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Making learning joyful and productive
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`Relevant education, especially for the girl child who is the first to drop out of school, has to be provided.'
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With the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act 2002, free and compulsory education for all children between the age group of six and 14 has become a Fundamental Right. In a country as diverse as ours, addressing this need for 192 million children could be a daunting task. Especially, when this is a time-bound target to be achieved by 2010 under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA). The SSA is a Government of India project for Universal Elementary Education in partnership with the States under the Tenth Five Year Plan.
K.R.Chandrasekaran, Assistant Educational Advisor, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Elementary Education and Literacy, Government of India, was in the city recently to participate in a programme to train teachers under the project. He spoke to Puja S Navin about how local resources need to be tapped to implement the goals of SSA.
"TAMIL NADU was one of the first States in the country to take up the programme in 2001-02. Providing quality elementary education with life skills within the total budget of Rs. 1,800 crores is a challenging goal. To achieve this we require innovative models. Cost effective approaches need to be adopted to build capabilities of teachers. Relevant and productive education, especially for the girl child who is the first to drop out of school, has to be provided too," Chandrasekaran says.
Citing the innovative model at work in the city, he says, "The Avinashilingam Jan Shikshan Sansthan is one of the oldest institutions in the country. It provides need-based and skill oriented training to tribals, women, Dalits and neo-literates to make them economically independent. The target audience for this centre are adults and for us the target group is children. However the expertise available here can be used to train teachers under the SSA."
"For instance, 576 teachers have been trained in art education. Skills such as doll making, gift article making, pot painting and glass painting have been imparted. These teachers now become our resource persons to train students in their schools, especially girl children. This type of training is Coimbatore-specific. It is productive and cost effective and helps teachers to create "joyful learning in their classrooms, apart from teaching skills that can be used later."
One of the major goals of SSA is to mainstream school dropouts and Chandrasekaran sees this model as an effective solution. "This model should be replicated in other States too and already Karnataka is showing interest in learning from this experience."
The survey of child labour in Coimbatore District in 2003 has identified 2,573 child labourers. Of these 1,272 are boys and 1,301 are girls. How does the programme bring such children under the SSA purview?
"Under the scheme there are various options for flexible education. One such scheme is the Educational Guarantee Scheme, which provides local teachers for every ten students in areas where child labour is prevalent.
With flexible timings, such schools are operational in Dharamapuri district and Valparai town. Under the Labour Commission of Tamil Nadu, special schools have also been set up in Sivakasi and Pudukottai districts," he adds.
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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