Measuring School Readiness in Very Young Children
Published: 11/2/2009
New research from Teachers College centering on a unique social experiment undertaken by an entire county in upstate New York offers some of the strongest evidence to date that the “school readiness” of young children upon entering kindergarten can be dramatically improved by providing them with stronger non-academic social supports along with informal education at home.
Since the famous Coleman report of the 1960s, one truth has been held self-evident about the achievement gap separating poorer, typically minority students in the United States from their wealthier, mostly white counterparts: that children’s family background, physical and psychological health, and other non-academic factors weigh as heavily on their chances for academic success as the quality of their schooling. More recently, that idea has been reinforced by research suggesting that the achievement gap gets locked in during the first three to five years of children’s lives, a critical period for developing language and mathematical abilities, social skills and much more.
The TC study lends new weight to both hypotheses. The research focuses on the Chemung County School Readiness Project, a grass-roots, communitywide collaboration that’s providing an array of child and family services to all residents in the region through a multi-agency partnership. The project’s goal is to increase school readiness levels and overall well-being in children during the first five years of their lives. The study’s authors are Madhabi Chatterji, Associate Professor of Measurement-Evaluation at TC and Director of the college’s Assessment and Evaluation Research Initiative (AERI), and her graduate assistant, Radhika Iyengar.
It will take another 10 years – the period during which the current kindergarteners in Chemung County will complete elementary, middle and high school – and several more studies for the Project’s ultimate impact to be known. The current research by Chatterji and her team, which profiled the school readiness of 2007-08 entering kindergarteners, is a baseline study designed to provide points of comparison for a long-term evaluation of the Project’s effectiveness.
Nevertheless, a number of key findings emerged from the study, which includes data on 300 of the county’s 934 kindergarten-enrolled children in 2007-08.
The children who were more “school ready”, the researchers determined, tended to have mothers who were at least college-educated; had been exposed to more informal educational experiences in the home; had received continuous and consistent parent care; were female; and had received pre-schooling at age three.
The children found to be less “school ready” tended to have more sleeping abnormalities; had been exposed to more traumatic events (high levels of family mobility, exposure to assault or incarceration within the family); had a medical history of ill-health or had received professional services for diagnosed special needs; and had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.
“The notion of ‘comprehensive education’” – a term that describes the kind of wrap-around services being provided to Chemung County residents – “has been in the early childhood literature for some time, enacted in the past through legislation such as the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971,” says Chatterji. “Recent thinking is that children who are more school-ready will tend to come from families that can provide more all-round opportunities and supports, such as informal education at home and protection from adversities during childhood.
“Our study validates these ideas using a comprehensive measure of school readiness in kindergarten as the outcome. The data from Chemung County support the project’s theory that providing these community services will promote school readiness in a broad sense. The project staff could use the results to build awareness among parents about the need for comprehensive education and encourage them to make use of county services if they haven’t already done so.”
A key feature of the study by Chatterji and Iyengar is the development of the first comprehensive measure of school readiness (CSR). Typically, school readiness has been defined mainly in terms of children’s literacy and facility with numbers and number concepts. However, the study measured readiness using both cognitive and non-cognitive factors, including children’s health, and social and emotional adjustment (such as their capacity to pay attention and follow rules in school). The study’s CSR is a composite indicator derived from eight such measurements.
To gather data for the study, Chatterji and Iyengar surveyed parents regarding the health history of their children, asking about the kinds of services they used from the county to support development. Each child also was observed by kindergarten teachers during the first semester of the school year. A vast majority of the children (87 percent) were five years old during the period the study was conducted.
Chatterji and two other TC students, Jennifer Mata and A. Brooks Bowden, have also produced a case study looking at how the Chemung County School Readiness Project came together.
“Other, similar efforts have often been initiated by the federal or state governments, but the Chemung project is purely grassroots,” Chatterji says. “It’s unusual for people in a community to band together on their own and attempt something so long-term and far-reaching, so we wanted to see what’s needed to make that happen. What roles did people take on? Who were the visionaries and catalysts? What was the role of local universities and foundations?”
The two studies are the first released by AERI, which was created in 2006 with an expressed goal of evaluating comprehensive initiatives that promote educational equity. The co-director of AERI is Edmund W. Gordon, Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus at Teachers College. Further information can be found at http://www.tc.edu/aeri/
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Friday, October 02, 2009
Anthropology to me……..
One of my prime reasons to apply to a graduate studies program was to bridge the gap between policy and practice. I worked towards universalizing education for marginalized children for many years in India. I hope that after my Ph.D. in Economics and Education, I will be able to compliment my past experience and will be in a position to critically analyze and evaluate basic literary issues in India. Therefore, coming from a background, where literary needs to be taken up in a campaign mode and where the Millennium Development Goals for 2015 almost seem a never attainable dream; I hope to use my education towards the literacy mission. With these overloading thoughts intertwined with my masters in Economics, Anthropology made me confused at the beginning, wonder a bit during the middle and enlightened me in a particular way by the end. The following is a story, of my journey as a novice anthropologist.
Me: Anthropology to me, are stories about people from different cultures. But then, [scratching my head], do I have time for stories knowing that even going to a school is a privilege of the few? Why should I be interested in Sierra Leone and its native people when I have my own problems to solve?
Wise Me: Anthropology taught me the “insider” and “outsider” approach of looking at a particular context. Anthropologist’s during their field work try to get the insider’s perspective, but since they are themselves an outsider, they perceive things differently. Similarly, an anthropological writing may be about an unknown country, but it may still talk about educational issues similar to India. This gives us a chance to look at the same issue in a completely different perspective. Here, Boas’s notion of “cultural relativism” becomes important, as we cannot make generalized conclusions without taking into account the cultural differences (Levinson 2000, p16).
Wise Me: The stories about people with different cultural backgrounds give a much deeper meaning to policies and practices in a particular cultural set up. Schwab points out that the children of an Australian Aboriginal community “failed” in school because the schools were culturally different from their society and they felt powerless in the unfamiliar education system (Schwab 2001, p249). Also, education was not seen as an investment since the aboriginal community does not stay in one place permanently. Therefore, they demanded elements of their culture to make their schools more relevant. In other words “Cultural Maintenance” would make their schools benefit the students. This gives an insightful “story” to what can be applied in the Indian context also.
Me: My goal has been to put children in school, so that they can read and write and be successful in life. Did Anthropology help me to define my goal?
Wise Me: Anthropology helped me to dissect and analyze my stated goal. Do children need to be in school to be educated? What is education and what is its purpose? Does education mean reading and writing a particular set of things the teacher wants the children to write? Fuller says that “throughout the world, schools have come to form part of our common sense, the normal way of “growing up modern (Levinson 2000, p5). The world culture theorist prioritized the learning from schools more than any other form of learning. Bourdieu’s “social reproduction theory”, suggests that schools propagate elements of the dominant culture. Therefore, if you are a part of the “dominant cultural habitus”, you have more probability to “succeed” in schools(Bourdieu 1970). If parents belong to the dominant class, it becomes easier for them to maneuver the system for the benefit of the children. Lareau talks about activation of this cultural capital when parents try to get the most out of the school to benefit their children(Lareau, 1999). She gives the example of Mrs. Marshall who “intervened“ in her daughter Stacey’s education at school and helped her to get into the “gifted-and-talented program”. One the other hand, Mrs. Mason’s argument that the school showed “patterns of racial injustice” was not taken in a positive light by the school, as she was a “black” parent who did not voice her opinion in a socially acceptable manner.
Wise Me: Anthropology brought to light my unquestioned assumptions about schooling. It taught me that what goes on inside the school may be more detrimental to the children than staying out. Therefore, it is important to recognize the “hidden curriculum” of the school and be critical about it.
Me: Why do I need to study ethnicity? Is it going to be related to my work with the non- government sector in India? Is ethnicity related to policy making and implementation?
Wise Me: Anthropology studies how group identities are formed. Malkki presents a narrative on identity formation of refugees in Tanzania (Malkki, 1996). She says that social imagination triggered by voiceless photographs of refugees played a crucial role in their identity formation. The way the refugees think of themselves is in conflict with the camp organizers and international organizations. And that group identities are constructed by historical and political experiences of the groups. On similar lines, Fordham, describes the story of “”high school black girls” who had to struggle against their negative societal image to develop a “meaningful and empowering” image (Fordham, 2000). Therefore, group affinity and common behavior aid in identity formation, also shown by Bateson in a dialogue with his daughter that discusses the characteristics of Frenchmen (Bateson, 2000). Here the Frenchmen are taken as an ethnic group and their behavioral patterns are generalized to being French.
Wise Me: Policy decisions based on “labeling theories” that form group identities may lead to disastrous outcomes. For example, like minded ethnic groups tend to stay together, therefore an education policy like school desegregation led to many families dislocating and children moving to new unfamiliar environments.
Me: Do anthropologists focus more on stories or more on theories? How micro can an ethnography get? Why do we need an historical background for anthropological studies?
Wise Me: The writing style of Anthropologists is very detailed. The detailed description helps the reader to add the cultural context to the writing. Ethnographies present interviews or dialogues as a ways of communicating to the reader. In this context the reader is given a free hand to interpret the dialogues. To place the ethnographies in a certain context, historical and comparative narratives are added as background knowledge. This gives more cultural relevance to the micro oriented ethnographic work.
In the end, though all approaches to ethnographical work are not methodologically convincing to me, but it was a good exercise to get an exposure to such writing. For example, I have apprehensions to the policy level usability of research written in a poetic form. Or adding too much verbosity to the text may defeat the activist purpose of ethnography itself. This is more so when the audience range from being a school administrator, to a senator and the purpose of their read may be different. I also do not like the idea of the interpretation of dialogues to be left to the reader because this may add more subjectivity to the research. The use of culture in ethnographic writing seems to be omnipresent and thus drawing policy conclusions from the entire picture becomes next to impossible. But I acknowledge the fact that anthropology gave me new insights and meanings to common terminologies that had only mainstream cultural meanings before.
References
Bateson, G. (2000). Why do Frenchmen? Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 62-65.
Bourdieu (1970). Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. B. Richards: 56-69.
Fordham, S. (2000). "Those Loud Black Girls": (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender "Passing" in the Academy. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Lareau, A., Horvat, E, M. (1999). "Moments of Social Inclusion and Exclusion Race, Class and Cultural Capital in Family-School Relationships." Sociology of Education 72(1): 37-53.
Levinson, B. (2000). The Symbolic Animal: Foundations of Education in Cultural Transmission and Acquisition. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 15-23.
Levinson, B. (2000). Wither the Symbolic Animal? Society, Culture, and Education at the Millennium. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc: 1-9.
Malkki, L. (1996). "Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization." Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377-404.
Schwab, R. G. (2001). "That School Gotta Recognize Our Policy!": The Appropriation of Educational Policy in an Australian Aboriginal Community. Policy as Practice. Levinson, B., Sutton, M: 243-263.
Me: Anthropology to me, are stories about people from different cultures. But then, [scratching my head], do I have time for stories knowing that even going to a school is a privilege of the few? Why should I be interested in Sierra Leone and its native people when I have my own problems to solve?
Wise Me: Anthropology taught me the “insider” and “outsider” approach of looking at a particular context. Anthropologist’s during their field work try to get the insider’s perspective, but since they are themselves an outsider, they perceive things differently. Similarly, an anthropological writing may be about an unknown country, but it may still talk about educational issues similar to India. This gives us a chance to look at the same issue in a completely different perspective. Here, Boas’s notion of “cultural relativism” becomes important, as we cannot make generalized conclusions without taking into account the cultural differences (Levinson 2000, p16).
Wise Me: The stories about people with different cultural backgrounds give a much deeper meaning to policies and practices in a particular cultural set up. Schwab points out that the children of an Australian Aboriginal community “failed” in school because the schools were culturally different from their society and they felt powerless in the unfamiliar education system (Schwab 2001, p249). Also, education was not seen as an investment since the aboriginal community does not stay in one place permanently. Therefore, they demanded elements of their culture to make their schools more relevant. In other words “Cultural Maintenance” would make their schools benefit the students. This gives an insightful “story” to what can be applied in the Indian context also.
Me: My goal has been to put children in school, so that they can read and write and be successful in life. Did Anthropology help me to define my goal?
