The learning curve

It was precisely to find this out that Pune-based educationists Devika Nadig,former principal of Karnataka High School and Vijay Gupta,a IT alumni and former vice-president Wipro,undertook the crucial work of an “academic audit’’ in schools located in the interiors of Chandrapur.

The initiative came from Ambuja Cement,that as part of its CSR initiatives,is working with Government managed schools in parts of Solan district in Himachal Pradesh and Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. The broad objective of the initiative is to bring quality education to every child who has access to these schools. With the efforts in these two districts around four to five years old now,the company felt it was the right time to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the initiative to learn see how effective has been the intervention in creating the impacts as envisaged. 

“We parked ourselves in Chandrapur in mid-September for about a week. Every day we would visit two villages where we would talk to the children and make them take our especially devised tests for Marathi and Mathematics. At the same time we met up with Gram Shikshan Samitis and also the Mother Teachers Association (MDA) in the villages,says Nadig who with Gupta runs Shikshangan,a centre devoted to promotion of quality education in schools.

“ The broad approach to conduct the evaluation was to compare the ‘after’ (or endline) with ‘before’ (or baseline) to make a judgment about the effectiveness of the interventions. We found that the intervention has been effective in making schools an attractive place for everyone (students,teachers and other stakeholders). Children look forward to coming to the school. The intervention has also brought the neighbouring community closer to the school in managing the affairs of the school. All this has clearly led to improvement in attendance (which was already high — an average of 80 per cent to more than 90 per cent). However we had to conclude that despite all the efforts and a very high level of dedication from the children’s side,learning was not happening at the desired rate.”

 The main reason for this,says Nadig was the quality of teachers in the schools. “There is some evidence though that learning achievement is higher in these supported schools as far as language learning is concerned,which is clearly attributable to the role being played by the Balmitra,” adds Gupta.

Balmitra typically is a married woman from the village who is class ten pass and who teaches Marathi and Mathematics to children with the help of songs. More importantly she stays in the village and is not transferred like other government teachers,making for a higher level of commitment. “There was a difference noticed in the learning levels of children who were taught by Balmitras. So one of our main findings and suggestions was that the role and scope of the Balmitras should be extended. Expectations from the Balmitra need to be defined more clearly and required support provided to them to help fulfill these expectations,” added Gupta.

The duo also found that the hole-in-the-wall computer concept had taken off very well at Chandrapur inspiring both children and adults to come and try some self-learning with the computers installed.

“Though we regularly do impact analysis for our various programmes,this is the first we commissioned an external audit for the 25 schools we support in Chandrapur. Based on the findings we will decide whether to extend the initiative to the rest of the district or to first fill the gaps to better the model,” said Pearl Tiwari,vice-president Ambuja Cement Foundation.