Asha for Education

Project Brief: Asha Chennai is working to improve the conditions and education at several government primary and middle schools in Thiruvallur district. 
Project Type: Working with the Government (description)
Primary Focus: to go to formal school (description)

Secondary Focus: other

Area: Rural
Supporting Chapter Contact:
Chennai

Status: CURRENT
Project Steward: Rajaraman Krishnan
Co-Steward: Venkat Ramasamy
Project Partner(s): Venkat Ramasamy
Project Address: Asha Trust - Project Sangamam
No.383. Ambethkar Nagar, Kaivandur post and village
Thiruvallur district
Thiruvallur, Tamil Nadu 631203
Tel: 91-9444404060
Stewarding Chapter: Chennai

<p>Thiruvallur is one of the poorer districts of Tamilnadu. It has always been a water scarce region. Proximity to Chennai has its positives as well as negatives. While lot of people find employment in Chennai and auxiliary industries for Chennai (like brick kilns and sand quarrying), the local resources are taken away from the region including water in the form of Poondi reservoir, river sand, human workforce etc. All this has left the mainstay of this region agriculture in a bad situation.</p><p>The scenario as regards education in this district is similar to the rest of Tamilnadu. Government schools exist but with serious deficiencies. Private schools are coming up and eating into the student force of the government schools. But the private schools are often worse in terms of the quality of the teaching. Asha Chennai believes the revival and strengthening of the government schooling system is essential to the implementation of any mass education initiative in India.There have been several positive changes in the government schooling system including the following,</p><ul><li>Introduction of good quality text books under the Samacheer Kalvi. But in the process the ABL (Activities Based Learning) a good system that was introduced in 2007 has been abandoned.</li><li>Regular assessments being done by SSA at every school and by NCERT through random sampling of the schools for the whole of India of the basic educational attainments (reading, writing and basic maths skills).</li> <li>Provision of computers and books to the schools.</li> <li>Introduction of English medium section in many schools. </li></ul> <p>While these are positive steps, for them to achieve their desired goals a lot more needs to be done. Rote learning without understanding of basic concepts is still the norm. Even the assessment conducted by SSA specifically tests reading skills without testing comprehension! While computers are provided they are not being used effectively in many of the schools. Further the introduction of English medium has been done purely to stem the tide of children going to other private schools. While it has been somewhat successful in doing that, they have not done anything to teach the children meaningfully in English.</p> <p>Asha Chennai works with 68 schools in Thiruvallur District – 53 in Poondi block, 10 schools in Ellapuram block, 3 schools in Kadambathur block, 1 school in Thiruvalangadu block and 1 school in Sriperumbudur block of Kanchipuram dist.</p><p>While Asha started teaching basic computer skills to the children at the schools we support, we also have a lot to do in terms of effectively using the computers for delivering curriculum contents in other subjects. </p><p>Asha Chennai has been working with eight government primary schools in the Thiruvallur district under Project Sangamam-Poondi. The project was started in the year 2004-05 with support to three primary schools. This year we are adding support to two more schools to bring the total number of schools we are working with to ten. The following timeline shows the history of our support to these schools.</p><table border="1px"> <tr><td> 2004-05 </td><td>Asha Chennai started the project with Panchayat Union Primary schools at Kuppammal Chathiram, Kanakavalli Puram and Pattarai Perambudur. Soon after that we added support for Placepalayam. This was the beginning of the project.</tr><tr><td>2013-14 </td><td>We were supporting 7 schools at the end of 2012-13: Kuppammal Chathiram, Pattarai Perumbudur, Thomur, Placeepalayam, Allikuzhi, Gandhigram and Kachur. Then we received a request from the middle school at Ramancheri as they were converting to an English medium school and they didn’t have any teacher to teacher English medium at the primary school. Since we wanted to participate in this experiment of the government we decided to support this school as well. During this year we also built toilets for the schools at Placepalayam and Allikuzhi with funds from Asha Frankfurt.</tr><tr><td>2014-15 </td><td>Hyundai Glovis came forward to support the project at the eight schools we were currently supporting. This has enabled us to take up support for two more schools at Ammambakkam and Nemiliagaram. We used to support Nemiliagaram till 2011 when the number of children dropped and our support was not needed any more. Children from nearby brick kilns come to this school nowadays which make it very difficult for them to manage during those 7 months. We also added support for Kannigaiper.</tr> <tr><td>2015-16 </td><td>Hyundai Glovis continued supporting the 8 schools. We continued supporting the 3 schools added last year and also added support for Kottaikulam. Parallely we also got support for Oracle Foundation to provide computer teachers to our existing schools of Thiruvallur Dist.</tr><td>2016-17 </td><td>Hyundai Glovis continued supporting the 8 regular schools. We continued supporting the 4 schools. We extended our project to support 2 more schools in Ellapuram block: Thandalam and Annanagar. Under Asha Kanini project we provided computer teachers to these schools as well as an additional 15 schools. We built a new toilet at Thandalam.<tr><td>2017-18 </td><td>Hyundai Glovis expanded the project to support all the 12 schools we were working with in the Poondi block. At Ellapuram block we continued to support the same three schools. Through Sangamam Kanini project computer teachers were teaching at about 45 schools which also included these 15 schools. The contents created through the Sangamam Kanini effort were also given to all these schools. As part of this project libraries were setup with Glovis support at all the 15 schools. Another parallel project – Sugadharam – was also supported by Glovis to repair toilets at 10 of these schools.</tr> <tr><td>2018-19 </td><td>Hyundai Glovis was looking to extend their CSR program and selected us as the partner. They extended their support to cover even the schools covered by computer teachers. Earlier we were only providing computer teachers to these computer schools. With Glovis support we started providing materials to the school and the children to these computer schools as well. They signed an MOU for 4.5 Crores to support 60 schools. We also started supporting 6 schools supported by Hyundai Steel. These were in the Sriperumbudur block of Kanchipuram Dist and Kadambathur block of Thiruvallur Dist. We repaired toilets at three middle schools.</td></tr> <tr><td>2019-20 </td><td>Hyundai Glovis continued supporting us and added one more school to bring their total to 61 schools. Hyundai Steel stopped supporting our project. We continued support 4 of the school we had taken up with them and further added support for 2 schools in Ellapuram block and one in Kadambathur block to bring the total number of schools to 68. A new library was built at Annanagar and also play areas were built at Gandhigram and Annanagar. </td></tr> <tr><td>2020-21 </td><td>The year began with the Covid pandemic which threw our operations into a spin. Further in August Hyundai Glovis announced that they will not be able to continue supporting us and pulled out of the MOU. We are continuing our support for the 68 schools in a limited manner with our own funds. We built new toilets at Pudhukandigai and Ramanjeri. We also undertook the repair of toilets at 15 additional schools. We also built a new play area for the school at Kottaikulam.</td></tr> </table> Locally the activities of the project has been coordinated by the project coordinator Srinivasan. We have also helped improve the infrastructure at the schools by repainting the boards, fixing the roof, building cooking areas, building toilets, providing electric fittings, plumbing facilities etc. We also sponsored the annual day functions at all these schools. In doing all these activities we have been happy to find a supportive and energetic set of teachers at these schools. The district and panchayat officials have also been very supportive.<h5>OTHER GENERAL INPUTS FROM ASHA:</h5> Asha Chennai has undertaken several projects with government schools. As part of these projects, Asha Chennai provides several standard inputs including,
<ol><li> Education material as appropriate for the class. This would range from crayons to atlases and geometry boxes.</li><li>Support joyful learning by supporting annual day functions, excursions etc. at these schools.</li> <li> Bring the teachers from these projects to Chennai for training. The annual training would be covered under the budget for Project Rightstart. Further, we also have a monthly training program to improve the skill levels of the teacher both in terms of basic knowledge of English, Maths and Science as well as their teaching skills.</li><li> Computers for the schools have been provided both by Asha and the government. We use these computers to teach the children digital literacy and programming as well as deliver general curriculum contents over these.</li><li> Conduct assessments at these schools to identify learning gaps and provide detailed feedback to the schools about what can be improved at these schools.</li></ol>