A Report on the visit to Sahanivasa
October 26th and 27th, 2002
Ram Krishnamurthy and Srikanth Voorakaranam
(Asha-Bangalore)
Asha’s association with Sahanivasa goes back 3 years. It started off as a project of Asha-MIT, got funding from Work An Hour the next year, and currently being jointly supported by Seattle and MIT chapters. It started off as an after-school supplemental program for children of class X in a couple of high schools (the pass percentage in class X for those children from the Dalit and other economically and socially backward classes who managed to reach class X was an abysmal 20%. There were numerous other cases where children from these communities would drop off from school even much before then).
Today, this is one of the largest interventions by Asha in a single project: it spans 538 children in 7 govt high schools, and 416 children in 15 govt elementary schools. It also provides employment as teachers to 34 youngsters (who are mostly from the same community and locality) and 1 coordinator.
Essentially the program consists of after-school tutoring (both in the morning as well as evening) for these children by teachers of Sahanivasa. The high school program is more geared towards improving the success rates in class X exam, where as the primary school intervention is aimed at establishing a culture of schooling, preventing dropouts and improve learning levels at the primary level itself, so that the accumulated deficiencies would not undermine the children doing well in higher classes down the line.
Take Aways:
Significant accomplishments have been made in the ‘instrumental value’ of education (the pass percentages have increased significantly to around 77% last year, which is higher than even the district average).
There is scope for improving on the ‘intrinsic value’ of education (quality of learning, working on improving the confidence levels and self-esteem, encouraging a culture of questioning). Some teacher training would help in this.
Cooperation extended by the govt school teachers to the Sahanivasa teachers (a key to the programme) seemed satisfactory.
There is a need to improve on the nutrition levels of children
Need to set up a library for the schools.
There is a need to make parents more accountable and responsible for the education of their children.
Getting There:
From Bangalore, there are buses at high frequency (probably one every half hour) that go towards Chittoor. It is about a 4.5 hour drive (including a break thrown in between). The KSRTC buses have a higher speed limit than the APSRTC buses, and gets you there faster, but their Kamikaze driving in a single lane highway is sure to keep you on the edge of the seats! The highway itself is very smooth and well-maintained, probably because it falls on the Bangalore-Tirupati route J
We started in Bangalore about 7:00 AM and reached Chittoor by noon. Smt. Suriaranjini, who heads Sahanivasa, picked us up from the bus station in the jeep owned by Sahanivasa (Sahanivasa’s operations cover a number of villages in a fairly vast area, hence having a vehicle such as this is indispensable for effective work). She, along with her husband Sri Chennaiah, had laid out a programme for us for the next 2 days which included visits to 5 high schools and 6 elementary schools, and after a quick lunch we set off.
Our first stop was the village Anatapuram. Sahanivasa had played a significant role in this village previously in getting the villagers land for building houses.
The first thing that struck me was the number of men folk who seemed to be idling around. This seemed strange considering that it was only about 2 PM on a working day. It turns out that this is due to the chronic under employment in the area. Chittoor normally doesn’t get a lot of rain, so on an average, agricultural workers get only about 10 days of employment per month. This year, even those rains did not show up and agriculture has taken a hit, and agricultural workers are not getting more than 5 days of work.
The Govt has taken up food-for-work programmes which has provided some relief. There have been several scams in this regard where the grain was diverted from the beneficiaries, and Sahanivasa played a role in exposing it (as a result of such activities, and their work in the area of land reform and redistribution, the organization does run up against very powerful political interests from time to time. Mr. Chennaiah himself had escaped a bid on his life some years back; the scars on his face from the attack bears testimony to that episode. More recently, he had to shift his own children out of Chittoor for their education and safety).
The Sahanivasa teacher at Anantapuram seems to have done a good job with the children. The children seemed spontaneous and expressive; they sang some songs for us, and also staged some plays on the importance of education. Since the regular school itself was in session, we dropped in to have a word with the govt school teacher there as well. It is made up of 2 fairly large halls, one of them an open one and another enclosed. She mentioned that the Sahanivasa teacher had been helpful to her in increasing the learning levels of the children.
(Though Telugu was the main language in the villages, there were several villages where the villagers spoke and understood Tamil reasonably well. So Ram could converse with them in Tamil while I talked with them in Telugu. Knowledge of a local language, we feel, is indispensable if we are not to miss out on many subtle, yet important points).
