Asha for Education

The Institute of Social Work (ISW) is an NGO based in Kolkata, West Bengal, which works to provide better opportunities to underprivileged women and children. Founded in 1978, ISW works in the greater Kolkata area on several fronts including primary and middle school education, vocational training for women and promoting awareness of social and health issues among women.

Asha Cornell supports two of ISW’s education projects: one at Barasat comprising of elementary and middle schools (Sishu Vikas Bharati and Kishore Vikas Bharati) and the other at Khidderpore where ISW runs a non-formal school and a coaching center for girls. The parents of the children served by these projects have meager incomes from vegetable vending, casual labor, rickshaw pulling, etc. More than half the children are girls.

The Schools: The Barasat school was founded in 1982 with volunteer teachers and 33 children who had dropped out of mainstream schools. Today, the school has nearly 400 children in classes from nursery to 8th grade. Besides the head of the school, there are nine teachers who teach Bengali, English, mathematics, science, history and geography. The school follows the syllabus prescribed by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education though it is not formally affiliated with the board. Students also participate in a variety of extracurricular activities such as dance, music, recitation, sports and crafts.

In January 2011, I visited the Khidderpore school. Khidderpore is an industrial and port area on the eastern side of Kolkata. The school is located in a slum with a large Muslim population. We were greeted by Sushmita Bhattacharya, who manages day-to-day activities at the school and teaches English. From the main road, we walked down a narrow, winding lane to reach the school, which is located on the upper two stories of a three-story building.

Classes are held in small rooms and there is a basic office or staff room in an even smaller room on the second story. When we visited, there were four types of class in session, two vocational training classes in tailoring and doll-making,` a coaching class for girls and a class to prepare first-timers and dropouts for entry or reentry into regular school. The coaching class caters to about 35 girls for whom English and Bengali instruction supplements their school education. The preparatory class has 40 children, who are given basic instruction that helps them get into and stay in regular schools. The 20 girls in the vocational training classes were aged 18 and above and most of them had left the school system between 8th and 10th grades.

Talking to the three teachers present, it was apparent that it was sometimes frustrating to fight the local bias against educating girls and allowing them to work. Particularly, the families of many of the older girls in the vocational classes did not want them to work in a mixed gender environment or even outside home. The teachers were optimistic though since an increasing number of parents were sending their daughters to school, more so because tailoring allowed the girls to conform to restrictions while earning.

The school had arranged with a small doll-making business to train and employ other girls in similar situations. When I asked some of the girls about their education, I sensed a slight wistfulness. Most of them were only a few years younger than I and I wondered if they were thinking the same thing I was: Had they been born in a family like mine, their circumstances would have been very different and they would not have been there.

While the girls in the vocational training were quiet and shy, I was struck by the confidence of the girls in the coaching class. They seemed eager to do well in school and to continue their education by going to college. I was very encouraged to see their enthusiasm in the face of such difficult circumstances. The younger children were a lively bunch even when the teacher told them somewhat sternly to be quiet. They cheerfully greeted me in sing-song voices and asked me my name.

I came away from the school with mixed emotions. While it seemed clear the older girls could not aspire for careers beyond tailoring and doll-making, it was good to see that they were at least able to earn an income thanks to ISW’s efforts. With the younger children, I hoped their enthusiasm would not be dimmed by the difficulties they would inevitably face as children from poor families. When I saw the determination of the young girls in the coaching class, I felt hopeful that they would try their best against the odds.

Challenges: The children attending ISW’s schools come from economically disadvantaged families and several are also forced to supplement the family wages by working. Malnutrition is common. Domestic abuse is not uncommon but is seldom reported and children are either victims or witnesses. Since many of the parents have had little or no education, they are unable to help their children with their studies. To discourage and deal with absenteeism, ISW’s teachers visit the homes of students who have been away from class for an extended period.

Achievements: The efforts of ISW’s teachers to engage parents by holding parent-teacher meetings and by visiting the homes of absentees appears to have paid off in terms of increased attendance at the schools. Some of the graduates of the Khidderpore coaching center have gone on to attend college. In my previous visit to the Barasat school as well as this visit to Khidderpore, the children seemed very enthusiastic and happy to study. Many of them expressed the desire to study further. The teachers, most of who are from the local community, came across as being very dedicated.

Akshardeep was started by an organization called Swadhar in 1998. It is an alternative school (non-formal education or NFE) program for 6 to 12-year-old children. It runs 10 classes in Pune Municipal Corporation and 10 classes in Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation. Asha Zurich funds the 10 classes in the PCMC area.

Objectives: Since its inception, the project has been working towards educating children of migrant workers and sex workers and preparing them for mainstream government schools. The teachers come from the same community. School timings and teaching methods are innovative and sufficiently flexible to cater to the educational needs of children coming from varying economically challenged backgrounds. The curricula are based on the State Department of Education curricula but are taught differently, making it more enjoyable and easy to learn.

The Right to Education (RTE) act has changed the role of organizations working in the area of primary education but Akshardeep appears to have made a seamless transition into this new reality. In response to the RTE Act, they have developed methods to help older, illiterate children to quickly come up to speed with the curricula in higher classes. Overall, Akshardeep has done a good job in keeping up with the requirements of the times and has reinvented itself to provide valuable services that help retain students in school.

Year 2011: Currently, 301 children are enrolled in the NFE and support classes. In July-September, we conducted a detailed survey of out-of-school children in two phases. It showed that the number of children going to mainstream school had increased. So we reduced the number of “setu” (bridge) classes. Setu classes are conducted in two areas where there are still out-of-school 6 to 14-year-olds.

Balia Gram Unnayan Samity (BGUS) is an NGO working in the Hooghly district of West Bengal for the social and educational upliftment of the villagers. BGUS runs pre-primary schools and coaching centers at seven villages. These aim to improve quality of education, prevent early dropout by instilling school going habits in children (through pre-primary schools) and providing supplementary support to students attending government schools (through a coaching program). BGUS also runs a book bank and supports development activities relating to healthcare, farming practices, professional training, etc.

Significance: Children need a friendly and accessible induction to education and schooling in a rural area that has a 30% literacy rate and no tradition of school-going. Without pre-primary education and preparation, a number of children find the step-up to government primary schools insurmountable. A large proportion of these children have illiterate parents who are unable to prepare them for primary school. This is where BGUS’s pre-primary schools step in.
Similarly, the coaching program helps students from economically weaker sections of society cope with school work and compete with students from affluent families who can afford private tuitions or have educated parents to help them with their school work.
BGUS’s book bank lends textbooks for the academic year and has reference books. This program is very popular and benefits students even outside the project area of BGUS. When I visited BGUS, I found the book bank, library and reading room in good condition although I did not meet any library member. Notably, a few pre-primary teachers from the neighborhood who had benefited from the book bank and BGUS were now working with BGUS.

Site Visit: On July 15 this year, my parents and I visited all the schools run by BGUS. I provide a detailed description of my visit to each school below. Overall, I would like to stress that I was overwhelmed by the dedication and continuous effort of the teachers and staff. For instance, they were very particular with documents, e.g., gradebooks, audit books, nutrition & growth monitor charts: Teachers at Balia and Kashipur readily showed me up-to-date books, attendance copies and growth charts. The teachers encouraged local participation, especially from children’s mothers. Their collaborative effort with the mothers in continuing pre-primary schools and mid-day meals was remarkable. Due to funding constraints, BGUS could not pay them market-rate salaries but that did not limit their unceasing dedication to the poor children.
I should also mention that BGUS schools need a lot of renovation and repair. Four of seven buildings were in deplorable condition; all schools’ toilets needed reconstruction and most schools needed water tube-wells. BGUS is completely dependent on Asha UIUC and we have only been able to cover running costs of three programs. We are trying our best to obtain external funds for reconstruction.

Balia: I reached Balia village around 11.30 am and went to the Balia pre-primary school immediately. The children brought flowers from home to greet me. Some mothers were also present. The children recited poems in English and Bengali and did quick addition and subtraction. The KG II kids sang an entire Rabindrasangeet. Some enacted Bengali poems.

The teachers knew which kids were absent. They also showed me the growth charts and attendance books. The mothers were quite happy that kids were going to school. There was no malnourished kid. However, the toilet and playground were in dreadful condition. Also, a pond behind the school needed to be fenced for the children’s safety. 

Kashipur: After Balia, I went to Kashipur. There was only one room and the balcony for three classes (nursery, KG I and KG II). The walls had cracks and there was a hole in the roof. The toilet and playground could not be used by children at all. Conversely, the children were all properly nourished though some mothers requested reviving the tiffin BGUS provided earlier. (Note: We started nutrition programs in August. The site was visited in July.) The kids recited poems for me and were very jolly.

Narayanpur: We reached Narayanpur around 1.30 pm. Most mothers had taken their kids home but brought them back to the school when we got there. The headmaster (an elderly person who oversees the welfare of the area along with Mr Chakraborty) scolded them for taking their kids home before 2 pm. But I understood that since the school no longer provided lunch, the kids got hungry by 2 pm; so, most mothers took them home for food.

The condition of the school was terrible. Walls were cracked and roofs collapsed. Class could be held in the balcony. Of the two rooms, only one was used for teaching but there too the walls were cracked. The other room was used to store tiles that have fallen off the roof. These may be stolen if kept outside.
Mothers do not send children to school when it rains heavily because they fear that the walls might collapse… which is quite possible. Two days before my visit there was a storm and one of the pillars crashed totally. Needless to say, that there was no working tube-well anywhere near, no fence around the pond and no playground. The toys were very old and mostly broken. The condition of the village was no better. It was a village of weavers and though their art was much valued in the city, they did not get much from middlemen.

I visited the other four schools just to see the conditions. I could not meet the kids as it was past 2 pm.

Jigra: The school was in good condition as it was reconstructed in 2008-9 using WAH (Work an Hour program) funds. Thus, they were able to increase the number of students. However, the playground was as bad as the other schools’.

Icchapur: The school did not have electricity. They had just a room and the balcony for classes. The roof tiles were old and during the monsoon water leaked into the classroom. The toilets and playground were unusable by children. The cycles for children were very old and rusted.

Bahirkand: There is no electricity in the school building. There is a pole nearby but to get electricity to the school at least two more poles have to be built. This may involve some cost but it is very much doable if BGUS gets some additional funds. The school had a small room with charts and books. There was no water supply nor a proper toilet. The toys were all rusted, old and broken.

When I reached, a coaching class was in progress. The children were very excited to see me. I met a girl in 8th grade who has been with BGUS since pre-primary. The coaching classes had to be held early in the evening as there was no electricity. They could study only as long as there was daylight. Nonetheless, children’s parents expressed their sincere gratitude to all donors of Asha for they could not afford educating their children by themselves.

Dulla: The last school I visited was at Dulla. It was quite far from the other schools. Its condition was deplorable. The roof had collapsed, walls cracked, there were no window panes, no electricity, no bathroom and toys were broken. Some parents said they benefited from the school but were very concerned about the safety of their children, which was only normal given the poor condition of the school.

Summing up: The areas where BGUS has schools are poor. Thus, initiatives taken by BGUS are beneficial. The government schools in these areas prefer to enroll children from BUGS’s pre-primary schools as they get a good education and can follow the curriculum in primary schools. Fortunately, the teachers are very concerned for the schools and the children.  