Wise Me: Anthropology helped me to dissect and analyze my stated goal. Do children need to be in school to be educated? What is education and what is its purpose? Does education mean reading and writing a particular set of things the teacher wants the children to write? Fuller says that “throughout the world, schools have come to form part of our common sense, the normal way of “growing up modern (Levinson 2000, p5). The world culture theorist prioritized the learning from schools more than any other form of learning. Bourdieu’s “social reproduction theory”, suggests that schools propagate elements of the dominant culture. Therefore, if you are a part of the “dominant cultural habitus”, you have more probability to “succeed” in schools(Bourdieu 1970). If parents belong to the dominant class, it becomes easier for them to maneuver the system for the benefit of the children. Lareau talks about activation of this cultural capital when parents try to get the most out of the school to benefit their children(Lareau, 1999). She gives the example of Mrs. Marshall who “intervened“ in her daughter Stacey’s education at school and helped her to get into the “gifted-and-talented program”. One the other hand, Mrs. Mason’s argument that the school showed “patterns of racial injustice” was not taken in a positive light by the school, as she was a “black” parent who did not voice her opinion in a socially acceptable manner.
Wise Me: Anthropology brought to light my unquestioned assumptions about schooling. It taught me that what goes on inside the school may be more detrimental to the children than staying out. Therefore, it is important to recognize the “hidden curriculum” of the school and be critical about it.
Me: Why do I need to study ethnicity? Is it going to be related to my work with the non- government sector in India? Is ethnicity related to policy making and implementation?
Wise Me: Anthropology studies how group identities are formed. Malkki presents a narrative on identity formation of refugees in Tanzania (Malkki, 1996). She says that social imagination triggered by voiceless photographs of refugees played a crucial role in their identity formation. The way the refugees think of themselves is in conflict with the camp organizers and international organizations. And that group identities are constructed by historical and political experiences of the groups. On similar lines, Fordham, describes the story of “”high school black girls” who had to struggle against their negative societal image to develop a “meaningful and empowering” image (Fordham, 2000). Therefore, group affinity and common behavior aid in identity formation, also shown by Bateson in a dialogue with his daughter that discusses the characteristics of Frenchmen (Bateson, 2000). Here the Frenchmen are taken as an ethnic group and their behavioral patterns are generalized to being French.
Wise Me: Policy decisions based on “labeling theories” that form group identities may lead to disastrous outcomes. For example, like minded ethnic groups tend to stay together, therefore an education policy like school desegregation led to many families dislocating and children moving to new unfamiliar environments.
Me: Do anthropologists focus more on stories or more on theories? How micro can an ethnography get? Why do we need an historical background for anthropological studies?
Wise Me: The writing style of Anthropologists is very detailed. The detailed description helps the reader to add the cultural context to the writing. Ethnographies present interviews or dialogues as a ways of communicating to the reader. In this context the reader is given a free hand to interpret the dialogues. To place the ethnographies in a certain context, historical and comparative narratives are added as background knowledge. This gives more cultural relevance to the micro oriented ethnographic work.
In the end, though all approaches to ethnographical work are not methodologically convincing to me, but it was a good exercise to get an exposure to such writing. For example, I have apprehensions to the policy level usability of research written in a poetic form. Or adding too much verbosity to the text may defeat the activist purpose of ethnography itself. This is more so when the audience range from being a school administrator, to a senator and the purpose of their read may be different. I also do not like the idea of the interpretation of dialogues to be left to the reader because this may add more subjectivity to the research. The use of culture in ethnographic writing seems to be omnipresent and thus drawing policy conclusions from the entire picture becomes next to impossible. But I acknowledge the fact that anthropology gave me new insights and meanings to common terminologies that had only mainstream cultural meanings before.
References
Bateson, G. (2000). Why do Frenchmen? Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 62-65.
Bourdieu (1970). Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. B. Richards: 56-69.
Fordham, S. (2000). "Those Loud Black Girls": (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender "Passing" in the Academy. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Lareau, A., Horvat, E, M. (1999). "Moments of Social Inclusion and Exclusion Race, Class and Cultural Capital in Family-School Relationships." Sociology of Education 72(1): 37-53.
Levinson, B. (2000). The Symbolic Animal: Foundations of Education in Cultural Transmission and Acquisition. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 15-23.
Levinson, B. (2000). Wither the Symbolic Animal? Society, Culture, and Education at the Millennium. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc: 1-9.
Malkki, L. (1996). "Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization." Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377-404.
Schwab, R. G. (2001). "That School Gotta Recognize Our Policy!": The Appropriation of Educational Policy in an Australian Aboriginal Community. Policy as Practice. Levinson, B., Sutton, M: 243-263.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Why do children go to school? Some thoughts from the field
May 2004
Pratham Resource Center
“The initial disposition of children towards schooling is usually positive, when a school functions their motivation is easily sustained. Even in schools where classes are far from exciting children, often look forward to going to school: It a chance to interact with other children a welcome change of atmosphere and a liberation from the chores of family labour”. (PROBE Report)
The PROBE data confirm a basic pattern observed in a number of other studies: that work hours of young out of school children in rural India are relatively short. When children work rather than go to school, the direction of causation need not run from child labour to non-attendance. In many cases it’s the other way round: children work because they are not in school. Unless family labour involves rigid work hours that consistently clash with school timing it is unlikely to prevent children from attending school with reasonable regularity.
In the last few months I have spent some time in a rural education project in Gauriganj block of Sultanpur District in Uttar Pradesh. My observations and experiences there have made me think even harder about why children go to school. In this block more than 90% of children in the primary school age in the villages are enrolled and a majority of them show up in school daily.
This my belief in the above hypothesis has become even firmer. While observing the 28 demo classes being run by Pratham trainers in 28 different maujas in Gauriganj, it was clear that the children needed much more than drab basic “education”. Even though the average attendance is more than 90% in most of the schools in the district, we need to think on the reason behind such high attendance, is it because of education? Meeting their friends? Going out of their houses? Escaping from work? Or out of sheer boredom?
In Prathmic Vidhyalaya in Darpipur, it was exactly 9:30 am when I entered the school, I saw a huge number of children walking towards the school from the nearby mustard fields, some were on cycles, some walked from the main road towards the school. Guruji came at exactly 9:55 am. The children were already in proper lines ready for their morning assembly and prayer. There was a huge crowd, but no chaos, everybody knew exactly where they had to stand, after the prayer finished, they sat on their bories and neatly took out their slates to write on with the kalam. The school was two-room structure, with a green line on the wall, denoting the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan symbol. Most of the children sat outside under a tree. Guruji took attendance and started taking one class at a time with classes 1-5 sitting in front of him. He was not the headmaster but the “shiksha mitra” in the vidyalaya. The “shiksha mitra” is a “para teacher hired at about half the salary of a regular teacher and posted in a regular school in under staffed schools, with the prospect of getting a regular post after ten years of service”.
