Pankhudi Pune has been actively interacting with SSA officials in Pune in the recent past. This is to analyze what SSA is, what is tries to solve, do we do something similar, can we help each other, etc?
Below is a summary of the same:
The Problem: Children not going to school and children getting dropped out from schools.
Reasons:
1) School infrastructure: Unavailability of basic infrastructure such as toilets, drinking water, good classrooms, etc causes children as well as teachers to minimize their time in schools. Pune has 272 corporation schools running in 132 buildings!
2) The Head Master (HM): Good HM = good school. HM is decided seniority-wise, which usually brings up the most tired-of-life person on board. Wherever there are good HM’s, the schools are doing well. It is in the HM’s capacity to take almost all the decisions regarding the school, right from academic to infrastructural. There are specific zonal offices wherein he’s supposed to send letters, in case of any problem at the school. Only if the HM knows the rules well and is willing will the system work fine!
3) Quality of education: The very basic problem of “What’s the whole point of spending so much time and money on education and then being unemployed” is addressed by some parents. We need to go for more practical courses (govt offers these as well) which would help the needy earn quicker returns.
4) Surroundings: Only about 1% of children HAVE TO earn for their family. About 9% of parents are not willing to send the children to school. 50% percent of the children do not go to school because they don’t find anything interesting there! Remaining 40% percent of the children do not go to school due to ‘bad’ company!! This bad company is of children who do not go to school and earn and learn their living through personal experiences of the world around! This informal experience based education attracts the children who are going to school to join them.
Other factors affecting a child’s life, especially girls, in the 513 slums that we have in Pune so far, is that the social burden is more on girls and hence they take more time to open up to new ideas. Most of them would need counseling before anything else.
Also noticeable is the hobbies that these children pursue, which are mostly decided by their peers and surroundings. Boys love to save up some money and use them later for short outings, watching movies in theatres, etc, whereas girls stick to in-house games.
5) Formal vs non-formal: The problem with non-formal education that people like us give to the dropout kids is that they are the rulers in our class. We decide, plan and execute our classes according to their moods and in a complete friendly and fun-learn style, giving personal attention to each of the children. The scene in a school is totally different. The child might never be even noticed in a mighty class and there would be zero importance attached to his actions, leading him to drop out again!
At the core of the problem lies the fact that we tend to provide solutions to all the above reasons and hence problems after the event. SSA aims to target the reasons first thereby avoiding this.
What SSA does:
1) External exam: External exams for all students of age groups between 5 and 14 is conducted by SSA. Nice scores in these exams can help the child get into the respective standard at any corporation school. This is of great use, since elder kids cannot go to lower standards.
2) Admission drive: A month before the admission season, surveys are conducted to search for out-of-school children and they are admitted into schools later. Primary education is compulsory in India, for children less than 14 years old.
3) Non-formal centers: The children who do no go to schools even after the drive, are taught for a year non-formally by a locally recruited teacher and are then put back into the school.
4) Evaluation exams: SSA checks every child’s performance through evaluation exams conducted every 3 months.
5) Teachers’ training: 21 day training courses are offered every month for teachers. The syllabus is revised every 5 years and teaching methodology is also changed accordingly. Hence it’s important to train the teachers. The training also aims at increasing the sense of belonging towards the school and kids.
6) Officers’ training: Education officers are trained at Giriwan through various innovative methods. This is a residential training. Pankhudi Pune volunteers are lucky to get to attend such a session and are looking forward to learning a lot more!
7) Syllabus and material: They take part in deciding the syllabus, providing free material to schools, etc- Pankhudi Pune has already got the latest material.
Collaborating with NGOs: SSA works with NGO’s and uses any help from them where the NGO’s specialize.
9) Workshops: Workshops, outdoor training sessions, etc are arranged for teachers. Summer camps (which include all-fun-no-study activities such as magic shows, craft, etc) are arranged for children just after their final exams, just so that their interest in the school does not fade away with the vacation.
10) Special projects: Special and specific projects such as the Pune Station project are taken up by SSA via sanctions from the central govt. The station project successfully dealt with rehabilitation of children based in the stations, which has helped bring down the crime rate from 174 per month to 47 per month! SSA conducts special purpose health drives in slums as well.
Further details can be obtained at the SSA website here.
What Pankhudi-Pune plans to do:
1) Admission drive: Help them by conducting the drive in the areas we know better.
2) Monitoring non-formal centers: Monitor the non-formal center closest to us. We just need to go there once a week to check if the teacher is doing his/her job well, if the children are enjoying the classes, etc. We might conduct some interesting activities for these children on weekends.
3) Monitoring schools: Volunteer should decide upon a conveniently located school, go there regularly to check if things are in place. If they are not then help the HM take the needed action.
4) Teaching: We plan to train ourselves better and then use the skills thus garnered to better effect.
5) Counselor: Some children/parents needs counseling. We could help do the counseling ourselves or co-ordinate with SSA to arrange for one.
Our learnings:
1) Attack the symptoms rather than the disease! For example, rather than moving dropouts to schools repeatedly, we should rather target why they drop out repeatedly.
2) Formal first: For dropouts, formal education should be the first step with non-formal coming into the picture later to either complement or supplement the formal education already provided.
3) Utilize present systems and infratstructure: It is of utmost importance that we help wake up the existing system, which already has all the facilities on paper which is also a more sustainable way than doing things through other channels which most probable might end up being a temporary solution. For example, conducting health camps in slums is a govt duty. They have a special office in Aundh (for Pune) for it. We plan to use it to help us.
4) Study: Keep our eyes open, watch out for the policies and schemes of our interest, observe, study them in detail, and implement them.
5) Training: Trained staff is a basic necessity of primary education. Pankhudi-Pune volunteers are excited at the chance of adding these skills to their teaching methodologies.
7) Children first, parents later: Parents counseling was considered to be a major issue to allow the child to attend school. But even after that a teaching methodology with no learnings and impact on the child might make the child stay away from school.
Hence, we plan to target making an impact on those lives who actually attend schools with us rather than go out and counsel more parents. This might help set an example for such parents who might hence relent.
10) Prepare ourselves for non-cooperation: Working alongside Government initiatives brings along a whole new aspect of working with a few people who might not be motivated to achieve the objectives that we target.
This initiative also helped us meet a lot of influential people in the same field. Dr. Sanjiwani Gohad, Head, Medical Social Work Cell, Sassoon Hospital, Pune has a lot of contacts and is willing to help us. She raised issues such as “Do you have any plans for the future of the elder children that you teach?” and made us aware of the various corporation scholarships and schemes even for 9th std kids, foreign funding, academic degree courses for us, etc.
She also gave us the contact of Ramakant Padwal of Vidyaan Aashram, Pabal which we plan to visit soon.
Hermann Center is also willing to help us in every respect and has already helped Pankhudi-Pune previously.
In another recent development, Subhash Mendhapurkar of SUTRA (Social Upliftment Through Rural Action, Himachal Pradesh) gave us the direct contact of Shanta Sinha, the Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
We hope we can go along this path and succeed at every step be it individually or with the SSA.
Our special thanks to Mr. Bhushan Nalage, SSA Co-ordinator, Pune who was kind enough to spend abundant time with us for this.
. Finally the treatment started. And its hard time to listen new stories. Total of 3 cases, where it was a genetic problem. Marriage in same blood like with Cousin or relative, leads to this problem. What doctor sir explained me was – “getting married in same blood cause this problem at a dominant level. Maybe either his mother or father has this problem but not prominent but the next generation effect is very prominent. Lot of research is going on but we don’t have any solid solution yet. ”
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