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Journalism of Courage
Padho Punjab, a joint venture of the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan and non-governmental organisation Pratham, has succeeded in lighting up the lives of underprivileged students. The students of primary schools, who were taught Hindi, English, Punjabi and arithmetic, have shown 15% to 25% progress in a span of eight months.
Manjeet Kaur, District Co-oridinator, Pratham, said, “To start with, we conducted a baseline test of the students but the results were not up to the mark. Many of the students could barely write a sentence although they were studying in upper primary classes. Simple addition and subtraction problems gave them jitters. But now things have started improving. We conducted their mid-test and found 15% to 25% improvement in their learning level.”
The project, which was started with an aim to increase the teaching aptitude of government schoolteachers and learning competency of children, took off on July 7. Comprehensive workshops for the teachers of government schools were held where 73 block master trainers from 19 educational blocks of the district were trained. These masters’ trainers further trained the teachers of government schools in their respective blocks. This way, 2,600 government primary schoolteachers were taught with the expertise teaching skills of Pratham.
About two months ago, the government schoolteachers complained that three projects of the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan have been initiated simultaneously and they hardly get time to teach regular syllabus to students. Amarjeet Kaur, District Education Officer (Elementary), Ludhiana, said, “Owing to complaints by a number of teachers, SSA Director General Krishan Kumar has exempted Class V students from the “Padho Punjab” project. They will now only be taught their routine syllabus. The latest grouse of the teachers is the 19-day seminar that is starting from December 1.
Baldev Mangat, Block Primary Education Officer, Ludhiana-1 educational block said, “Classes will suffer when we send teachers for attending these seminars. It becomes difficult for us to run schools under such a scenario.”
Amarjeet Kaur while lauding the project said, “It is indeed a very good project and has increased literacy in Kerela and other states. It is doing a good job in our state too.”