The children were amused and curious to see the two outsiders and observed our every move. They wanted to speak to us, hold our hands and told us a lot about their school, few of them came and told us that they walked for miles and came to school from the nearby poorvas (or hamlets). The Shiksha Karmi was very cooperative and allowed us to take a simple language test of all the children present in the Vidhyalaya. Between my colleague and I, a in few hours we had spent a few minutes with each child and had a good idea about the reading ability of all children who were present in school that day.
The table below shows what we found: First of all, most of the enrolled children were present that day. Second, there were many more children in Std 1-4 than in Std 5. Of the 125 children present in Std2-5 on that day only 30% could read simple paragraphs. 70% of children in Std 2 to 5 could barely read alphabets. Reading is the first and most essential step for further learning. But close to 70% of children Std 2 and above could not read anything other than letters.
Enrollment: Std 1 -42; Std 2- 34; Std 3- 41; Std 4- 43; Std 5- 17
Could read simple material (easy paragraphs or stories) :
Std 1- Did not test; Std 2-0, Std 3- 8; Std 4-17, Std 5- 5
Could read only letters or could not read anything:
Std 1-Did not test; Std 2-32; Std 3- 33; Std 4- 23; Std5-7
Note: Figures refer to number of children.
The numbers made me think even more: why do these children come to school regularly, walking for miles and not learn anything? What makes them come to school? There was no instant answer. With the Shiksha Mitra trying to manage nearly 180 children by himself alone, it was not surprising the children’s reading capabilities were so low.
As part of the education project in the block, Pratham people started classes as “demonstrations”. Each person worked with 25 children who could not read. Simultaneously he/she also started mobilizing local volunteers in the nearby villages to join the effort to get every child to read. There were finally 11 local volunteers who agreed to start classes in the village. These classes would meet in the school and in the community. The volunteers were mostly 10th class pass married women from the Darpipur area and got to know of the Pratham classes from the Pradhan. They took interest in the reading program and liked the way the children improved the reading skill so quickly.
They carefully watched the progress of children in the demo class. After around 8 days the progress of the demo class was something like this:
Reading level:
Feb 23 2004
Story & easy paragraph- 0
Word- 0
Letter & nothing- 25
TOTAL 25
March 1 2004
Story & easy paragraph-7
Word-7
Letter & nothing- 1 1
TOTAL 25
The volunteers watched the demo, observed the reading technique for about a week and finally started with their classes from the 1St of March. I visited 4 of the local volunteers’ community classes in Darpipur itself. Amongst the children I found a girl who had been in the demo class in the school. I asked this girl why she was attending the class again. She said she found it interesting and likes to come for the class. I visited the other classes in the area during the day and found 3 children who were there attending all 3 classes at different times all through the day.
This was the first day so the volunteers were told to keep track of children and not duplicate so that there would be room for more children who needed help. On asking these children why they attended all 3 classes, one girl told me that she gets bored at home and there is nothing to do at home especially on holidays. Her mother does all the household work.
Imagine the situation when the child learns nothing till class five and is probably a drop out after that. She comes to school because she does not have enough to do at home. Now with an interesting learning opportunity in village, she is willing to go and sit in 3 classes. Is it because she wants to read? Is it because she likes her new reading teacher? Is it because she likes stories like “Rumki” in the books that the teacher has? Children’s demands are so small; they need little effort to keep them interested in learning. This is very different from an urban set up; in the cities, the child has many distractions. They have a TV at home, a cinema theatre to go to, run out of school to sit at their father’s shop in the community. The rural needs are very small as compared to the large distractions in the city.
A Pratham type intervention is what children in Gauriganj were thirsting for. One Pratham person says, it was very difficult for her at the beginning to ask children to play word games with them, ask them to write anything they wanted to on the board. The children were not in the habit of thinking on their own. They have become so accustomed to the rote method of learning. But it is remarkable that without any active learning in the schools and so many children still come to school each day, and day after day.
Some children carried books: the Hindi books looked pretty tough. One child was carrying a mathematics book in English. “Who bought the books for you? “ “Father”. These were not age specific books nor were they books for first generation learners. Even if the parents are interested in the child’s education, relevant education material is not available to them.
I wondered if they came to school for the 3 kg of grain that they are supposed to get every month. I asked a mother nearby poorva about the grain that the child gets in the school. She said that the grain doesn’t come every month. The grain is distributed every third month and is given in bulk. She said, we don’t require the grain and don’t depend on the grain the child gets.”
The shiksha mitra finds himself helpless to manage 180 children at the same time. How much can he do alone? The head master was sitting on a chair under the tree and doing paper work all through the day. The shiksha mitra had not received his pay for three months now but he still was very devoted and helped us to take our classes with his children.
What needs to be done to improve the situation? How can people collectively take more responsibility? The Guruji needs to be more serious towards his responsibility? The Government more strict on monitoring? Are we waiting for an external intervention like Pratham? These are questions that still need to be answered. Do parents care if the children are learning anything at all in the schools, or does their responsibility end if the child merely attends the school?
In the meanwhile, girls and boys are still going to school in Gauriganj and still collecting near the hand pumps to fill their little bottles with ink. They are still sitting on their bories, waiting to be wooed by the world of books.
2nd May 04.
Pratham Resource Center
“The initial disposition of children towards schooling is usually positive, when a school functions their motivation is easily sustained. Even in schools where classes are far from exciting children, often look forward to going to school: It a chance to interact with other children a welcome change of atmosphere and a liberation from the chores of family labour”. (PROBE Report)
The PROBE data confirm a basic pattern observed in a number of other studies: that work hours of young out of school children in rural India are relatively short. When children work rather than go to school, the direction of causation need not run from child labour to non-attendance. In many cases it’s the other way round: children work because they are not in school. Unless family labour involves rigid work hours that consistently clash with school timing it is unlikely to prevent children from attending school with reasonable regularity.
In the last few months I have spent some time in a rural education project in Gauriganj block of Sultanpur District in Uttar Pradesh. My observations and experiences there have made me think even harder about why children go to school. In this block more than 90% of children in the primary school age in the villages are enrolled and a majority of them show up in school daily.
This my belief in the above hypothesis has become even firmer. While observing the 28 demo classes being run by Pratham trainers in 28 different maujas in Gauriganj, it was clear that the children needed much more than drab basic “education”. Even though the average attendance is more than 90% in most of the schools in the district, we need to think on the reason behind such high attendance, is it because of education? Meeting their friends? Going out of their houses? Escaping from work? Or out of sheer boredom?
In Prathmic Vidhyalaya in Darpipur, it was exactly 9:30 am when I entered the school, I saw a huge number of children walking towards the school from the nearby mustard fields, some were on cycles, some walked from the main road towards the school. Guruji came at exactly 9:55 am. The children were already in proper lines ready for their morning assembly and prayer. There was a huge crowd, but no chaos, everybody knew exactly where they had to stand, after the prayer finished, they sat on their bories and neatly took out their slates to write on with the kalam. The school was two-room structure, with a green line on the wall, denoting the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan symbol. Most of the children sat outside under a tree. Guruji took attendance and started taking one class at a time with classes 1-5 sitting in front of him. He was not the headmaster but the “shiksha mitra” in the vidyalaya. The “shiksha mitra” is a “para teacher hired at about half the salary of a regular teacher and posted in a regular school in under staffed schools, with the prospect of getting a regular post after ten years of service”.
The children were amused and curious to see the two outsiders and observed our every move. They wanted to speak to us, hold our hands and told us a lot about their school, few of them came and told us that they walked for miles and came to school from the nearby poorvas (or hamlets). The Shiksha Karmi was very cooperative and allowed us to take a simple language test of all the children present in the Vidhyalaya. Between my colleague and I, a in few hours we had spent a few minutes with each child and had a good idea about the reading ability of all children who were present in school that day.
The table below shows what we found: First of all, most of the enrolled children were present that day. Second, there were many more children in Std 1-4 than in Std 5. Of the 125 children present in Std2-5 on that day only 30% could read simple paragraphs. 70% of children in Std 2 to 5 could barely read alphabets. Reading is the first and most essential step for further learning. But close to 70% of children Std 2 and above could not read anything other than letters.
Enrollment: Std 1 -42; Std 2- 34; Std 3- 41; Std 4- 43; Std 5- 17
Could read simple material (easy paragraphs or stories) :
Std 1- Did not test; Std 2-0, Std 3- 8; Std 4-17, Std 5- 5
Could read only letters or could not read anything:
Std 1-Did not test; Std 2-32; Std 3- 33; Std 4- 23; Std5-7
Note: Figures refer to number of children.
The numbers made me think even more: why do these children come to school regularly, walking for miles and not learn anything? What makes them come to school? There was no instant answer. With the Shiksha Mitra trying to manage nearly 180 children by himself alone, it was not surprising the children’s reading capabilities were so low.
As part of the education project in the block, Pratham people started classes as “demonstrations”. Each person worked with 25 children who could not read. Simultaneously he/she also started mobilizing local volunteers in the nearby villages to join the effort to get every child to read. There were finally 11 local volunteers who agreed to start classes in the village. These classes would meet in the school and in the community. The volunteers were mostly 10th class pass married women from the Darpipur area and got to know of the Pratham classes from the Pradhan. They took interest in the reading program and liked the way the children improved the reading skill so quickly.
They carefully watched the progress of children in the demo class. After around 8 days the progress of the demo class was something like this:
Reading level:
Feb 23 2004
Story & easy paragraph- 0
Word- 0
Letter & nothing- 25
TOTAL 25
March 1 2004
Story & easy paragraph-7
Word-7
Letter & nothing- 1 1
TOTAL 25
The volunteers watched the demo, observed the reading technique for about a week and finally started with their classes from the 1St of March. I visited 4 of the local volunteers’ community classes in Darpipur itself. Amongst the children I found a girl who had been in the demo class in the school. I asked this girl why she was attending the class again. She said she found it interesting and likes to come for the class. I visited the other classes in the area during the day and found 3 children who were there attending all 3 classes at different times all through the day.
This was the first day so the volunteers were told to keep track of children and not duplicate so that there would be room for more children who needed help. On asking these children why they attended all 3 classes, one girl told me that she gets bored at home and there is nothing to do at home especially on holidays. Her mother does all the household work.
Imagine the situation when the child learns nothing till class five and is probably a drop out after that. She comes to school because she does not have enough to do at home. Now with an interesting learning opportunity in village, she is willing to go and sit in 3 classes. Is it because she wants to read? Is it because she likes her new reading teacher? Is it because she likes stories like “Rumki” in the books that the teacher has? Children’s demands are so small; they need little effort to keep them interested in learning. This is very different from an urban set up; in the cities, the child has many distractions. They have a TV at home, a cinema theatre to go to, run out of school to sit at their father’s shop in the community. The rural needs are very small as compared to the large distractions in the city.
A Pratham type intervention is what children in Gauriganj were thirsting for. One Pratham person says, it was very difficult for her at the beginning to ask children to play word games with them, ask them to write anything they wanted to on the board. The children were not in the habit of thinking on their own. They have become so accustomed to the rote method of learning. But it is remarkable that without any active learning in the schools and so many children still come to school each day, and day after day.
Some children carried books: the Hindi books looked pretty tough. One child was carrying a mathematics book in English. “Who bought the books for you? “ “Father”. These were not age specific books nor were they books for first generation learners. Even if the parents are interested in the child’s education, relevant education material is not available to them.
I wondered if they came to school for the 3 kg of grain that they are supposed to get every month. I asked a mother nearby poorva about the grain that the child gets in the school. She said that the grain doesn’t come every month. The grain is distributed every third month and is given in bulk. She said, we don’t require the grain and don’t depend on the grain the child gets.”
The shiksha mitra finds himself helpless to manage 180 children at the same time. How much can he do alone? The head master was sitting on a chair under the tree and doing paper work all through the day. The shiksha mitra had not received his pay for three months now but he still was very devoted and helped us to take our classes with his children.
What needs to be done to improve the situation? How can people collectively take more responsibility? The Guruji needs to be more serious towards his responsibility? The Government more strict on monitoring? Are we waiting for an external intervention like Pratham? These are questions that still need to be answered. Do parents care if the children are learning anything at all in the schools, or does their responsibility end if the child merely attends the school?
In the meanwhile, girls and boys are still going to school in Gauriganj and still collecting near the hand pumps to fill their little bottles with ink. They are still sitting on their bories, waiting to be wooed by the world of books.
2nd May 04.
Some of my past work
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4555163.stm
It is a hot summer mid-morning. The temperature is pushing close to 35C.
But in a narrow lane in east Delhi, the discomfort of the heat and the dust is forgotten as a group of excited children surround a young woman who is carrying a bulky bag.
As Satyavati Sharma opens the bag to reveal a collection of story books, the children get ever more excited.
Ms Sharma is a volunteer with an Indian non-governmental organisation (NGO), Pratham (First), which runs mobile libraries for the children of Delhi's slums.
The NGO has developed a novel way of helping under-privileged children learn to read - they deliver books door to door.
Total literacy
Only 65% of India's billion plus population is literate and among them, millions are unable even to read a paragraph.
Radhika Iyengar, Programme Coordinator with Pratham
It's the children who can't read at all who are the biggest beneficiaries of our libraries
Radhika Iyengar, programme co-ordinator with Pratham
India's school infrastructure is of poor quality, and more than half the children enrolled never make it to the end of primary school.
So, it is hoped that the mobile libraries may play a key role in achieving total literacy where the schools have failed.
Radhika Iyengar, programme co-ordinator with Pratham, says that every morning of the week Sharma and 200 volunteers carry a variety of books in a bag and go around the community.
"First the teacher goes house to house and tells the children that we're running a library here. And then the teacher decides on four to five hot-spots in the community where she can sit and where children can come."
Ms Iyengar says there are no criteria for joining the library and all the children between the ages of six and 14 are welcome.
Applause and laughter
"They see these picture books and when our librarians tell them the stories, they want to borrow the books and try and read them. It helps build their confidence too."
To sustain the children's interest, Pratham also organises lots of fun activities.
Children attend Pratham session
The reading project has become enormously popular
Satyavati Sharma gives out five words - boy, girl, Hindu priest, Muslim priest and village - and asks the children to weave a story around them.
The boys in the group are excited by the challenge: the girls require some cajoling to join in. The final result is greeted with applause and laughter.
Through its volunteer system, Pratham libraries cater to 40,000 children in Delhi. In a country where 30m children in the age group of six to 14 years cannot read at all and 40m children can read only a few letters, Pratham's collection of picture books and big bold lettering has become a resounding success.
Kirti Kumar Bahadur is 11 and a regular at this road-side library.
"I study in class four. I love reading books. They have nice stories, and great pictures. In the last three months I've borrowed six to seven books. My favourite is Suraj ka gussa [Anger of the sun]. It's a story about how the sun gets angry with all those who wake up late."
Teething problems
Ravinder Singh Air says he has borrowed several books from the library. I first thought I'll have to pay money to borrow the books. But then my friends told me it's free. They have some very nice books."
Pratham library books
Books were previously unavailable for many slum children
One Pratham volunteer, Suman Lata, not just lends books, she also helps children learn to read. She sits in the corridor of a run-down building helping about 50 children recite a poem from a book.
As I watch, the number of children continues to swell.
"My library has about 500 children as members, and about 50 of them come every day. I take classes for three hours every morning - we do drawings, make newspapers, do a bit of role-playing. One day if I don't turn up, they come to my house to call me. They know where I live."
The first library started about eight months ago and today, there are 200 mobile libraries operating around Delhi. Although the libraries have now begun to draw in the crowds, Ms Iyengar says there were initial teething problems.
"We had a problem convincing parents about our libraries. They felt it was not directly related to the school curriculum and it was difficult explaining to them that it's part of the holistic approach to the studies.
"It was difficult to convince the parents that it will expose their children to a lot of reading material and will open their minds to new ideas. We had to sit down with parents and counsel them," she says.
It is a hot summer mid-morning. The temperature is pushing close to 35C.
But in a narrow lane in east Delhi, the discomfort of the heat and the dust is forgotten as a group of excited children surround a young woman who is carrying a bulky bag.
As Satyavati Sharma opens the bag to reveal a collection of story books, the children get ever more excited.
Ms Sharma is a volunteer with an Indian non-governmental organisation (NGO), Pratham (First), which runs mobile libraries for the children of Delhi's slums.
The NGO has developed a novel way of helping under-privileged children learn to read - they deliver books door to door.
Total literacy
Only 65% of India's billion plus population is literate and among them, millions are unable even to read a paragraph.
Radhika Iyengar, Programme Coordinator with Pratham
It's the children who can't read at all who are the biggest beneficiaries of our libraries
Radhika Iyengar, programme co-ordinator with Pratham
India's school infrastructure is of poor quality, and more than half the children enrolled never make it to the end of primary school.
So, it is hoped that the mobile libraries may play a key role in achieving total literacy where the schools have failed.
Radhika Iyengar, programme co-ordinator with Pratham, says that every morning of the week Sharma and 200 volunteers carry a variety of books in a bag and go around the community.
"First the teacher goes house to house and tells the children that we're running a library here. And then the teacher decides on four to five hot-spots in the community where she can sit and where children can come."
Ms Iyengar says there are no criteria for joining the library and all the children between the ages of six and 14 are welcome.
Applause and laughter
"They see these picture books and when our librarians tell them the stories, they want to borrow the books and try and read them. It helps build their confidence too."
To sustain the children's interest, Pratham also organises lots of fun activities.
Children attend Pratham session
The reading project has become enormously popular
Satyavati Sharma gives out five words - boy, girl, Hindu priest, Muslim priest and village - and asks the children to weave a story around them.
The boys in the group are excited by the challenge: the girls require some cajoling to join in. The final result is greeted with applause and laughter.
Through its volunteer system, Pratham libraries cater to 40,000 children in Delhi. In a country where 30m children in the age group of six to 14 years cannot read at all and 40m children can read only a few letters, Pratham's collection of picture books and big bold lettering has become a resounding success.
Kirti Kumar Bahadur is 11 and a regular at this road-side library.
"I study in class four. I love reading books. They have nice stories, and great pictures. In the last three months I've borrowed six to seven books. My favourite is Suraj ka gussa [Anger of the sun]. It's a story about how the sun gets angry with all those who wake up late."
Teething problems
Ravinder Singh Air says he has borrowed several books from the library. I first thought I'll have to pay money to borrow the books. But then my friends told me it's free. They have some very nice books."
