winter school selected enteries - team gopro

CCE and Learning Outcomes

RTE RESOURCE CENTER

WINTER PRACTICUM REPORT

Names: Abhishek Ghosh and Arnav Gupta

Contact Numbers: 08503993484 and 09660582490

Email ID: [email protected] and [email protected]

City: Mumbai

Name of the College: BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

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mailto:[email protected]


I Interaction with Educationists

I. Getting the perspective of Educationists:

i. Elizabeth Mehta, Founder Director, Muktangan: Elizabeth, who insisted we called her Liz, has had over 40 years of experience in designing, managing and developing child-centred curricula. She has worked closely with Curriculum Development and with the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). Currently, she oversees the programmatic aspects of the seven schools and the teacher education institute at Muktangan, an NGO working in the field of developing a new model of education.

Liz strongly believes that education is meaningful only if it aims to nurture citizens who are willing to bring about positive transformation rather than simply conform to societal norms. Even though the ideal of child-centric education involving one-to-one mentorship may not be practical for the present, it was imperative to at least attempt to make it as child-friendly as possible. For her, the child was an independent human being whose choices needed to be given more respect when designing educational material.

She essentially told us about the teacher-training workshop at the Muktangan schools that is a one-year immersive course into making mentors from willing volunteers who belong to same community as that of the Economically Backward students attending the school. In the status quo, the National Curriculum Framework, published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), that guides modules for teacher training, is treated like a ‘cookery book’ instead of being adapted to ground realities by teachers. This ensures an immediate ‘connect’ and trust amongst the kids and their mentor. Liz told us about how the spirit of the RTE was noble, but its repercussions have not all been completely desirable. The crux of the problem lay in the evaluation scheme of formative and summative examinations. Textbooks were not designed to be child-friendly, as they were written in a language that was not very natural for a child to understand and were often peppered with half-truths, especially courses in history. Additionally, the

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exams had a very rigid ‘model answer sheet’ that did not encourage any diversity in thinking or imagination of the children. A report card that simply screams a set of dismal marks proves to be very discouraging to the child. Instead, Liz suggested, it would have been much better if a particular skill of the child such as the ‘ability to translate word problems into mathematical operations’ was tested and if the mentor could work with the child to develop this facet if the child found difficulty in mastering it.

Despite the need for education to be inclusive, provisions for differently abled or blind or children with slower cognitive abilities were almost always overlooked in public schools.

In short, Liz made a very clear distinction between evaluation for accountability and qualitative developmental assessment. The former system, that continues to exist in the status quo, follows the philosophy of ‘one size fits all’. Even with the introduction of CCE, there were simply too many evaluation components that ended up being meaningless numbers on a report card. There was always an overemphasis on getting results rather than developing concepts. Muktangan sought to work in a freer, more child-friendly atmosphere. They gather immense hope from empirical evidence of hawker children on the street, who have never been exposed to formal education, being able to demonstrate astonishing computational ability.

Another glitch in the legislation was the necessity of children being admitted to the ‘age appropriate’ class, instead of observing their cognitive level and assigning them to the appropriate grade level. Additionally, Liz and her team found the levels of bureaucratic control of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) on the teachers in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools simply stifling. Because the teachers were sent memos if his/her students failed to perform well in the exams, there were cases where teachers were caught filling in the answer sheets of their students, just to project artificially higher pass percentage numbers!

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To get past this, Muktangan had developed a form of continuous qualitative assessment. The mentor would randomly pick two students per week, check their progress daily, and gather everyone in a group discussion to talk about their problems and evolve a possible plan of action collectively. Also, students were told about what qualities and skills they really excelled in and were guided in areas that they were not particularly strong in. The only problem they faced was that the mentors themselves were not always very fluent in English and thus could not make a clear distinction between the degrees of grading (‘need to improve’, ‘average’, ‘fair’, ‘above average’.etc). Mentors at Muktangan have a detailed qualitative discussion with the parents about their child and only when they have understood the areas in which the child would require some extra help does the teacher actually disclose the marksheet of the child.

The Muktangan schools have also witnessed positive social attitudes adopted by the kids such as every child feeling obligated to clean up after play and cleaning vessels after a meal.

As the curriculum is designed to lie within the ‘Zone of Proximal 1

Development’ of the child, where competition is replaced by shared learning, it is no wonder that the children attending Muktangan rarely miss even a single day of class.

