As Class 5 students Bhavana and Kiran struggled to read words and solve basic addition and subtraction, their classmates stepped in and came up with different tools to help the two — creating word games, playing with letter cards, and making use of pebbles or leaves to learn mathematics. Within days, Bhavana and Kiran — students of the Anudanit Prathmik Ashramshala in Nandurbar — had caught up.
As part of a pilot project, the Ashramshalas, residential schools covered under the Tribal Development Project Office, in Nandurbar taluka in Maharashtra, have been experimenting with a unique way to learn. Here, teachers are facilitators, who, instead of following the fixed pattern of facing the class and conducting lessons, set challenges for students and encourage them to learn their curricula by developing innovative methods on their own, in the form of group activities.
The pilot, called ‘Vedh Project’, is based on the novel concept of heutagogy, a student-centred instructional strategy. Launched last year for Class 5 students in all 60 residential schools in this tribal district, educators say the project has helped to bridge the gap in learning outcomes after two years of the pandemic kept children out of schools.
The Tribal Development Project Office in Nandurbar has now decided to extend the project to include classes 2 to 7.
Saying the initiative was born out of the need to plug foundational learning gaps, Minal Karnwal, Development Officer at the Nandurbar Project, who is the brain behind this initiative, told The Indian Express, “A baseline assessment conducted with help from the NGO Pratham revealed a huge learning loss. Along with the pandemic, general laxity had contributed to poor Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) among students. Class 5 students did not know how to solve division sums, or read full sentences, which is part of the learning outcome expected at that level.”
Karanwal says it all began with helping teachers identify where their class stood. “With the baseline assessment report at hand, teachers knew that their class had students with different learning levels and that they couldn’t teach everybody in the same manner,” she says.
This was followed by a breaking up of the traditional seating arrangements, with teachers forming smaller groups. For instance, Shital Hande, a teacher at a school in Kochara in the district’s Shahada taluk, had divided her class into three groups to cater to students at different learning levels: those who could identify letters, words, and sentences. “The groups were then presented with challenges to help bridge the learning gaps revealed in the baseline tests,” says Karanwal, adding that the goal of the project was to create a student peer group and then handhold them as they interact with each other as part of their learning process.
Besides the baseline test, the evaluation process involved a ‘mid-level progress’ and an ‘end-line progress’ that teachers conducted. The latter two evaluations were deliberately called “progress” and not “tests” to avoid pressure on teachers that would have possibly led to fudging of data.
While for baseline and mid-level evaluations, teachers from the same 60 schools were shuffled, for the end-line assessments, teachers from nearby Zilla Parishad schools were invited.
A teacher at the Vadfali Ashramshala, Dinesh More, explains, “After the baseline test reports, which showed where each student stood in terms of expected learning outcomes, days were dedicated to implementing remedial teaching based on peer challenges in a class. After the mid-level progress, teachers had more clarity on the learning levels of their students. At this stage, teachers, too, are encouraged to learn from each other by way of sharing experiences or solving one another’s problems. And this led to another round of remedial teaching in classrooms, where students were motivated to help each other learn. Finally, the end-line progress was conducted and that showed tremendous progress in the pilot project.”
According to data provided by the Tribal Development Project Office, while the baseline test showed that only 20 per cent of Class 5 students in the district’s Ashramshalas could read an entire story and 14 per cent were still at beginner level, with no ability to identify letters, at the end of 55 days of the project, 41 per cent students could read an entire story, with no one left at the beginner level.
Talking of instances when children helped each other, Karanwal says, “Teachers developed challenges based on the skills of students. For example, a child who was good at multiplication was given a challenge to make it simpler for those in class who were struggling with it. This completely changes the way a class traditionally runs.”
Anita Patil, who teaches Class 6 at the Nandurbar Prathmik Ashramshala, says the project has worked wonders for her. “It has just been a couple of months since school started but students in my class have almost finished learning the entire Marathi language curriculum, completely on their own. And we will soon give them tasks to strengthen their
concepts, especially grammar lessons.”
Karnwal says that at a time when schools are given fancy kits and encouraged to start smart-classes, the Nandurbar teachers devised their own teaching learning material (TLM) using sand, pebbles, electrical wires, ropes and handmade cards.
“We only gave them a framework to apply to their classrooms,” says Karanwal, adding that the initiative will now be scaled up to include all classes from 2 to 7 in all 60 schools covered under the Nandurbar Project.
Students with their teacher Anita Patil. (Express/Pallavi Smart) 
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