thumb_up 0

COMMENTS

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)

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

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.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

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.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

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. 

 

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

Srivathsa, Gowri, I didn't say I buy that talk of 'scale'. I merely expressed a personal dilemma. The way I think of it, scale is the wrong word. The right word is impact. Anything that can make a lasting impact or cause change, local or large scale is welcome. Forget that, anyone wanting to do any volunteering, without bothering about impact etc and over analyzing things - nobody should belittle that. Gowri/Navshot, liked the way you talked about "making it fit in the big picture".

Gowri, I am sure many of us will be interested. But not sure how many will realistically be willing to commit regular time (that is where all the problem begins, and number of volunteers dwindle - I have a family, I am abroad, I can only do Saturday evenings, can't commit to a time of week as work keeps me busy etc etc). How about this:

• We set up a voluntary teaching calendar here. Along with it, there will be detailed course material (what needs to be taught/covered, which school). And then, a group of people can combine (by sharing the teaching work) to make sure at least someone takes the classes on a given day. This sort of collaboration could get us more volunteer teachers.
• Do you want to move your school blogs here? Together we attract more people, and the online-driven volunteer program to go with it can get more folks interested.
• And to go with all this, with time, we will track/watch Bangalore's primary education initiatives (under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan or other) and can try to 'lobby' for things with right people.

Be sure that I am only thinking of ways to help you extend your reach. To me, Praja's philosophy is that there are a lot of people with energy, but they don't get the right outlets. On the other hand, lots of organizations like yours do nice and noble things, but your deeds may not be known to as many.

Can talk more over email (just sent you one), but can talk openly via comments here as well. Your pick.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments