3ll_Urbanpoor

Most efforts at improving quality of government education are not widely known, and given the extent of the problem, there seems to be not many such efforts.

1. Efforts focusing on specific subject like Eklavya’s Science and Social science programme, Suvidya’s mathemathic programe, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Teaching, Centre for Science Education & Communications

2. Unconventional areas of Curriculum eg Health, environmental education: CEHAT, FRCH, BVIEER, Uttarkhand Seva Nidhi, Khog, and Abacus in teaching History for Communal Harmony, Vigyan Ashram: rural technology

Community Mobilisation- Jahangirpuri school project of Delhi University, MAYA (Karnataka)

( Adapted from: Omproving the Quality of Government Schools: by Mnadira Kumar & Padma M Sarangapani. Sutraddhar. Books for change.2005.[B.N30.M2])

In the seventies, Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work took an initiative to work with municipal schools in Mumbai. It was the first time a partnership of this kind had been forged between an educational institution and the municipal corporation. We wanted to demonstrate how social services help for the education of the marginalised.

The way we see it is that the BMC has to be accountable to its citizens. Citizens should be able to work together with the BMC, and not antagonise it. Thus, Pratham was born in Mumbai in 1994, committed to the cause of universalisation of primary education. Although it was technically set up as a nongovernment organisation (NGO), it is really a platform that brings together the local self-government, the corporate sector and the voluntary sector.

The Sarva Shikshan Abhiyan of the State is modelled on the Pratham pattern. It incorporates a community-based monitoring system. The Pratham model is cheap, low-cost and replicable; it uses existing resources- "your resource, our mechanism". By 2002, the organisation has spread to 21 cities, (ten of which are in Maharashtra). - Pratham - preparing the very young, Farida Lambay, Humanscape, 01/10/2002, /eldoc/n00_/01oct02HUS.pdf

Jeevan Nirvah Niketan (JNN) is an open school in a slum in Mumbai started by a retired school principal in the early 1990s. When Snehasadan established 15 homes for street-children in the same area, it had to adopt a multi-pronged approach as regards their education. Those who managed to pick up fast were admitted to the formal school. Those who could not were admitted to the open school. In 1996, when the Mumbai Police rescued child-prostitutes from red-light areas and sent them for rehabilitation to shelter homes in the same area, the necessity for an open school for girls who could not adjust with the mainstream education came up. The third category of students in the open school are the child workers from the locality. The shelter homes constructed a new building to house the open school. Now, the open school has a huge building with all modern amenities, well-equipped units for technical and vocational training, and school buses. It provides placement for the students in professional social work institutions. The success story of JNN has inspired the State government to replicate this model in all educationally deprived areas of the State.

Anjina recalls, "When I asked them if they would like to read and write, most of them answered in the affirmative." A devotee of Sai Baba, she approached the trustees of the Sai Temple, then under construction in Sector 40 of NOIDA. Not everyone was happy at the prospect of these children studying in the temple premises. However, after some persua-sion, they permitted her to use the sec-ond floor of the temple to run her non-formal education centre. The children are graded not according to their age but according to their learning abilities. Once their level is decided, they are taught from appropriate books. For instance, all new students, irrespective of their ages, are placed in level I. Exams are held at regular intervals to assess them and their learning capabilities. Accordingly, they are promoted to the next level. Promotion to the next level need not be only at the end of the year but can hap-pen after every exam. These are usually held after every three months. The school has classes till level V, which is equivalent to standard V in the regular schools. It follows the CBSE pattern and the books are those recommended by the CBSE. The children who do well are promised enrolment in the regular school in Vazidpur after level V.
Meanwhile, efforts are also on to find other schools that would accept them once they complete their studies at Sai Shiksha Sansthan.
Then the students of the senior level shift to three classrooms of a school at a distance of about half a kilometer. Another set of 80 students, mainly of the Vth level, join them there. Anjina says that the response of the school administration has been encouraging. They have even asked some of the girls from IXth and Xth classes to adopt one child each. These senior students help them with their schoolwork, and take arts, crafts and dance classes for them after regular school hours.- Teach the children, Anand Jha, Humanscape, 11/01/2002, /eldoc/n00_/11jan02HUS4.pdf

The 'biggest and most comprehensive primary education project for Calcutta's deprived 'urban children' is the result of a joint venture between government agencies, NGOs and industry, which have formed the State Resource Group for Education' of Deprived Urban Children.
The first task of the Group, set up 1999, was to conduct a survey in all 141 city wards to identify how many children were out of school because of "high hidden costs of school, lack of facilities, schools being far away, school environment not being child-friendly, pressures of sibling care school timing not being suitable".- School for all, all in school, MADHUMITA BHATTACHARYYA, Telegraph, 09/04/2001, /eldoc/n21_/09apr01tel1.pdf

While the household's ability to defray schooling related costs, both opportunity costs, as well as direct costs in terms of expenses on textbooks, uniforms, etc., featured as salient determinants of girls schooling, the rela-tionship between a household's economic standing and the enrollment of girls in school was not always clearcut. Thus, the better-off households had girls who were not in school while the poorer households had school-going girls. At the aggregate level, the relationship between per capita household income and the per cent enrolled among girls of school-going age was erratic. In contrast to the relationship between household income and girls' schooling, girls' enrollment was very consistently a function of the schooling exposure of parents.

- The Sociological Context of Girls' Schooling: Micro Perspectives from the Slums of Delhi, Rajiv Kalakrishnan, Social Action, 01/07/1994, /eldoc/n00_/01jul94SOA2.pdf

Pre-school coverage for universalization of primary education dominated Pratham’s efforts in the mid 1990s. Pratham’s low cost and replicable model of community based pre-school provision led to a rapid expansion of the balwadi (pre-school) network across the slum areas of the city. In 1995, there were 200 Pratham balwadis catering to 4000 pre-school age children. By 1996, the number had risen to 350, reaching 7000 children between the ages of three and five. By 1998, the pre-school network had expanded extensively across the city; through approximately 3000 balwadis, close to 55,000 children had access to affordable early childhood education.
....How does pre-school help children in primary school? Would all of the children attending Pratham balwadis have enrolled in formal schools anyway? How has Pratham’s balwadi activity helped to bring every child to school or helped them to learn better? Estimates suggest that in the 1999-2000 school year, a third of all children who entered Std I in the municipal school system with some exposure to early childhood education were from Pratham balwadis. Pratham’s own figures showed that unless the child’s family moves out of Mumbai, practically all children go on to the formal education system – whether it is private schools or government or municipal schools. Enrollment in Std I in a city like Mumbai is very high. With or without pre-school, most six year olds are children are enrolled in Std I.

In 2000-2001, a study sampled approximately 4000 Std I children in municipal schools across Mumbai and compared children who had exposure to early childhood education with those who had none. The study suggests that in this context the real ‘value-added’ of pre-schools has to do with attendance and achievement.

Overall, the data suggest early cognitive advantage of children who have been to pre-school. Children with a pre-school background scored significantly higher in the first test in Std I in language and maths as compared to children without exposure to preschool. This is especially true for Marathi medium schools. Although there may be problems with the measurement of children’s academic progress in school and questions about the accuracy and reliability of attendance data, analyses based on the school system’s own figures do show the comparative advantage of a child who has been to pre-school before.

A survey of the impact of an NGO project to introduce an accelerated reading technique in schools in Maharashtra shows that if children are taught properly, their academic abilities can improve substantially. Intervention is also found to be more beneficial at the lower rather than higher levels of primary education, and the survey did not detect any gender bias in learning.

- Interventions and Learning Abilities - 'Read India' Project in Maharashtra, DHANMANJIRI SATHE, Economic & Political Weekly, 08/01/2005, /eldoc/n21_/08jan05EPW103.pdf

Amongst those who face extreme difficulty in accessing schooling are children of urban slum dwellers and migrants. Even when their parents value education and go to some lengths to admit children to schools, they find private schools (even if government aided and not charging tuition fees) beyond their reach. As for municipal schools, they are widely seen as boring, unattractive, marked by ineffective teaching-learning – in other words, as being ‘good only for the poor’. The first case study in this section presents the work of Pratham, an NGO that has done stellar work with municipal schools in Mumbai. Its emphasis, throughout, has been on strengthening the capabilities of government schools as also on helping children cope with the burdens of learning. Pratham also realised early on that a uniform strategy would not suit all children in scattered slums.

Pratham has chosen to be a supporter rather than a critic of the government, operating on the premise that since education is a state subject, it is the state that should be held accountable. Intervention ought to be directed at reform and improvement through consultation and participation of all involved parties rather than on designing alternative or parallel systems. Since revitalisation of the government system requires both financial and human resources, Pratham has sought to forge a triangular relationship between community, government and corporate donors. Municipal teachers, corporate sector personnel, NGOs, social workers and academics have been brought together in a partnership to rejuvenate the school and help the child.

- Backward and Forward Linkages that Strengthen Primary Education, Vimala Ramachandran, Economic & Political Weekly, 08/03/2003, /eldoc/n21_/Primary-Edu.htm

THE civic authorities are high on euphoria on World Literacy Day today, what with their annual enrolment-drive among primary school children ove.r-shooting the magic 25,000-mark by a substan-tial 3,433 children. But before full marks are awarded, let the gullible be warned a simple perusal of attendence sheets in the civic schools where the children were enrolled not a month ago indicates that 60 per cent of the children have dropped out. The reason? The plan failed to account for the fact that most of the children targeted were street children, who feel they can spend their time more pro-ductively outside the confines of school.
...The children, on the other hand blame the teachers for their disinterest. Most of them complain that they are either rude or ig-nore them completely, because of which they don't feel like they "belong". Some of them are also beaten, they claim. Parroting alien rhymes like "Twinkle twin-kle little star" and "A for apple" is the clincher. So, they simply leave, free uniforms notwith-standing. Says Imran (7), "I might as well con-tinue begging at traffic signals. That way, I earn at least Rs 40 and don't have to take or-ders from a teacher."

- BMC flunks school as kids stay away, Indian Express, 08/09/2000, /eldoc/n22_/8sep00ie1.pdf

Children have a fundamental right to proper development, irrespective of their age, social class and gender. In contrast, according to latest government figures (Multi Indicator Survey, 2001, Department of Women and Child Development, MHRD and UNICEF), only 48% of children have access to preschool facilities; the actual reality is likely to be much lower. Overall, growth monitoring of only 27% children less than five years is done; of those weighed 22% are found to have low birth weight. This effectively means that a quarter of our children are at risk of ill-health right from the start. 62% of children in the second year have not completed immunization; 25% of children are not immunized at all. While there is a now considerable stress on ensuring the needs of school age children, the needs of the very young are ignored.

There is a need to recognize the distinctive nature of early childhood and plan for it accordingly. These efforts fall under the framework of Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) which by definition involves providing the necessary support for every child to realize his/her right to survival, protection and care and ensuring optimal development from birth to the age of eight years. The government has repeatedly stated that ensuring the needs of young children is a matter of priority which is reflected in its policies and programmes. While the recent move to make education as a fundamental right is a step in the right direction, it has effectively meant the dilution of the government’s commitment to ensure education and care for children under six (which were earlier included in the state’s commitment to ensuring education for all children under fourteen years of age).

More Articles:

- NGOs take the lead in education, Matilda Yorke, Economic Times, 24/11/2002, /eldoc/Education/241102.pdf

- The Power of One, Manoj Prasad, Indian Express, 07/07/2002, /eldoc/n21_/power_of_one.html

- Concrete, Vedabhyas Kundu, Humanscape, 01/07/2001, /eldoc/n00_/01jul01HUS5.pdf

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Reports

1. Elementary Education for the Poorest and other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalisation, Jha, Jyotsna & Jhingran, Dhir, Centre for Policy Research, 01/06/2002, N00.23

- Education and the Urban Poor- pg 191-228

2. India Education Report, Govinda, R, Oxford University Press, 01/01/2002, N21.G.1.R ,

- Education of Urban Disadvantaged Children by Vandana Chakrabarty- Ch 5 pg 59-71

3. India Education Report, Govinda, R, Oxford University Press, 01/01/2002, N21.G.1.R ,

- Role and contribution of NGOs in Basic Education- Ch 10 pg 121- 130

4. Public Report on Basic Education in India, Oxford University Press, 01/01/1999, N21.P.1,

- Ch 8 pg 95-113

5. Door Step School - Annual Report, July 2002-June 2003, Door Step School, 01/10/2003, R.N30.12,

6. Background information on VOICE, N21.49

7. Science education Teaching Methodology Teachers Training
- Looking back To the Future - A Triannual Report of the Eklavya Foundation for the years 1998-2001, Eklavya Foundation, 01/12/2001, R.N20.5

8. NFE, Education and Child Labourers,
- Elementary Education and Child Labour in India, Oonk, Gerard, MV Foundation, 01/04/1998, R.N21.19

9. Swadhar Akshardeep - A Report 1998-2003, Akshardeep, R.N21.39

10. Education and Child Labourers Democratic Education
- The Concerned for Working Children - Annual Report 2003, The Concerned for Working Children, 01/01/2003 R.N21.33,

11. Educate A Child Discover A Personality, Each One Teach One Charitable, 01/01/2003, R.N21.35

12. Pratham, Mumbai Education Initiative, D'Monte, Darryl, Pratham, 13/01/1998, R.N21.9

13. Maths Education Curriculum development
- Suvidya - Collected Papers, Suvidya, 01/01/2001, R.N24.10

14. Govt -NGO joint venture Curriculum Development
- Samvaad: Towards a Dialogue, AVEHI, 01/01/1995, R.N24.1

15. Curriculum Development Science education
- EKLAVYA - The Spirit of Innovation In Education, EKLAVYA, R.N30.10

16. Alternative Curriculum Schools
- Prayas - Experiences in Partnership - Vigyan Ashram, Singh, Manju, CAPART, R.N30.7

17. Mel Jol Hum Bacchon Ka, Annual Report, 1993-94, R.N21.57
Books:

1. recheck books.

see vimamal ramachandranWebsites: