3 min readPuneJul 14, 2023 08:41 AM IST
First published on: Jul 14, 2023 at 03:45 AM IST
Giving an example of ‘Baby Shark Dance’, a viral video for kids on YouTube, Pune Zilla Parishad CEO Ayush Prasad made a case for making children-oriented educational yet interesting content on YouTube, during a press conference on Thursday evening.
“Smartphones and children’s increasing engagement with YouTube is a reality so it makes more sense for us to start creating engaging educational content geared towards them,” said the official.
“We have plans to dramatise and set music to poems of textbooks. This will improve children’s audio-visual comprehension rather than just focusing on reading comprehension,” he said. There will be a pilot this year and it can be launched next year.
“The District Planning and Development Committee has sanctioned Rs 4 crore for e-learning in schools,” Prasad said and talked about the possibility of “gamification” of education.
Speaking about Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) which has been foregrounded in the Nipun Bharat program, he stressed on repetition being crucial to achieving the goal of “Nipun Pune” by 2025. Setu or Bridge courses are being conducted by the Primary Education Office and District Institute for Education and Training (DIET) in Zilla Parishad schools in the district.
The official cited an 8% increase in learning outcomes over an eight-week long Nipun Bharat drive conducted from December to February. Pune Zilla Parishad will be conducting a similar six-week Bridge Course starting July 15 to further that learning.
According to official figures, 653 primary schools out of a total of 3638 and 76 aided secondary schools out of 916 are under performing. “We have run programs and 53 secondary schools have already crossed the threshold of 80% or more pass percentage this year,” said the press release.
Leadership for Education, an independent organisation also shared their third party assessment report of Zilla Parishad schools at the press conference. The report focused on learning outcomes of students in grade 1, 3, 5 and 7 over two years and showed some growth in the performance of students.
The Pune Zilla Parishad also plans to push for cluster schools as mentioned in Clause 7 of the National Education Policy 2020. “Students from schools in the area can be brought to one campus wherein the infrastructure and subject-wise teachers and other arrangements are adequately made,” sai8d the official.
A pilot for the same is ongoing in Panshet with 12 schools. A committee has been appointed by the Government of Maharashtra to explore the possibilities of up-scaling the model.
"This will improve children’s audio-visual comprehension rather than just focusing on reading comprehension,” he said.
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