We met with the headmaster, the regular school teachers and the Sahanivasa teachers at the N.R.Pet High School next. This is a fairly large school with a big open area in between. (This seemed fairly typical of most of the high schools we visited. Contrary to the dismal picture I had in mind of govt schools with crumbling infrastructure, most of these schools had good solid buildings with large open areas around them where the children could play). A roster of the number of children in each class was maintained on the board (curiously, the breakdown by caste was also there) and except for some did around class VIII (class VII being a public exam), mostly the trends were not alarming (ie, it did not show a big drop for girls and so on).
All schools in the dist had taken part in a “Chaduvula Pandaga” (Festival of Education) launched by the Andhra Pradesh govt where drop-out children would be identified, and their parents would be talked into sending them back to school. One big issue that the headmaster had was on the question of number of teachers. A lot of permanent posts are not filled, and the Andhra Pradesh govt had introduced the concept of Vidya Volunteer- para-teachers who were supposed to take up the same workload as a regular teacher, but who are paid only a fraction of what a regular teacher is paid (the salary of a parateacher is Rs. 1000; the salaries of regular teachers varies between Rs. 5000 to Rs. 8000 apparently, and some of the headmasters make up to Rs. 15,000 pm).
Since we were running behind schedule, we did not interact with the children here and moved on to the next school.
The school here is probably the smallest of the high schools we visited. We talked to the headmaster and teachers about the functioning of the school, the Chaduvula pandaga program and thanked them for the cooperation they have been extending to Sahanivasa for their after-school program (there might be some element of looking down upon by the regular teachers on the Sahanivasa teachers, but on the whole we found that the cooperation extended by them towards the program was quite satisfactory. Lot of it might have to do with the fact that there is a friendly competition for different schools for good results, and the future promotions and salary of the headmaster at least seems to be tied up to the track record of results that he or she builds up. So it is in their interest also that a lot of the children attending the schools pass the examination).
After initial hesitation, the children opened to us a little (but not too much). The contrast between the primary school we visited a few hours back and the high school in terms of the curiosity was marked (this was later borne out in other primary and high schools that we visited as well). Where as the primary school children were bubbling with energy and were keen on showing off their learning to us, we found a marked lack of it in the class X children. No doubt a lot of this is due to the strict regimen that is encouraged in our schools under the guise of ‘discipline’ which ends up totally killing the initiative of a child and discourages any such practices as questioning.
A couple of children sung songs, and we also had a role play where a child would act as a politician who has come asking for votes, and highlight the issues that he would solve if he is voted to power. The issues that were identified by the children themselves were like drinking water, cheaper electricity, employment, laying roads etc. They seemed to have their priorities right, indeed! There was a particular pathos to this exercise because most of the children appeared to be severely mall-nourished and small for their age. You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that many of them would be in class 6 or class 7, based on what city kids of that age look like. The only silver lining is the fact that following the recent Supreme Court to all the states, the AP govt is starting a cooked noon-meal program in November in the govt run schools (but it will cover only children till age 14, or the equivalent of class 8).
I glanced through the text books (the govt gives textbooks for free to the children; the medium is Telugu for all subjects, save English), and they seemed to have improved somewhat since my time. The density has come down a little and there were more pictures. But still there is plenty of scope for improvement in terms of relevance, language used etc. For science and math in particular, the equivalent terminology in Telugu can be particularly difficult.
This high school was in the news last year for securing a 100% pass result, which was recognized by the CM in presentation when he visited Chittoor. It was getting a bit dark, but for some reason the lights in the classroom would not work. Which proved to be a good thing because we requested that the children should come out and sit with us on the ground in the open in the vast school compound itself. Though, even here, the manner in which the students were made to fall in line and troop out suggested the domineering influence of the govt teachers (there is one reason why the Sahanivasa teachers do better when compared to the regular teachers; they are much more compassionate towards the children since they are from similar social and economic backgrounds, and also because this aspect is stressed during the teacher training and meetings that Sahanivasa conducts for their teachers. This in turn encourages a more open relationship between the children and teachers).
There is an interesting practice in all the schools of one of the children writing the daily news on a black board in the school. When asked about what was written that day, some of the children were not very clear, indicating its limited utility in practice.
The children sung a few songs for us. When we asked them whether they had any questions for us (instead of us doing the questioning and talking), there was a very tangible silence-no doubt the children were feeling the watchful eyes of the headmaster and the teachers (unlike the previous school where they had left us largely on our own) and were not certain whether it is proper to ask questions.
Since it was getting late for the children (and many of them have to commute several kilometers to reach home), were soon wrapped up the visit.
This was the final stop for the day and it was getting to 8 PM by then. Since these villages were closeby, they had asked the children from 3 elementary schools to assemble at a central place. The children took turns at different cultural programs: songs, traditional dances like Kolatam (some of the songs related to the life of Dr. Ambedkar) and a play. Here too the inherent curiosity that children come in with when they enter school was apparent.
Ram had a long discussion with the parents on the problems they faced, and issues related to their livelihood. Most of these folks were illiterate which limits the type of jobs they have access to. There was an interest in getting trained as drivers.
After dinner, we had a discussion well into the night with Mr. Chennaiah and Mrs. SuriaRanjini where we learnt more about the other work of Sahanivasa, the social and economic hardships that a lot of landless Dalits go through (we would highly recommend that people visiting projects should plan on staying overnight at the project whereever possible. That is the time when the project organizers open up to you, and you can really learn a lot about the community and their issues, many of them perhaps not directly related to the project run with Asha’s support). We also talked about the challenges encountered in the children coming back later on and taking responsibility for helping their community (a lot of them, in particular those who migrate to towns and cities, end up disowning their Dalit identity because of the stigma attached to it even in this day and time).
A slight drizzle accompanied us to the Bangareddipally elementary school the next morning where some of the children had gathered (unfortunate that it was our visit that brought them out on a Sunday-their normal holiday). During the course of our interaction, the children could do some basic math and write some basic English words, and also read out Telugu poems from their books.
A lot of parents had assembled there. Some of them felt that the children were not learning enough English! At this, the teacher got all upset and asked the children to show what they learnt in school. We enquired if there were any children in the village who dropped out (the parents emphatically said there were none, which is probably not the entire truth). We got complaints from parents about the Rs. 5/month they had to pay for the centers. Mr. Chennaiah took them to task for spending more than this on their daily beedis.
After a quick breakfast we went to the G.D.Nellore High School
This is one of the bigger schools in the area. And, out of all the high schools, this is the only one situated in the town.
The contrast between this school and the rest was marked both in terms of the heath of the children (the children here were much bigger and in better health than the others), and their confidence levels was also at a much higher level ((perhaps one reason why Asha should really make efforts to reach the real interior schools; it is obvious that the need there is considerably higher). As opposed to the other schools where mostly the children were from the Dalit and backward communities, this school had a good sprinkling of children of upper casters as well. The children had very definite views on fighting corruption, role of reservations etc. They also highlighted the fact that the school did not have a Hindi teacher for the 5 months (!!) since the schools started and were requesting Sahanivasa to start classes for Hindi as well. Apparently the headmaster was trying to secure the services of some Vidya volunteer for this, but in these areas it is not very common to find a good teacher with Hindi background.
The lack of a Hindi teacher was a problem plaguing the school as well. Mr. Chennaiah asked the Sahanivasa education coordinator to try to do something about this, since the children are expected to sit from exams in another 5 months, and not having a Hindi teacher could seriously jeopardize their chances of passing. (though the pass percentage of children has improved significantly since the Asha intervention started, there is a great deal to be done in improving “real” learning levels of children, which remain quite poor. We talked with Mr. Chennaiah about the need to expose some of the teachers to successful alternative education initiatives so they can incorporate the better aspects in their own teaching).
We repeated the exercise of role play by the children. One of the children passionately extolled the good things the CM has done for the region, while another was equally critical of his failure in some of the areas (the issues the children were most concerned with, as with the Mukkalathuru High School, were all basic ones affecting their livelihood). The fact about none of the schools (except the town-based G.D.Nellore school) having a library of any sort came out during our interaction with the children. It is clear that Asha should address this as an area of focus, if the education is not to remain confined to the rote learning through textbooks.
After lunch we met with old students who graduated out of the program the last few years and also the teachers. We had a chance to go through some of the lesson plans the teachers prepare (both on what they have taught the last week, and what is the plan of teaching for the next week), and also the receipt books of fees collected from children. In general the documentation is very well kept. The need to continue to emphasize on the collection of the nominal Rs. 5 to make the parents realize the worth of education was emphasized. It was heartening to see the teachers tell stories of what motivates them to teach inspite of low salaries, and them taking pride at the difference they are making to the lives of the children (once every month, the teachers have a general session with the . The request of making their jobs “permanent” was voiced. We explained how Asha works and how most of our fundraising is done from year to year and how though we try our best to work with groups on the long-term basis, by the very nature of a voluntary organization we cannot make firm commitments for the long-term.
We took our leave of the teachers and were dropped at the bus stand at 5PM where we caught the bus back to Bangalore. It was indeed a learning experience for us, and although too much had been crammed into the 2 days, we hope to go back a few more times in the next year to participate in the work there in more detail.