Interventions - Sikshana

Introduction

Sikshana is an effort to make a discernible impact on the mainstream public education system at the primary level. It centers on evolving a sustainable and replicable model for an effective and decentralized public school system. The program is run by Sivasri Trust and is presently concentrating on schools in the Bangalore South zone, mainly in the Jayanagar/ Banshankari area and beyond. They have plans to expand the area of operations to other parts of Karnataka during next year. Sikshana has presently 7 schools and about 3000 kids under the program. Sikshana aims at:

1. Improvement of learning levels in the Public education system, with quantitative targets and time schedules.
2. Adoption of modern teaching techniques and aids.
3. Working in collaboration with the Government and from within the system.
4. Mobilization and deployment of resources, concentrating on core essentials and avoiding frills.
5. Using a zero overhead system in the conveyance of resources.
6. Applying management concepts commonly used in other sectors- such as budgeting and targets, accountability, return on investment, motivation and non-fiscal reward systems.
7. Developing a sustainable model for replication on a wider scale.

Presentation at the conference (by Ramamoorthy)

My background is industry and I got into education by choice to do something socially productive. I believe education is a fertile field to do something productive in. What part of education should one get involved with? We have a lot of niche areas in education. Education for special children, premium schools, schools that adopt alternate models of educating children, many schools that innovate, schools for children with disabilities etc. We have lot of thinking and innovation going on in the field of education. Outside of all of this there is the wide area of mainstream education. Just to give an idea about the numbers - nine million children in Karnataka attend primary schools. In all about 48000 primary schools are there. If you are looking at working in the area of primary education the numbers are mind boggling.  Ninety percent of children go to simple, down to earth government schools. What are these schools like? In most cases the schools are just 4 walls. Many government schools don’t have roofs. There are schools in Bangalore that do not have classrooms, classrooms are held in the open. We have something radically wrong in the mainstream education system. Mainstream education needs attention in many areas from people, organizations who can contribute towards improving the situation. With such huge numbers the problem seems daunting. But people need to step forward. If some way can be found out it can be proven that this can have an impact on the system. This is an area I decided to focus on.

We have started a program called Sikshana. The aim is on evolving a model that is sustainable and replicable. If a school needs improvement we can pump in a lot of money and make that school much better. But if every school needs Rs 2 lakhs, then who will fund 48,000 schools? So we need to make efforts to improve learning levels of the children in schools, so that the resources that are called for are not high or expensive - are available, and the efforts are scalable, replicable and sustainable.

Contrary to what one might believe there are good teachers in these schools. In my experience 90% of the teachers are motivated. They need a pat on the back when they do something good and a lot of interaction. They need some direction.  It is not that the government is not pumping in money into government schools. Today the qualification of government school teachers is far higher than the qualification of the private schools. They are paid well. Yet the results are nothing to speak about. Most of these schools are getting only 58% pass, so how do we increase it to 100%? There is no target setting today; so what if we set the goals? Some of the management principles that routinely apply in industry need to be applied in education regularly and routinely to get results.

So we pushed these schools to get to 100% pass, gave whatever inputs they asked for and the school did get good results. They just had 4 months to get the children ready and they actually managed to do this. In this time they managed to prepare the children so that all of them passed. A few actually managed to get distinction grades which is rare for such a school. This may seem like applying screw driver technology on education and a lot of people may be skeptical about this. But I still believe that some principles that are applied in industry can be applied to education. We should insist and demand results. Today there are many people including reputed NGOs working on mainstream schools. How much are the resources being pumped to increase the learning levels? But if one looks at this objectively – how much of these resources are really producing children with higher levels of learning? Someone needs to be responsible for the resources spent. If resources are spent, there should be clear goals and expectations from this resource expenditure. We should hold people accountable for this. In return for resources invested is it possible for us to turn around and ask if the school can help the children break barriers and accomplish what is promised? We need to improve the children’s level of learning. Somehow this accountability is missing today and we need to demand this. A lot of resources are being deployed especially around Bangalore city with very little difference. This has to change.

Take for example children who come from slums. The expectation needs to be set that this child coming to the government schools also needs to be able to actually read, add or do other things expected from the school. The children are pulled out of school if they do not reach the learning levels their parents expect. One needs to see what their expectations are and give them this. It is a myth that parents pull their children out to do more work. My experience has been that parents sometimes take the kid out of the school because they feel that going through the school is not going to give any meaningful results and that the child will be wasting the next several years there. But 90% (of parents) want children to go to schools. To summarize main-stream education needs a lot of attention. So we need to work in improving learning levels in the current system in a replicable sustainable way by using resources wisely, by improvising many different ways. Involvement of the community, parents is certainly desirable, but this should not be a necessity. There needs to be a movement in this direction. Someone has to take this seriously and find a way.

Further Details

Since nutrition is an essential factor in enhancing the academic performance of the children, especially in a community where the child invariably gets a breakfast or lunch – not both- on a typical day, we seek to ensure that in all our schools, an adequate mid-day meal is provided to each child. Besides this, the child needs two other vital resources for advancement: adequate space – physical and notional – around him/ her to be able to concentrate on the inputs and a ‘dedicated’ teacher exclusively available for the benefit of the group, to which he/she belongs.

As a first step, the Trust is taking up with the Govt. of Karnataka the issue of allotting and registering sufficient land for each primary school, initially at our Block and then at the District/ State levels. Regarding the latter, additional teachers are being deployed, wherever required, by the Trust to augment the existing staff. Enhancement of performance is related to non-fiscal/ quasi-fiscal measures such as motivation, training and low cost environmental upgrades. Co-curricular activities such as library sessions, fine art meets, educational tours, exposure to multimedia content etc., are encouraged, as they are considered to be important factors in enhancing the receptivity of the children to academic inputs. 

Having completed one full academic year with 7 schools, two independent audits are under way to study the impact of the program and suggest improvements to the content. Based on this and other inputs, a second phase is being planned from June 03 onwards wherein:

1. The program will undergo consolidation in the existing schools, with emphasis on empowerment and functional autonomy    
2. The coverage will be increased to 20 schools through induction of two or more clusters of schools of about 5 each 
3. Additional nodes will be created in the City with mentors and volunteers to take care of this expansion, thus carrying this experiment one step further 
4. Increased and intensive activities for pushing common causes

Contact Information

E.S. Ramamoorthy
Sivasri Foundation
B 1103 Brigade Residency Road
Uttarahalli
Bangalore 560061
Tel:  (80) 6668713/ 6931153
Email:  rmurthy@vsnl.com
Website: www.sikshana.org

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