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Gowri, thanks for this excellent post.

I have a conflict running in my mind. One thing I am often told is - charity never scales. When trying to help with issues like these, what should be the role of active citizens? "become a traffic warden" if you are so driven about traffic - can this scale, or is this right?

While I am nobody to belittle those who volunteer to do things (traffic wardens, or volunteer teachers). But primary education is a prime area of social responsibility local governments have. Pushing them to increase allocations in this area, making them divulge how they spend currently allocated amounts, and how they monitor the effects of their spending - do you think this type of help will go a longer distance?

Questioning and pushing and helping those  who are "supposed" to do the job - I think this approach will bring us more results.

On the other hand volunteering activities bring quick results and satisfaction, how much ever small the area of impact may be. This is the other side of the conflict that runs on my, and I am sure many other people's minds.

Welcome to Praja.

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Quick win
One area where we can help is coming up with checklist to rate the schools and have a praja rating system for the best run govt school in the state (start with BLR) which will be validated and approved by govt/experts. Praja volunteers and working groups can participate in the annual rating exercise with the help of the education dept.

Medium term plan
First, Set up a working group to collect all opinions, ideas, earlier reports & studies done on the methods to improve govt school system. Second, Define the desired state for these schools. Third, brainstorm the methods and expenses and put up a timebound roadmap to take these schools to excellence. Implementing them and monitoring them has to be done by a govt. authority.

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SB,

I personally feel that this scaling question reflects a business mindset.  It is now almost a holy cow!  If something is worth doing, it needs to be scalable!  I am not so sure. 

I am more of a "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness".  I will give you an example from Madras.  Apparently,homemakers in one part of Adyar organize "homework" sessions for poorer children.  They all turn up to the locality, get a glass of milk and a snack, do their homework and then go back home.  Is this scalabale?  I don't know.  Does it make a difference.  I think so. 

It does not have to be an all or nothing approach.  If each of us enables one child to access education in some way, that is good enough. 

 

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This is nothing specific to govt. education; it applies to other initiatives too. I think a majority would get interested in volunteering/charity if they can connect themselves with the big picture. If you can convince them that their efforts would impact in a quantifiable way, more people would help unconditionally.

Open ended requests (like "please help whatever you can") would always create a block in one’s mind. The chances of success is more if you ask specific help and show them how exactly and to what extent it is going to help solve the issues.

A simple example: Every year we have drives in our company calling for volunteers and donations towards education (probably a part/full of it goes to Akshara foundation). This year, we were able to sponsor for about 4 times more underprivileged children than last year!! How was this possible? Last year's campaign just highlighted the issues (the big picture) and called for donations. But this year, with that, it was made clear of the amount (Rs. X) that is required to support one child. So, more employees could connect with it and they could see the kind of impact it would have on one child if they donated Rs. X.

Hence my suggestion is to define what you need clearly. For example: “2 hours of one person’s time on Saturdays for 3 months would help 10 children learn basics of arithmetic, which otherwise they wouldn’t.” OR “Rs. 5000 per year would support a child’s all education needs” and so on.

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Much has been said of the Govt. schools in Bangalore. Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar's latest book, "Escape From The Benevolent Zookeepers," a collection of his writings in his column, Swaminomics in TOI has 5 articles on universal education. He reveals that the problems of ineffective teaching in schools is the same all over the world. He says that mere literacy can be achived in months. The aim of completing six to eight years in primary school (as planned by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan launched in 2001) is to gain skills that translate into higher wages and less poverty. But, while literacy improves income significantly, additional years of schooling contribute very little extra. Why? Because even in many countries with near-universal education, students cannot read simple texts or do simple sums. They may have completed school, but they are functionally illiterate. Surveys in seven Latin American countries reveal functional illiteracy of 40% in Chile,... 43% for nine-year-olds in the USA. Billions spent on more teacher training, textbooks and learning materials have achieved almost nothing. Research suggests that if children cannot read after 2-3 years of education, they probably never will. They may be promoted regularly and complete school, but they will be functionally illiterate. Lesson: Indian education must focus above all on early reading skills. If that is not achieved, all subsequent schooling is a waste. Why are schools so weak in teaching poor children to read? Because ( Aiyar quotes here Ernesto Schiefelbein, former Education Minister of Chile and a renowned educator) better-off children typically enter school with a vocabulary of 2,000 to 4,000 words and have often started reading already at home. But poor children typically have a vocabulary of only 600 words and have never read at home. Now, the skills needed to teach a child with a 600-word vocabulary are totally different from those needed to teach a child with a 3,000-word vocabulary. Most teachers lack the special skills (or time, or patience) needed for teaching poor children. Quality improvement schemes tend to focus on teacher training for higher levels of learning. In itself, this is a good thing, but it tends to neglect the basic skill of teaching children with a very small vocabulary and little support at home from illiterate parents. So, spending billions on supposed quality improvement might not improve learning outcomes: few poorer children will reap much benefit. Are things better in India (or even in Bangalore) than in Latin America? Alas, no. They are probably worse. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan may, by spending thousands of crores of rupees, get most children into school. It may finance better textbooks, teaching materials, and teacher training. But will it ensure that poor children can read within their first two or three years in school? If not, little will be achieved by ensuring that all children complete school. Poorer children will emerge functionally illiterate after wasting eight years in school. One of the best-known NGOs, Pratham, has conducted surveys and says that half the children aged 6 to 14 years cannot read simple sentences. In rural India, about 85 per cent of students in Class VI can read only at the level of Class II to III. However, Pratham has devised an accelerated reading course, which it claims has worked well in the field. With focused effort, illiterates can be taught to read within three months. Children who can barely read the alphabet have been enabled to read entire paragraphs within two or three weeks. Pratham has collaborated with the Maharashtra government to catalyse reading in schools... Maharashtra is scaling up the reading programme to cover the whole State.... Development history is full of stories of islands of success that could not be scaled up nationally. That is the challenge we face today. (Editors: Almost all of the above is copyrighted by TOI. Please examine whether to retain or when to delete this)

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