All three programs of BGUS are dependent on Asha UIUC for funds. So far we have been able to cover only running cost. However, we should seriously think about a reconstruction plan for the classrooms, playgrounds, toilets and water supply. Quality of education cannot improve much without these basic facilities. As I described, in some schools the condition is so bad that it really raises concerns for the children’s safety. We should also think of nutrition for the children, especially in villages like Dulla, Bahirkand, Narayanpur and Icchapur. We hope our donor community can help us improve the situation.

Background: The Quality of Education (QED) focus group at Asha for Education was formed in 2010. It aims to explore the meaning of quality education, to encourage our project partners to think about ways of improving their pedagogy and forge closer collaboration between Asha and our project partners working on the ground. While (a) Asha volunteers will gain deeper understanding of the complexities and ambiguities of working in the community, (b) project partners will reflect on innovative ways of improving pedagogy. It was also felt that providing a nominal seed funding to the project partners through this QED focus group would help implement innovative ideas. Once implemented, these ideas would be sustained through regular funding from Asha chapters.

After a detailed deliberation involving Asha volunteers, subject experts and project partners, the group came up with nine dimensions comprehensively encompassing QED:

1. self-awareness of school aims and objectives
2. scholastic learning
3. non-scholastic learning
4. society
5. parents
6. teachers
7. learner/student
8. school management/leadership
9. relationship among entities.

Process: With these objectives in mind, the QED group created a detailed questionnaire that helped volunteers dive into the unique projects and gain a holistic understanding of the dynamics of projects. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF), published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in India, influenced the questions in the questionnaire. The questionnaire covered various pertinent subjects like composition of the administrative staff, the academic environment, ethos of the project, use of educational materials, nature of learning, evaluation techniques and relationships between students, parents and teachers.

Project partners also submitted proposals explaining specific ideas that they wanted to implement for improving quality of education in their projects and potential impacts of these on local communities. In this, they were helped by individual Asha chapters supporting their respective projects. After this, the QED group deliberated over these documents and held discussions with project partners to get clarifications and further inputs on the proposals. The group members shared insights and worked with project partners to refine proposals.

Enactment: In the first phase, the QED group helped implement ideas for improving QED across 19 projects in various parts of the country including Sunderbans, Balia (West Bengal), Kamalpur (Bihar), Chitradurga (Karnataka), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Dharmapuri (Tamil Nadu), Delhi and Andhra Pradesh. The ideas ranged from creating role-play-based learning environments for fostering creativity and improving English language learning to supplementing homework with audio (developed by professional linguists) that reinforced the curricular units and presented content in multiple ways. Teacher training and professional development of the staff also emerged as an important theme across proposals.

Next steps: After the initial phase, discussions and feedback from the Asha-wide community helped the QED group reposition itself as a knowledge sharing and learning group. It was felt that the real value of the group lay in priming project partners to think about QED and then facilitating cross-pollination of ideas between different projects. While providing seed funds to implement those ideas was a critical piece of the QED jigsaw, starting with implementation in mind often clouds the deliberation process at the proposal stage.

The first phase also helped the QED group realize core competencies of various projects supported by Asha. These competencies needed to be nurtured and developed into more structured offerings to facilitate efficient cross-pollination of ideas and utilization of expertise between projects. This led to the identification of three core themes for the group, namely: (a) identify and support Centers of Excellence among projects covering diverse QED topics, (b) create and support networking initiatives across project partners by leveraging established knowledge sharing platforms and organizing conferences in India whenever possible and (c) provide a learning platform for Asha volunteers by curating resources related to QED and periodically inviting external speakers to share their expertise. The group must address assessments too, so that we understand the effects of any change in the pedagogy. Volunteers are discussing how assessment tools can be designed to take into account socio-economic contexts and highlight the impact of educational innovations on the community connected with each project.

These are some ways in which Asha and its project partners are trying to improve the quality of education in India. While much needs to be done, the QED group seems to be a step in the right direction and may eventually facilitate richer collaboration between Asha and its project partners.