Vygotsky’s theory professing that education's role is to give children experiences that are within their zones of 1

proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning

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II Child Biography

1. Educational Biography of Ayesha

1.1.Name: Ayesha Raju Shaikh

1.2.Age: 11 years

1.3.School Name: Swami Vivekananda Sankul, Sanpada, Navi Mumbai

1.4.Tuition: Alpha Tuition (All Subjects)

1.5.Fees:

1.5.1. School Fees: Rs. 500/month

1.5.2. Transportation: “I walk to school by foot”

1.5.3. Tuition: Rs. 400/month

1.5.4. “There is a government school right in front of our home. On asking my neighbor, I found out that the school is completely free and even provides everything from meals to uniforms to their kids. Even then, I decided to put Ayesha into a semi-private school for the simple reason that the only medium of instruction in the government school is Marathi. Back home in Baharampur [located 200 km north of Kolkata, West Bengal], there would be no practical use of knowing Marathi. Instead, if my daughter knew English, I believe she would have much more opportunities of working in big cities all over India. What’s more, I’ve heard that the teachers are hardly interested in teaching, the quality and intensity of learning in a government school is really something that discourages me from approaching them.”

1.5.5. Subjects names: English, Maths, Science, Social Studies, Physical Training, Scouts and Guides, Hindi, Marathi.

1.5.6. Favourite: Science and English, Dislike: Maths

1.5.7. I can look for answers to questions asked for homework, I play Kabaddi, Kho-kho, Throwball, Dodgeball really well, I can teach them Arabic, teach them Koli dance, I can work well with the computer and I draw well.

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1.5.8. “ Priya, Deepa, Shruti, Bhoomika, Neha, Prachi, Meet, Noorsabah, Rooksar”, these friends are common to school and to the place that I live in. What’s striking that even though they share similar economic histories, all of them are from very different social backgrounds- Ayesha is a Bengali Muslim from originally from Murshidabad, whereas most of the others are Hindus who all belong to Maharashtra.

1.5.9. Teachers: Saumya Miss [English] , Priyanka Miss, Shanti Miss [Maths], Bharati Miss, Smita Miss, Bharati Miss

Saumya Miss is always ready to explain. She tells us the meaning of all the hard words and works with us to solve most of the questions. She also plays a lot of fun games, like ‘Name, Place, Animal, Thing’, ‘Story-Telling’ and ‘Simon Says’.

Shanti Miss scolds us a lot. Not only that, if we fail to hear her question or answer it correctly, she even beats us sometimes. She turns us out of the class if we ask her to explain things again.

1.5.12. I feel bored at home. At school, I get to interact with so many people- teachers and lots of my friends.

1.5.13. I would love it if they taught us more on the abacus. I love the P.T. period because I love learning through games. I am really excited about learning Urdu [she excitedly pulls out her notebook to show us many pages of written work].

1.5.14. I love both my parents equally. Both my parents earn and support my education equally.

1.5.15. I find a role model in you, dada. I want to be able to study well.

1.5.16. I would like to become a nurse, or a teacher.

2. An Interaction with Sunny:

2.1.When I walked into the gates of the Swami Vivekanand Sankul in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai, the school was rife with kids running around, busily preparing dance sequences for their Christmas Day celebrations. After walking into one such group, I met Sunny, currently studying Science in Grade XII of the same school. I prodded him into walking out to the playground to start up a conversation on his experiences in school. A pattern soon emerged as to what,

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in his words, were the small factors that went on to make a huge difference in the learning levels of the various kids from Economically Weaker Sections of his community.

2.2.Sunny first talked about why he felt school education was important to him. He told me that from a young age he was very passionate about dancing and felt the confines of his classroom stifling. But his father, who works as a local tailor, explained to him that education was the only way to ascend out of their meager existence. Sunny felt a huge responsibility to his parents, who were working very hard to fill in the fees of the school.

2.3.Swami Vivekanand is a Private school under the State Board, whose authorities provide English-medium education from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and then host Marathi medium classes. Despite the RTE coming into force, the authorities insist on timely payment of fees to meet their regular administrative and operating expenses. Even amongst Sunny’s community, there is a feeling that the government schools provide an education that rarely translates into social mobility and tangible improvements in learning opportunities. He felt teachers must first be sensitized to the fact that there exists an inherent discrimination against financially poor students, who may have gotten admission for free. They must instill a sense of equal belonging amongst them and encourage all her kids to shun the belief that financially weaker students would necessarily be a bad influence on them and that they were less capable of achieving the goals they set out for themselves. Due to the parents’ suspicion of free schooling being equated to the bad company of financially weaker students, government schools are rarely adequately staffed or populated by students from diverse economic backgrounds.

2.4.Additionally, even if Private schools charge a higher fee, Sunny would prefer studying in English-medium, owing to the greater opportunities for employment later in life. He goes on to tell me how there is a distinct perception that only the really needy go onto study in Marathi-medium, as every Junior College (starting from class XI) teaches only in the English medium. There is absolutely no provision for a bridge course for students from the vernacular medium, thus denying them an equal platform to compete with the more self-assured English medium educated applicants.

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2.5.Then I asked Sunny about what an ideal school would be for him. He told me primarily that more than any radical change in syllabus, teacher training was crucial. In the status quo, he told me how any new change in the system (such as the CCE) would fail if the teachers lacked motivation and the space to customize the way they teach. He told me about how he hated maths. He was always one who was slow at grasping new concepts. If he were to ask the teacher to slow down or repeat concepts, she would retort, “I can’t be repeating this again. I have a huge syllabus to complete.” The focus was always on repetitive questions from the exercise till one ‘learns’ the formula. He told me that he was never encouraged to ‘think’ or given a reason as to why he should be studying Pythogoras’ theorem. He was never treated as an individual capable of having a different point of view. He was simply tutored to conform. Despite group projects being handed down to students, teachers were so overburdened with trying to cover the curriculum objectives that often, the projects just ended up being one of the innumerable ‘evaluation components’ that the students and teachers wanted to get past somehow. Thus, the sole focus of students was to rote-learn whatever is given in the textbooks to increase the marks they get in the final exam.

2.6. Building a Relationship of Trust: Respecting the Child

2.7.In stark contrast to this, English lessons were a favourite. The teacher made her children not only read the lessons, but also made them explain it in their own words, re-enact it and make them draw a picture describing what they think could summarize the story. Thus, she made sure that everyone in class had an equal opportunity at speaking up. She made the process of learning a very personal one for each of her kids. She then went on to narrate real-life stories of some of her previous students who had fought all odds to earn a life of dignity. For her kids, more than the material incentives of a job, they were looking to an English-medium education to get a life of self-respect and confidence. Sunny continued by emphasizing that the teachers must take the effort to make a ‘connect’ with the students instead of simply narrating from the textbooks. Only then, would real learning be possible.

3. Family:

3.1.Family Income: 20,000 INR

3.2.Household amenities: electricity supply, HP piped gas, water supply

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3.3.Number of family members: 6

3.4.Educational Qualifications:

3.4.1.i. Raju Shaikh and Farida Shaikh (the parents, wherein the father is employed in the very seasonal and uncertain sector of construction as a daily wage labourer, the mother works as a domestic help ): illiterate

3.4.2.ii. Rabi-ul Shaikh (the eldest son, 23 years old, is married and has the highest educational qualifications in the family): class XI

3.4.3.iii. Safar Shaikh (works as a mechanic in a local shop, is barely 18 years old but is also married): class III

3.4.4.iv. Ayesha Shaikh (the youngest daughter of the house and undoubtedly the one with the optimum conditions of a pakka house and a stable family income, which in turn would contribute to help her complete her education successfully) : class V

3.4.5.v. Zeba Shaikh, Rabi-ul’s wife, 18 years, educated up to class X.

3.5.b. Farida’s eldest son, Rabi-ul, is employed as a Call-Centre employee and earns a respectable sum of money. However, Farida’s expectations of getting her child educated were not fully met. Her eldest son eloped and brought home a wife before attaining the legal age and he refused to continue studying after that (he dropped out in class XI). Since he was the most educated in his family, he did not accept to work in lower skilled professions such as a mechanic and others involving much physical unskilled labour. After considerable prodding, he got recruited into a local call centre. In direct contrast to this, the younger illiterate son had joined as a mechanic in a local workshop. He has worked hard and has picked up incredible skills such as diagnosing any problem that an automobile may face and fixing it. He has developed considerable responsibility towards his family- contributing to the family income, fixing lights and fans at home, and generally troubleshooting any electrical or other household problems himself. He also spends his money more wisely than Rabu-ul and has developed a wide array of vocational skills without any access to formal education.

3.6.c. The parents wanted education for their children so that they would not have to live a life of dependence on seasonal unskilled work. They want a life of

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dignity and a better standard of living such as a permanent house that belongs to them and a family income that is steady.

3.7.d. All the decisions are taken by the parents themselves, as they are migrant workers from Murshidabad and are not in direct contact with relatives.

3.8.e. No specific target-they just want their children to be able to live independently and without the burden of poverty.

3.9.f. Monthly school fees for Ayesha: 900 INR

3.10.Percentage of monthly family income= 4.5%

3.11.g. Safar could not be enrolled in a school because Farida and her husband frequently moved houses and were new to the city of Mumbai. Work was hard to come by and was uncertain. Farida missed enrolling her child into school and thus there was a 3-4 year gap in his education. When she was finally able to afford to enrol him in a school, Safar felt it incredibly difficult to cope with the level of learning expected of a boy of his age and thus eventually dropped out.

3.12.h. In Maharashtra, there exists a 5% reservation provision for Muslims and there are also Muslim educational institutions with a 50% reservation for members of the community. They had the requisite documents and were aware of the policy of affirmative action.

4. Education Resource Mapping:

4.1.Ayesha (the only member of the family who is continuing her education) has access to both public and private schools in her locality.

4.2.She attend the Swami Vivekanand Sankul in Sanpada and some of her neighbours attend the Municipality school (Sri Datta Vidyamandir) also located in Sanpada. We have visited and written a detailed analysis of both later in this report.

4.3.There are adequate provisions for both tap water, water in the washrooms and a regular supply of electricity in the classrooms (though interesting, the teachers try to use as much of natural light as possible)

4.4.NGO’s in Navi Mumbai:

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4.4.1.i. AARAMBH is a non-profit charity organization based and 2

working in Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), India. This non-government organization (NGO) was created as a Community Service Center for the most marginalized families living in urban slum communities and rural areas.

4.4.2.Farida works as a domestic help in the neighbouring housing localities. Amongst one of her employers, we have formed a very close bond with her and have regular conversations with her regarding any issue she may face with managing the education of her kids.

4.4.3.Ayesha comes to our home regularly, on Sundays, where my sister and I help her with her homework, help her improve her handwriting and try conversing with her in English. She in turn, is a very eager learner and absorbs as much as possible from sources ranging from us to her elder brother’s wife (educated uptil grade X), who stays at home the entire day and help Ayesha with her homework on weekdays.

4.5.Ayesha attends (private) tuitions in maths, science, English, Hindi and Marathi. In the evening, she also attends a local Madrassa where she is taught to read Arabic and Urdu. What is a little disturbing though is that the tuition teachers emphasise purely on rote-learning and one of them even uses corporal punishment for erring students. We’ve explained it in no uncertain terms to Farida that she should personally inform the teacher that they are not allowed to even lay their hands on their students. It’s simply against the law.

4.6.Sources of Information: Local newspapers, neighbours, some of Farida’s employers, Rabi-ul and his wife (educated up to classes XI and X) respectively.

4.7.Economic Opportunities: Ayesha aspires to become a nurse (College of Nursing, Bharati Vidyapeeth is a possible option). Medium-skilled jobs usually require a minimum qualification of passing grade XII. Possible job opportunities include a salesman at some of the numerous outlets of Nokia, Vodafone or Reliance mobile repair shops, call centres, fashion and apparel shops, restaurant managers in the numerous local malls, computer technicians (would typically require a diploma course from a local engineering college)

Official Website of Aarambh: http://www.aarambh.org/2

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4.8.Educational Officers of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation

4.8.1. NMMC Head Office: Plot No. 1, 2, Sector 15-A, Govardhani 3

Chowk, Belapur, Navi Mumbai. Telephone: 2756 7070

4.8.2.Mr. A.R Patnigire: DMC (Secondary Education): [email protected]

4.8.3.Mrs. Varsha Bhagat: Director, Education and Training Centre: [email protected]

URL: http://nmmconline.com/organization-structure 3

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mailto:[email protected]


III Topic of the Practicum

III. Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE): What is the Crucial Gap in Bringing Out Positive Learning Outcomes in the Children it Seeks to Benefit?

i. Objective of the Study: We involved the various stakeholders in a conversation about what they felt was an obstacle in opening up the free flow of ideas and skills between the teacher and his/her children in the school.

We also sought to hear out the voices of children and educationists ranging in backgrounds from a local Municipality School in Navi Mumbai, the elite Private schools such as the Podar Group and institutions developing new models of education such as Muktangan.

We have broken down the problem into the following components:

• Are the learning tools that the CCE intends for teachers to use really addressing the root cause of disinterest in learning amongst kids?

• Are teachers well-equipped enough to implement the Right to Education in the spirit with which the law was written?

• Are the kids equally involved in the projects and assignments they are given? Or do they think they are just an added burden to tests?

• Are the kids encouraged to use their classroom knowledge in practical situations? Is there an attempt at the holistic development of the child?

ii. Reflections on the Orientation Program held at the IIM Ahmedabad Campus (IIM A) from the 14th to the 18th of December, 2014:

“To Hell with your good intentions!”: A strange thought to throw at a classroom full of students who’ve made the journey all the way to Ahmedabad with

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supposedly the ‘good intention’ of doing ‘social good’. Were we not here to bring ‘education’ to the masses of illiterate poor, to ‘bring them into our fold of development’ and get them to become ‘truly globalised citizens’? If not for the four days we spent at the conference organized by the members of the RTE 4

Resource Centre, all the previous phrases would not have been enclosed in single quotation marks.

The first lesson, poverty does not equal ignorance. Do not assume that since you have had about 16 years of formal education that you are the only one who can make rational choices for the poor. Ashish Nanda, Director, IIM A, told us about ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’, Katherine Boo’s work on dispelling myths such as ‘the poor don’t value education if they don’t have to pay for it’ moving towards capability development rather than mere literacy development.

As armchair activists turn up on the internet much more than the doers, the succeeding session by Prashast and Saransh of the Young India Fellowship sought to dispel another myth: that of government schools in India being breeding grounds of substandard Sirs, sanitation and school (infra)structure. What evolved out of the discussion on monitoring the quality of educational instruction was the need for accountability, on all sides. So what Prashast and Saransh were helping to establish were improved lines of communication between the headmasters, psychologists, teachers and parents (especially of first generational learners) through School Management Committees. They sought to draw this out as the truest form of social audit and hoped to address social prejudices, fears and problems through this simple yet effective means.

Fahad Mustafa, Co-Director of Katiyabaaz, went on to visually demonstrate how 5

well-intentioned policies can go awry if it fails to study ground realities first.

Here’s a snapshot of the main players in the film:

The Right to Education, a fundamental right to free and compulsory schooling for kids between the ages of 6 and 4

14. An idea that is being refined and promoted within a large group of Civil Society movements.

Katiyabaaz (English : Powerless) is a 2014 Indian Hindi documentary film directed by Deepti Kakkar and Fahad 5

Mustafa about the problem of power theft in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh

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!

While flouters of the law like Loha argued that the local manufacturers needed electricity to run their factories and that KESCO was itself entrenched in corruption and bureaucratic indifference, Ritu argues that KESCO was running into losses to the tune of Rs. 200 crore because of such thefts. All this just led to a deadlock.

Fahad cautioned us against going into field work with preconceived notions. He talked about how problems need not necessarily be linear. “You come up with one solution addressing the linear problem you conceive and then realize you’ve just pulled at one string out of a tangled mass of intricately woven problems! You may just end up creating a bigger mess!”

In retrospect, our experience of the local government school was close to what Shibayan Raha, Founder at Anant Learning and Development, had told us. “The more distrustful of the people we are, the more structures we evolve!” Shibayan was concerned about how the rigid structures of time-tables and hierarchy of subjects had isolated any attempts of fostering compassion amongst students. In this mad rush to do what is best for the child, we hardly listen to what they need or have to say about their own education. If given enough space, every child will be able to choose for themselves the skills they wish to pick up and in the process, would be grateful for being treated as an individual capable of making decisions for themselves. With more time on the playground and a much more informal atmosphere, the government school seemed to be modeled more closely on the

Kanpur Electricity Supply Company

Ritu Maheshwari (IAS Refromist):

"Raid Defaulters!"

Irfan Solanki (the Local 'Politician'):

"Give us Basic Amenities!"

Loha Singh (the Robin Hood of Kanpur):

"We live in Muck, but we Hold our Heads

High!"

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fluid, free and deep-rooted sharing of knowledge typical of village life rather than the more inflexible formal system that specifically does away with the free will of the child.

Then, as Mr. Binoy Acharya, Director at Unnati, went on to talk about the democratization of knowledge creation, we got a clearer idea of the methodology we were to follow for our field work. He introduced us to the idea of participatory research, where impetus was given to informal discussions with the stakeholders involved to open up new avenues of solving the issue at hand. He told us that as much could be learnt from the people’s silence. One of the most significant revelations of Mr. Acharya was that of the hierarchy of engagement between the people and the project managers. He told us to that the lowest rung, ‘Passive Participation’, treated people as mere participants in a survey and the project managers as distributors of input. Successively moving from this level, to that of ‘Self Mobilisation’, where the mandate of deciding the future direction of the policy would be directed at the people themselves, with the project managers only providing technical support when asked for, should the ultimate broader goal of the policy formulation process. Often, what we consider as implementation flaws are actually the result of excluding the people from the crucial processes of policy formulation and decision-making. Often, we end up erroneously conjecturing problems that are defined by the specific solutions we have in mind.

In essence, it would be essential to move from a dominating to a liberating stance on knowledge sharing during the course of making a policy- from administering questionnaires and reading books, books lecturing and extracting information to facilitating and listening, to putting the people first, enabling them to communicate freely and making them converse in a relaxed and enjoyable climate. The ultimate objective, as a field worker, would be for us to internalize the struggle of the people we would be interacting with. Mr. Binoy, put in this succinct quote to summarize it all, “…if you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you come here because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together!”

The aim we had in mind, when we went out to conduct our field surveys, was to gather an in-depth understanding of human behaviour and the reasons behind such

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behaviour. We chose to follow the qualitative method that investigates the why and how of decision making, not just the what, where and when. We used this experience to work on informal structures of interviewing, with a majority of open-ended questions. We were also involved in participant observation, by spending an entire day in the classroom with the children and observing them at play and their interactions with each other outside of the classroom. This approach was inspired by our exposure to Max Weber’s Social Action Theory, 6

which emphasizes on direct observational understanding. Unlike the macro perspective of studying phenomena on a societal scale, we chose to restrict our case-studies to the ‘micro’ level. We sought to examine a smaller group of individuals within the larger society and make an interpretive assessment of the situation by including the subjective states of the individual. We noted unspoken signs such as the gestures of the people we were interacting with and tried our best to keep an open mind and an attitude of being a listener rather than an investigator, in keeping with the spirit of participatory qualitative research.

Drawing logical links to all our discussion and bringing forth the larger picture, Ravi Gulati, Founder of Manzil, talked about the Scale and Scope of Social Change. Through the instance of the ‘Pesticide Paradox’, he implored us to adopt 7

a systemic versus a linear approach to thinking of a problem. He talked about change as being dynamical. We, as a collection of individual agents, who have the freedom to act in unpredictable ways, perform actions that are interconnected to provide system-wide changes. Policy making was more like an infinite rather than a finite game- you can neither predict nor control, you can only set the conditions that would go on to shape the emergent change. Thus there would be no single ‘root cause’, ‘cause and effect relationship’ or ‘determined end’. Our approach was rather directed at ‘Adaptive Action’, a constant state of flux between 8

identifying an issue, understanding its meaning and deliberating on what we all can do to solve it.

“Social Action Theory”, History Learning Site, URL: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/6

social_action_theory.htm, accessed on January 2, 2015

An interesting systemic solution can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxQcnxSbivQ7

More at http://www.adaptiveaction.org/8

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http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/social_action_theory.htm


During the course of the practicum, we were to turn judgement into curiosity, conflict into shared enquiry and defensiveness into self-reflection. The method of ‘Positive Deviance’ would be the next step in the process of our practicum. The 9

best way to address an issue is to observe certain uncommon behavior within that community that proves to be highly successful and to develop a plan of action to promote its adoption by everybody concerned. Because even as we take on the role of leaders, it remains true that “ …leadership and learning are indispensable 10

to each other!”

!

iii. On the Field Observations:

We visited a low-cost Private school in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai, a Municipality school in Sanpada and the Muktangan school, run out of a BMC school complex in Worli. Below, we have reproduced extracts from the conversation highlighting the issues we could identify from the conversations we had.

Internalize the Pain of

the Stakeholders

Dynamical Change with Undefined Boundaries

Public Policy

Street-Level Bureaucrats (Teachers in Educational Policy)

‘What is Positive Deviance?’, Positive Deviance Initiative, URL: http://www.positivedeviance.org/, accessed on 2 9

Jan, 2014

Quote by John.F.Kennedy, 35th President of the United States of America10

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http://www.positivedeviance.org/


a. Sunny, Aged 17, from a low-cost Private School in Navi Mumbai

When I walked into the gates of the Swami Vivekanand Sankul in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai, the school was rife with kids running around, busily preparing dance sequences for their Christmas Day celebrations. After walking into one such group, I met Sunny, currently studying Science in Grade XII of the same school. I prodded him into walking out to the playground to start up a conversation on his experiences in school. A pattern soon emerged as to what, in his words, were the small factors that went on to make a huge difference in the learning levels of the various kids from Economically Weaker Sections of his community.

Sunny first talked about why he felt school education was important to him. He told me that from a young age he was very passionate about dancing and felt the confines of his classroom stifling. But his father, who works as a local tailor, explained to him that education was the only way to ascend out of their meager existence. Sunny felt a huge responsibility to his parents, who were working very hard to fill in the fees of the school.

Swami Vivekanand is a Private school under the State Board, whose authorities provide English-medium education from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and then host Marathi medium classes after that. Despite the RTE coming into force, the authorities insist on timely payment of fees to meet their regular administrative and operating expenses. The Principal was not very forthcoming in engaging in a conversation about the provisions of the RTE.

Amongst Sunny’s community, there is a feeling that the government schools provide an education that rarely translates into social mobility and tangible improvements in learning opportunities. Due to the parents’ suspicion of free schooling being equated to the bad company of financially weaker students, government schools are rarely the first choice of parents who can afford a Private school. As a result, Government schools are rarely populated by students from diverse economic backgrounds, as they become the last resort of parents who cannot afford to pay the Private school’s fees.

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Even if Section 12(1) of the RTE were to be enforced in his school, Sunny felt that teachers would first have to be sensitized to the fact that there exists an inherent discrimination against financially poor students, who would get admission for free under the clause. They must instill a sense of equal belonging amongst them and encourage all the kids in her class to shun the belief that financially weaker students would necessarily be a bad influence on them and that they were less capable of achieving the goals they set out for themselves.

Another observation that I made was that, even though Private schools charged a higher fee, Sunny preferred studying in English-medium, owing to the notion that an English education was the only guarantee to improved employment opportunities. He went on to tell me how there was a distinct perception that only the really needy go onto study in Marathi-medium (the medium of instruction in Government schools), as every Junior College (starting from class XI) in and around the area taught only in the English medium. There is absolutely no provision for a bridge course for students from the vernacular medium, thus denying them an equal platform to compete with the more self-assured English-medium educated applicants.

Then I asked Sunny about what an ideal school would be for him. He told me primarily that more than any radical change in syllabus, teacher training was crucial. In the status quo, he told me how any new change in the system (such as the CCE) would fail if the teachers lacked motivation and the space to customize the way they teach.

He told me about how he hated maths. He was always one who was slow at grasping new concepts. If he were to ask the teacher to slow down or repeat concepts, she would retort, “I can’t be repeating this again. I have a huge syllabus to complete.” The focus was always on repetitive questions from the exercise till one ‘learns’ the formula. He told me that he was never encouraged to ‘think’ or given a reason as to why he should be studying Pythogoras’ theorem. He was never treated as an individual capable of having a different point of view. He was simply tutored to conform. Despite group projects being handed down to students, teachers were so overburdened with trying to cover the curriculum objectives that often, the projects just ended up being one of the innumerable ‘evaluation components’ that the students and teachers wanted to get past somehow. Thus, the sole focus of students was to rote-

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learn whatever is given in the textbooks to increase the marks they get in the final exam.

In stark contrast to this, English lessons were a favourite. The teacher made her children not only read the lessons, but also made them explain it in their own words, re-enact it and make them draw a picture describing what they think could summarize the story. She made sure that everyone in class had an equal opportunity at speaking up. She made the process of learning a very personal one for each of her kids. She then went on to narrate real-life stories of some of her previous students who had fought all odds to earn a life of dignity. For her kids, more than the material incentives of a job, they were looking to an English-medium education to get a life of self-respect and confidence. Sunny continued by emphasizing that the teachers must take the effort to make a ‘connect’ with the students instead of simply narrating from the textbooks. Only then, would real learning be possible.

b. Vikas Hade, Aged 14, from a Government (Municipality) School in Navi Mumbai

I walked into the school to find all the children obediently seated on the floor listening to a speech by the local Municipality Commissioner during their morning assembly. After it concluded, I approached a group of teacher who very warmly welcomed the idea of talking about their experiences of the RTE.

Sri Datta Vidyamandir, in Sanpada, is a school with classes from Nursery (for children aged 6 years) to class X (students aged 15-16 years). The timing of the school is from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. and it is completely Marathi-medium.

In the beginning, the teachers were not very comfortable with the idea of being openly critical about any of what the local government had offered them. However, on enquiring further, they told me that the rigid requirement of ‘age appropriateness’ of children being admitted to a particular class had caused them quite a lot of trouble. For instance, even if an illiterate 12-year-old were to get admitted to the school, he is appointed to grade VI, without gauging his true learning level. This causes an extreme imbalance in the grasping powers of students in the class.

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The policy of no detention uptil the completion of elementary education translates into a chronic lack of commitment to attending classes. Often, there is a gap of 1-2 years in a student’s education because they decide might decide to visit their native village, where they do not attend school. When they return, they are assigned to the ‘age appropriate’ class without realizing that they have missed out on some crucial learning while they were away. This lack of seriousness leads to a lack of motivation amongst teachers to put in their best efforts. The attitude is often “those who wish to study will work hard and do well. For the rest, it’s their choice.” When the chronic absentee students are suddenly faced with state-level and national-level competitive exams to gain admission into local colleges, many of them have a weak basic understanding of their subjects and drop out of the educational system entirely. The teachers would rather have a policy of continuous evaluation where they would have an opportunity to assess which one of their kids needs extra help. They were willing to dedicate extra hours after class or form student groups with students of varying aptitudes to help the students who score low marks to improve on their performance. Marks were important parameters to the teachers, as they were objective. Qualitatively assessing every student would become difficult with class sizes exceeding 50.

The school has also realized that it needs to evolve to become English medium if they are to attract more students. Currently, they are in the transition to becoming ‘Semi-Marathi’. Most of the surrounding slum-dwellers are migrant workers (a majority from Bangladesh and West Bengal) and thus are not very eager to send their kids to a vernacular medium school. They also find the cost of living too high and the return on investment of sending their kids to school to be inadequate. Also, since the school does not provide vocational training and is not demanding in terms of regular assessments, students end up missing a lot of school days to learn to manage the trade that their parents practice.

One distinguishing feature of the school was the amount of bonding with the teachers and peer-learning amongst the students. The teachers and students did not share the (f)rigid relationship of most private schools but rather learnt from each other and were willing to help each other. Empahy and community are deeply embedded values. Children are often self-motivated to organize extra-curricular activities like dance and sports events. A few of them have picked up English from watching television. The children depend on each

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other, on group study, rather than external coaching classes, to teach each other the skills that they possess individually.

They believe that through education, they would be able to take a small step away from bare subsistence and uncertain daily wage labour (most of their parents are street-side vegetable vendors, autorickshaw drivers, domestic helps, tailors, barbers and construction workers) to jobs that are better paying and secure. There is also clearly a gender divide. The boys were less interested in continuing theoretical education and wanted to take up more ‘hands-on’ jobs such as that of an electrician, manager of a restaurant, police officer, Kabaddi coach and dance instructor at the school and the like. On the other hand, the girls wanted to continue to study and had set up higher ambitions of becoming nurses, doctors and engineers. For them the purpose of education was to improve the quality of life beyond what their parents had experienced. They came to school because they had different aspirations from those of their parents and wished to fulfill their ambitions through education.