Pratham library books
Books were previously unavailable for many slum children
One Pratham volunteer, Suman Lata, not just lends books, she also helps children learn to read. She sits in the corridor of a run-down building helping about 50 children recite a poem from a book.
As I watch, the number of children continues to swell.
"My library has about 500 children as members, and about 50 of them come every day. I take classes for three hours every morning - we do drawings, make newspapers, do a bit of role-playing. One day if I don't turn up, they come to my house to call me. They know where I live."
The first library started about eight months ago and today, there are 200 mobile libraries operating around Delhi. Although the libraries have now begun to draw in the crowds, Ms Iyengar says there were initial teething problems.
"We had a problem convincing parents about our libraries. They felt it was not directly related to the school curriculum and it was difficult explaining to them that it's part of the holistic approach to the studies.
"It was difficult to convince the parents that it will expose their children to a lot of reading material and will open their minds to new ideas. We had to sit down with parents and counsel them," she says.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Lok Awaas Yatra
Checkout the Marathwada Trail videos. They are edited by my sister Pooja.
http://lokawaasyatra.net/multimedia/video
http://lokawaasyatra.net/multimedia/video
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Voices of Jhabua
“If I send my child to school he cannot work with me in the fields or become a daily wage earner, nor does he learn to read or write, why should I him to school then.”
“Its been 2 to 3 years and my daughter doesn’t even know “a” se anaar [alphabets].”
“We are illiterate that is why we can’t complain about the headmaster who doesn’t teach my daughter.”
“In twelve months, my son should know how to write his name. He doesn’t even know alphabets, what is the point in sitting in school then. If he doest learn how to read and write, I might as well teach him how to work with me. It is a waste of time sitting in the school.”
“If we complain to the panchayats about the headmaster, they fight with me.”
Dear friends,
These responses are not confined to a few schools. During my fieldwork, I have visited 12 villages in 4 Blocks (out of a total of 6) and more than 20 schools in Jhabua district. In this letter I present a glimpse of the problems and potential solutions.
During my visit to the schools, I noticed classroom without teachers, missing headmasters, teacher-student ratio on an average of 1:60, students from grades 1 to 5 sitting in one room, children below 5 years sitting in the classes with their siblings, no utensils for the mid-day meals, no toilet facility for the teachers and the children, schools begin late and get off early as the teachers come from far. Therefore, pretty much all problems that one could potentially think of are present in Jhabua. I carried with me the ASER(www.asercentre.org) testing tool and tested 5 children per school. With an exception of one school, which has the reputation of having a hardworking headmaster, almost all children tested cannot read letters and only a handful could read words. Children sat with difficult books in their hands, these books were as per the grade, but the children are atleast two grades behind their present grades in reading. Blackboards were full of 3 digit addition sums, but the children were unable to even read the title of their math books.
I must comment on the “partnership” structure which is responsible for the functioning of the schools. Each school has a Parent Teacher Association (palak shikshak sangh). The President of the PTA is a parent from the village whose child goes to the same school. The funds allocated for the school come into the bank account of the PTA President. His/her signature is required to draw out the funds for any repair work in the school. I spoke to Presidents of these PTAs and they are not even aware of when the money was withdrawn from the account and how it was spent. The bank passbook is with the headmaster, while the account has the name of the President PTA. The mid-day meal administration is done by another stand alone group in the village. The group independently manages the funds for the meal and has the responsibility to purchase the grains and the lentils and get the meal cooked daily. In the schools I visited, the mid-day meals were infrequent, some had missing utensils, others gave the utensils only on “special” occasions and some complained of lack of funds. There were multiple reasons for not preparing the meals regularly.
During my discussion with a Ranapur Block Janpadh(elected local government member), he mentioned that the Panchayats(village level government) are kept away from the schools. There is no link of the panchayat to the schools. My discussions with Sarpanch (head of the panchayats) also came to the same conclusion. Therefore, the Sarpanch cannot listen to the complaints of the parents about missing teachers and take action accordingly. The PTAs, village education committees, mid-day meal groups are isolated groups which do not have any reporting structures nor do they have any authority over the schools. But I noticed that the parents in the villages have not given up on the school, they are looking for structures and opportunities to complain to. Only a handful of private schools run in the district and parents report that they will stop sending their children to private schools, once the government schools start functioning. On more than one occasion, as soon as I entered the school, the parents would come in and start telling me that their children are not given the meal today or that the teacher is not regular and that their children are not learning.
What is needed is a comprehensive structure that has the authority to address their problems. The first solution could be to have all the local groups like PTAs, the mid-day meal group, NGO’s under the panchayats, which addresses education related problems in the village. The panchayats could conduct gram sabhas (panchayats meetings) once a month and discuss education issues. The second solution is through the NGOs who will help to mobilize people. For instance, in Jhabua two NGO’s Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua(www.jssjhabua.net) has collaborated with Shalum Mission with about 150 volunteers who will be given an ID card and the ASER testing tool. The card and the testing tool empower the volunteers to go to their local village school and test the children’s Hindi reading abilities. They also check on the teachers’ presence and if the mid-day meal was being served. This “flying –squad” is empowering the village locals to inquire about their schools and take ownership. It gives them the courage that they can also enter the school’s premise and ask questions.
Community ownership of the school cannot be done by building structures, but by making the existing structures work or by social activist group who have the right to know about their village schools. The government schools need to be owned by the people themselves and they should stop waiting for higher authorities to make their schools work.
Radhika Iyengar
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)
“Its been 2 to 3 years and my daughter doesn’t even know “a” se anaar [alphabets].”
“We are illiterate that is why we can’t complain about the headmaster who doesn’t teach my daughter.”
“In twelve months, my son should know how to write his name. He doesn’t even know alphabets, what is the point in sitting in school then. If he doest learn how to read and write, I might as well teach him how to work with me. It is a waste of time sitting in the school.”
“If we complain to the panchayats about the headmaster, they fight with me.”
Dear friends,
These responses are not confined to a few schools. During my fieldwork, I have visited 12 villages in 4 Blocks (out of a total of 6) and more than 20 schools in Jhabua district. In this letter I present a glimpse of the problems and potential solutions.
