prearranged schedule (perhaps once every four weeks);
- Let each subject-grade level group meet once a month for a two hour interactive session, and let efforts be made in these sessions to answer doubts faced by teachers;
- Let pre-recorded lessons taken by expert teachers (recorded earlier in the master lab) be shown on a periodic basis, to be watched by the teacher audience;
A more complete proposal for in-service training, written by Dr Shailesh Shirali, is available on www.rishivalley.org/features
Purnima Kashyap, Social Association for Awareness Training and Human Improvement, Jaipur
I was going through the response of Ms. Radhika Herzberger and found a very important line, which is very close to the concept which we, at Social Association for Awareness Training and Human Improvement [SAATHI], believe that when implemented in teaching methodologies would enable high quality learning, teaching and monitoring system.
The line says that "distance between knowledge and action needs to be bridged". This basically is the need of the hour. The major problem in almost all the government schools is the retention of children in spite a cent percent enrolment. And so in order to make the whole Rural India education process a success, the very first thing should be to encapsulate activities in teaching methodologies which would arose interest in children to study and to come to school. Moreover the activities should be designed as such to reduce the gap between theory and practical; between knowledge and action. Allowing children to learn things by actually doing it will definitely arose curiosity in their minds and encourage them to understand things in a better way.
The concept which I was referring to focuses on the same ground and we call it "DISCOVER". It is a concept to help young minds discover all sorts of new and different things about the world around them.
DISCOVER believes that "there is only one way to learn how to do something and that is to do it". The aim is to gift young minds the gift of enthusiasm by making them realize the power of their thoughts.
We, at SAATHI, have decided to do the pilot testing of this concept under the UNICEF's project of "Ensuring access to elementary education to STILL out of school children", at our areas of study i.e., in Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan.
The process could include children learning the basic concepts of astronomy, light, force, compass, magnets etc.... This we would try to achieve by indulging children in activities like;
- Rainbow colours
- Tug of war
- Basic astronomy
- Magnet world
- Direction game
- Candle fun etc.
With a desire "to make each child sad when the last bell is rung at the end of the day in school", we hope that "DISCOVER" could become a tool to bring a revolution in the education system and make every child understand the power of education, thereby motivating and encouraging them to go to School.
Suggestions on this matter from the community members are always welcome Moreover we would be glad to share our ground experiences with the members.
Umesh Chandra Gaur, Confederation of Community Based Organizations of India, New Delhi
The Government of India regard education as the basic element for overall development of its citizens. I want to say that only a good teacher can make a good student. But it is sad to say that the burden of bags of the children is increasing but the level of education is decreasing because the teachers don't give full attention to their students.
Sixty years after the Constitution of India came into force, the commitment to provide education to all, remain unfulfilled. While India is home to 22% of the world's population, it accounts for 46% of the world's illiterates. Almost one fourth of the world's total child labour force and a very high proportion of the world's out of school children and youth are in India.
I want to draw attention towards the condition in rural and urban areas. The quality of education is poor. Quality of education and performance of teacher are two areas of urgent concern. Number of schools has increased yet facilities are far from satisfactory. Nationally sponsored schemes are nation specific only. Quality of education is very low - for example in Uttar Pradesh, among the children studying in Class V, 5% cannot read anything, 15% can only identify alphabets, and 50% can do simple addition and subtraction.
We can start some awareness camps for teachers. Government should give more attention in rural and urban areas and should make a committee who regular take back report monthly from every school so that government could know that the position of a particular school is improving or not. Non Government Organizations and Voluntary Organizations can play an important role in this. They can lead the awareness camps. By doing this we can improve our educational system.
Jammu and Kashmir State is way ahead of other states in teacher education. The State has many institutions imparting teacher education. The DIET's train primary teachers and they receive a Diploma at the end of the course. There are also institutions of ETT (Elementary teacher training) imparting two years training. These are affiliated to Jammu & Kashmir Board of School Education. Most of the trainees come from the neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal. There are over a hundred private B.Ed. colleges besides two Government B.Ed. Colleges located in Jammu and another in Srinagar. B.Ed colleges located in Kashmir Division are affiliated to Kashmir University and those located in Jammu Division are affiliated with Jammu University. All these institutions fulfill National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) conditions. Like in the case of ETT students from neighboring states come for admissions to pursue B.Ed. courses.
Both the Universities of the State also have a two year Distance Education programme to train teachers for B.Ed degree. Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) also has set up centers at Srinagar and Jammu for correspondence education including B.Ed courses.
Teacher Education is an essential component of School Education. How far do the teachers possessing teaching degrees follow what they have learnt at the college? This is something that needs monitoring.
Nayana Renukumar, Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad
For improving the motivation of teachers and raising the overall level of learning in government schools, I would like to draw attention towards the potential for improving the quality and impact of school inspections using social accountability tools. School inspection in India is a relatively neglected area, focusing more on administrative matters and less on quality of pedagogical inputs, teacher-learning process, effective school management and community involvement. Workload of inspecting officers, inadequate number of school inspectors, poor quality of personnel, low salaries and lack of specialization are the other issues weakening the inspection system. Moreover, school authorities look at external inspections with suspicion and mistrust as they feel that inspection is a process being done to them and not with them. While the concept of 'school complexes' and 'Village Education Committees' have been introduced in some states for addressing issues related to supervision of schools, no tangible progress has been achieved.
Social accountability tools focusing on stakeholder participation can complement the presently weak system of school inspection and address some of these issues. Recently, social accountability tools have evolved to bring in accountability and transparency in public services with active engagement of the community. A variety of tools like community score cards, social audits, citizen charter and school score cards are progressively being introduced as mechanisms to improve the functioning of government schools. Centre for Good Governance, in partnership with M Venkatarangaiya foundation piloted Community Score Cards in 19 schools of Adilabad and Nalgonda districts of Andhra Pradesh. After two rounds of the Community Score Card exercise, definite improvements in the quality of education were noted. This experiment is being taken forward by Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), Government of Andhra Pradesh. While most social accountability initiatives in India relating to schools have hitherto focused on mid-day meal schemes, scholarship etc., little exploration has been done on the potential of these tools to complement a school's inspection.
Use of social accountability tools in school inspection can have following desirable impacts:
- Bring aboard hitherto neglected stakeholders groups like pupil and community members other than parents and school authorities for providing evidence on the effectiveness of a school. While quality of teaching and learning within the classroom is best assessed by the experts, community feedback in school inspection can provide insights on the wider social impacts of the school and empower the community to play a more active role in education.
While many state governments have already established 'participatory committees', they are not school-specific; rather a village education committee is based at the gram Sabha level (the lowest level of the Panchayat system), despite the fact that a gram Sabha may have more than one school or no school at all. Moreover, the caste and class based divisions prevalent in society keeps all but the most influential parents out of such committees. Participation guided by a school inspection system will provide better results compared to the current adhoc set up of Village Education committees.
- Evolve inspection reports from mere information brochures on school's administrative operation to comprehensive reports setting guidelines for development of the school: While this might seem far-fetched in the present dismal state of government schools in India, it is time to revisit the role of schools as vehicles of improvement and development of the community.
- Set the stage for more intense involvement with the community to monitor the implementation of Right to Education: School inspectors are set to emerge as the government representative closest to the field to ensure that Right to Education is implemented in its spirit. For this, they will need the community's involvement and parents support and there is no mechanism more effective than introduction of social accountability tools at this stage to build better relations with eth community.
Integrating social accountability with school inspection and charting a wider role for school inspectors might seem ambitious given the sorry state of Indian school inspection system. However, adequate training of inspectors for improved interaction with the community and concerted action to build capacity of community members to facilitate the inspection process might help improve the quality of monitoring and supervision of schools and consequently, the quality of education.
Avinash Verma, CARE India, Uttar Pradesh
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.
Shubhra Chatterji, Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Kolkata
Our organization Vikramshila has been working with teachers and children for the past twenty years to reach out to children who find it difficult to access good quality education. We have found that it is comparatively easier to implement innovative ideas in our own schools, and the real challenge lies in working with the government system and teachers – within schools. The last twenty years has seen a profusion of in-service trainings, but the majority of the classrooms continue to function in the traditional way. Transfer of training to the classroom remains a challenge. There is however a tendency to put the entire blame on the teachers for this and there is talk of poor teacher motivation and whether this can be addressed through some management kind of training and quick fix solution.
We at Vikramshila have been grappling with this issue of introducing relevant and meaningful changes in classroom learning and have been working along with teachers inside the classroom to find out ways and means of how these can be instituted within the existing systemic constraints. We are working with government schools at the upper primary level, where the poor learning achievement of children is a matter of concern.
We have identified the following issues:
- Mismatch between the curriculum content and actual number of teaching hours in a year (less than 500!) makes it virtually impossible for the teacher to do anything but rush through the textbook to 'cover' the syllabus irrespective of whether the children have been able to understand it or not. The act of learning as a process of 'discovery' remains a far cry.
- Lack of autonomy of teachers (who would like to be different) – in interpreting the curriculum and re-structuring the sequence.
- The tyranny of 'unit tests' and allied paraphernalia attached to the process.
- Lack of proper guidance to teachers to bridge the 'social gap' between them and the first generation school-goers.
- The conflicting self image of the teacher vis a vis her role in school and society.
- Manipulation of the teaching cadre by the powers that be – the teacher of today is a peculiar example of a politically empowered and professionally disempowered being.
Of course, the observations made above are based on our experience of working with schools and teachers of our state, but the general picture is likely to be the same throughout the country.
Having flagged these issues, however I would like to state that is spite of all these difficulties, we have been able to develop a positive relationship with the teachers and the other stakeholders of the schools. On reflection I feel that the success we have experienced is due to the following factors
- We have tried to be as non judgmental as possible about the school functioning and have invested a lot of time just being around the school to be able to understand its culture.
- We simultaneously worked to bring about changes in the school culture while working with specific pedagogical issues. We undertook several activities to develop the various sets of relationship that are operational within any school system – between the Managing Committee and Headmaster, between headmaster and teachers, between teachers and teachers, teachers and children, teachers and community, etc.
- From time to time, we undertook short term activities that showed positive and tangible results – and shared the same with all the stakeholders.
- We have tried to maintain a very responsive stance towards the headmaster and teachers – even though it meant walking a few extra miles a number of times.
The reason why I have elaborated on this issue is that in the coming years there is likely to be a plethora of enterprises on educational innovation to transform the government school system to meet the challenges of Right to Education (RTE). Some of these initiatives may be undertaken by NGOs, and some may be market driven. But before plunging headlong into such reform agendas, it would do us all well to keep in mind the change defying stubborn school culture that brings to naught many interesting and innovative ideas and plan our strategies accordingly.
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/
Many thanks to all who contributed to this query!
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