Amongst the students I interacted with, I met a student who had gone on to pursue the BMS course in Modern College (a local institute) and some others who had performed well when they switched to the CBSE/ICSE Board after class VIII. However, for the majority of them, there was little willingness to continue beyond elementary education.

There is however, a significant drop-out rate. One of the students who dropped out early on told me that he had seen his neighbours become engineers, invest around Rs. 3 lakh in college education and even then end up earning only Rs. 10,000 per month. One student told me about how some students had committed suicide because of parental pressure to work and study and the school’s lack of structures to deal with the psychological problems of students. There is also a lack of a career counselor to guide students in applying for jobs that are commensurate with their skills and learning levels.

Muktangan, a NGO based in Worli runs 7 schools in Mumbai. The NGO works on the PPP model with BMC to efficiently provide community based education to the children. The NGO has 6 schools functioning upto grade 7 and the foremost foundational school functioning to grade 10 starting academic year 2013-2014, producing exceptional results in their first batch of grade 10. The other 6 schools expand by a grade each year to accommodate the senior most class. We visited 2 schools run by Muktangan to understand their functioning.

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The visit to Sayani school gave us immense insights into the principles and foundations of Muktangan. The visit to Sayani school started with a meeting with Ms. Sapna, who is the overall coordinator for Muktangan schools. She gave us a brief on the schools and the implementation of CCE. This gave us an understanding of how schools try to implement CCE into their curriculum. Muktangan schools function in a non traditional manner where the teachers do not focus on the text books and emphasis is laid on learning instead of course completion. The schools have to then include summative and formative assessments into their curriculum and model the assessments in a way to evaluate the projects and assignments done by students to satisfy the CCE norms. Ms. Sapna then gave a further brief on the Sayani Road school and introduced us to the other authorities present at the school.

One of the principles that makes educationists at Muktangan proud is that they include different child psychology studies into basic activities at the school. An instance Ms. Sapna shares with us refers to the study that a child’s mind needs to be relaxed after every class to enhance learning in the next class and this can be implemented by some movement to refresh him. So as to implement this the school has rooms fixed for each subject and the students move to the respective rooms depending upon their schedule. We observed a set of grade 7 classes to understand how they are taught at the school and how it differs from other schools. We joined a group while they were half way though a maths session. The class was being taught different elements of a cube. Studies at Muktangan are activity based which is a joy to each student in the class. The students were making small paper cubes in their small group time and understanding the different terms such as length, breadth, height and area. This was an interesting session where the children were actively helping each other and learning while doing. The next session for this class was social sciences.

We moved along with the students for the next class. The room was equipped with a projector. The session began with a short documentary on environmental issues our planet faces today due to pollution. After the documentary the students went back to their small groups for discussion on the documentary facilitated by their teachers. This is a very effective model adopted by the school for active learning among the children where they are themselves able to elaborate on the topic based on their experiences and understand each others perspective on the issue. The discussion on the documentary was followed by analysis of some home assignments the students were given in the earlier week. The students had been given the task to conduct surveys in their community on the different aspects of pollution that were affecting the lives of the people. The goal of the survey was to make the students understand the each person has a different perspective to each problem and the same set of questions to a different

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set of people results in varying answers. Each students shared their experiences conducting the survey and shared the question and responses of their surveys. The teacher and other students then shared possible improvements that could have been made. This is another aspect that Muktangan implements at each grade in their schools, they involve students in solving others students issues. Each day at Muktangan begins with all students arranged in a large idle called the “circle time”. As a part of their circle time the students share how they are feeling that day and if they have any issues or problems the want to discuss. The solutions to the problems faced by students come from other students and result in a discussion between them and lead to development of trust between the children from their pre primary education itself.

We then met Ms. Rinku, the head for Sayani school for Muktangan. Meeting her helped us understand issues specific to that community. We were able to understand that a majority of the students are very satisfied coming to school and are very regular. The school however caters to a small part of the community which includes migrants. These migrants go back to their home villages in different part of the country annually. This leads to absenteeism among those students for periods extending upto a month of uninformed leave. On a regular basis the school has minor issues of absenteeism. Meeting Ms. Rinku helped us further understand implementation of CCE at the Sayani Road school. She also elaborated on the fact that the backgrounds the students come from has little influence on the child’s learning outcome. Based on her experience she feels that the learning is independent of gender, religion and caste at the school, she feels that the amount of effort the student puts in is all that affects the outcome.

We attended a teacher training session to understand how they intensive training works. The session was very interesting and gave inputs on the mammoth efforts that go into training teachers to effectively teach the students. We attended a session where the teachers were being taught to teach painting to pre primary students. The teachers first listed out the objective for the activity. They then discussed how they would introduce the activity to the students and discussed on various methods and activities they could involve in the process. The training was very exhaustive and covered most situations that the prospective teachers could face.

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