During my visit to the schools, I noticed classroom without teachers, missing headmasters, teacher-student ratio on an average of 1:60, students from grades 1 to 5 sitting in one room, children below 5 years sitting in the classes with their siblings, no utensils for the mid-day meals, no toilet facility for the teachers and the children, schools begin late and get off early as the teachers come from far. Therefore, pretty much all problems that one could potentially think of are present in Jhabua. I carried with me the ASER(www.asercentre.org) testing tool and tested 5 children per school. With an exception of one school, which has the reputation of having a hardworking headmaster, almost all children tested cannot read letters and only a handful could read words. Children sat with difficult books in their hands, these books were as per the grade, but the children are atleast two grades behind their present grades in reading. Blackboards were full of 3 digit addition sums, but the children were unable to even read the title of their math books.
I must comment on the “partnership” structure which is responsible for the functioning of the schools. Each school has a Parent Teacher Association (palak shikshak sangh). The President of the PTA is a parent from the village whose child goes to the same school. The funds allocated for the school come into the bank account of the PTA President. His/her signature is required to draw out the funds for any repair work in the school. I spoke to Presidents of these PTAs and they are not even aware of when the money was withdrawn from the account and how it was spent. The bank passbook is with the headmaster, while the account has the name of the President PTA. The mid-day meal administration is done by another stand alone group in the village. The group independently manages the funds for the meal and has the responsibility to purchase the grains and the lentils and get the meal cooked daily. In the schools I visited, the mid-day meals were infrequent, some had missing utensils, others gave the utensils only on “special” occasions and some complained of lack of funds. There were multiple reasons for not preparing the meals regularly.
During my discussion with a Ranapur Block Janpadh(elected local government member), he mentioned that the Panchayats(village level government) are kept away from the schools. There is no link of the panchayat to the schools. My discussions with Sarpanch (head of the panchayats) also came to the same conclusion. Therefore, the Sarpanch cannot listen to the complaints of the parents about missing teachers and take action accordingly. The PTAs, village education committees, mid-day meal groups are isolated groups which do not have any reporting structures nor do they have any authority over the schools. But I noticed that the parents in the villages have not given up on the school, they are looking for structures and opportunities to complain to. Only a handful of private schools run in the district and parents report that they will stop sending their children to private schools, once the government schools start functioning. On more than one occasion, as soon as I entered the school, the parents would come in and start telling me that their children are not given the meal today or that the teacher is not regular and that their children are not learning.
What is needed is a comprehensive structure that has the authority to address their problems. The first solution could be to have all the local groups like PTAs, the mid-day meal group, NGO’s under the panchayats, which addresses education related problems in the village. The panchayats could conduct gram sabhas (panchayats meetings) once a month and discuss education issues. The second solution is through the NGOs who will help to mobilize people. For instance, in Jhabua two NGO’s Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua(www.jssjhabua.net) has collaborated with Shalum Mission with about 150 volunteers who will be given an ID card and the ASER testing tool. The card and the testing tool empower the volunteers to go to their local village school and test the children’s Hindi reading abilities. They also check on the teachers’ presence and if the mid-day meal was being served. This “flying –squad” is empowering the village locals to inquire about their schools and take ownership. It gives them the courage that they can also enter the school’s premise and ask questions.
Community ownership of the school cannot be done by building structures, but by making the existing structures work or by social activist group who have the right to know about their village schools. The government schools need to be owned by the people themselves and they should stop waiting for higher authorities to make their schools work.
Radhika Iyengar
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)
How do you get information about the village primary school?
How do you get information about the village primary school?
Information flow, as we know, is the key to efficient delivery mechanisms. If so, from where do the villagers get the information about the school? “I don’t ask anyone, because no one knows” is a common response. “The school master comes to my house”, the key informants in the two villages said. Teachers have to do a yearly survey to get the numbers of children eligible to go to school. They go from house to house to gather this information. From a different village came a reply that they got the information about the school from the Panchayat (the local government). Only one of the villages said that the PTA is an important source of information about the school. Every village has a ration-shop which is often the hub of all activities. This was cited as another source of information about the school. Some mention that they get information from the Janpath (elected govt. members) meetings at the Block level. A local haat (market) is also another source of information. Women from the village mentioned that the only source of water in the village hamlet (a public Hand-pump) is near the school and they can keep a check on the school when they fill water in their pots.
I visited Dev Jhiri village today and asked them the same question. The key informant was an old man in the village with a red turban and a long mustache. He said that he gets the information about the school from his grandson. After school, he asks his grandson “what did you do in school today?” His son tells him “today I got food”, “today the teacher came late and we played”. The old man also said that the hamlet folks keep track on children loitering around and ask them to go to school. They would also tell the parents whenever they get a chance that they saw their child playing and not going to school. I am told that the village also has a very strong PTA. The PTA President oversees the school functioning along with keeping a check on teacher absenteeism. “This won’t do in our village” the PTA President would say to a teacher who would come late to school. Surprisingly, this community ownership of the village school is completely community driven and not initiated and promoted by an NGO. Infact there are no NGO’s working the village. What makes some communities different?
Radhika Iyengar
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)
Information flow, as we know, is the key to efficient delivery mechanisms. If so, from where do the villagers get the information about the school? “I don’t ask anyone, because no one knows” is a common response. “The school master comes to my house”, the key informants in the two villages said. Teachers have to do a yearly survey to get the numbers of children eligible to go to school. They go from house to house to gather this information. From a different village came a reply that they got the information about the school from the Panchayat (the local government). Only one of the villages said that the PTA is an important source of information about the school. Every village has a ration-shop which is often the hub of all activities. This was cited as another source of information about the school. Some mention that they get information from the Janpath (elected govt. members) meetings at the Block level. A local haat (market) is also another source of information. Women from the village mentioned that the only source of water in the village hamlet (a public Hand-pump) is near the school and they can keep a check on the school when they fill water in their pots.
I visited Dev Jhiri village today and asked them the same question. The key informant was an old man in the village with a red turban and a long mustache. He said that he gets the information about the school from his grandson. After school, he asks his grandson “what did you do in school today?” His son tells him “today I got food”, “today the teacher came late and we played”. The old man also said that the hamlet folks keep track on children loitering around and ask them to go to school. They would also tell the parents whenever they get a chance that they saw their child playing and not going to school. I am told that the village also has a very strong PTA. The PTA President oversees the school functioning along with keeping a check on teacher absenteeism. “This won’t do in our village” the PTA President would say to a teacher who would come late to school. Surprisingly, this community ownership of the village school is completely community driven and not initiated and promoted by an NGO. Infact there are no NGO’s working the village. What makes some communities different?
Radhika Iyengar
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)
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