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EDUCATION GUARANTEE SCHEME AND ALTERNATIVE & INNOVATIVE EDUCATION
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7. Ensuring quality in EGS & AIE Children
in the NFE centres are from different age group and abilities. So
far, in the NFE centres all children have been taken together through the
semesters, covering the curriculum in a sequential manner. Such an
approach has not had satisfactory outcomes in terms of children
progressing from one level to another, as well as children completing
their primary education. This has been an area of concern.
Poor performance of learners has been due to poor and inadequate inputs
into the programme. There has been a lack of appropriate and adequate
training of teachers, inadequate supervision and academic support for the
teacher, the curriculum and teaching-leaning material does not recognise
the different pace of learning of the children of different age groups.
The current scheme of
EGS & AIE recognises that the schools/centres/camps would have
children in the age group of 6-14 years, these children would have either
never been enrolled at school or would be dropouts hence they would also
have different abilities. Since the EGS schools would be like formal
schools or feeder schools for formal schools, these schools would use the
formal school curriculum and textbooks. The challenge in such a situation
would be in using formal school textbooks along with additional teaching
learning material which would enable the older children to cover the
curriculum for the earlier classes in a short period. The Education
Volunteers would need to be trained to address the varying learning needs
of the children. The provisions of the EGS & AIE scheme have been made such that there is no compromise on the quality of teaching learning in the school/camp/centre. The following are the non-negotiables viz-a-viz the classroom pro
To be able to
incorporate the above principles in any strategy a holistic approach of
planning will need to be adopted. This will have to be addressed in the
training package for the Education Volunteer and the Cluster Resource
Person, the teaching learning material will have to be developed such that
it would allow children to learn independently and with their peers,
designing the regular academic support in the form of regular visits of
the CRP to the centre and the fortnightly/monthly meetings for review,
reflection and developing innovative activities (refer Annex
II).
7.1
Training: EGS & AIE provides
for induction training of 30 days duration for the Education Volunteers of
the primary level and 40 days for those of the upper primary level. This
training would be residential. There is a provision
for 30 days training in every subsequent year also. This recurrent
training could be provided in 2 to 3 or even more rounds during the year.
All CRPs would also need to undergo these training programmes.
In addition, the CRPs would need some additional training to deal with
monthly meetings and other administrative issues. The content and focus of
these training programmes should be flexible, depending on the need
assessed by the education volunteers, resource persons, and training
institutions like DIETs or VAs. The training process should be
participatory and reflective in nature, allowing enough scope to the
education volunteers to learn through experiences. Lecture-based
training should be completely discontinued. The training programmes
would need to address the specific requirements of multi-level teaching
for children of different age groups and abilities. This is a major
challenge since such training programmes have not been attempted earlier
on a large scale. Institutions like SCERTs, DRUs and DIETs would
need to work intensively on formulation of long duration programmes that
help in preparation of EVs for the challenging classroom conditions in
alternative schools. In certain DPEP states, State Resource Groups (SRG)
have undertaken such work in collaboration with SCERTs or other
institutions/NGOs. Training at the
district and block levels would be the responsibility of DIETs, DRUs
located outside DIETs or identified VAs. VAs receiving funds under this
scheme could have the option of getting the training organised thorough
DIETs, DRUs or reputed VAs which have carried out innovative work. States
could also constitute state, district & block resource groups to
impart training to Education Volunteers under EGS & AIE. Key Resource
Persons at state / district level would need to be provided exposure
through visits to other innovative programmes’ resource institutions
etc. Such exposure visits/capacity building programmes for resource
persons associated with EGS & AIE would be supported under SSA 7.2 Regular academic
support The experience of Alternative Schooling programme of DPEP, LJP and several VAs has clearly shown that academic review and planning on a fortnightly/monthly basis is the key to maintenance of quality of the teaching learning process. This has also been the experience with BRC & CRC forums for the formal schools. It is therefore advisable to provide adequate and intensive academic support to the EGS & AIE centres from the initial stage. EGS & AIE provides for one Cluster Resource Person (CRP) for every 20 centres. The CRPs would be responsible for regular visits to the schools / camps and also for holding fortnightly / monthly academic review and planning meeting of the Education Volunteers. The CRP replaces the erstwhile supervisor in the earlier NFE scheme. For EGS schools in project districts and SSA districts, existing structures of CRC and BRC would be well placed to provide regular academic support. For strategies aimed at mainstreaming involvement of the head teacher of the nearest formal school would be desirable. These review and
planning meetings of the Education Volunteers should be organised for
atleast 2 days every month (one day every fortnight or for two days, once
in a month). 7.3
Teaching-Learning Materials: It is expected that in
most states, the EGS schools would follow the formal schools curriculum
and textbooks. While the EGS school may start with all children at
class I level, it would soon have to deal with children in different
classes. It would be challenging task for one EV to use the formal
school textbooks (which follow a somewhat rigid, sequential structure) to
teach all children effectively. There would be a need to develop
supplementary material that help in organsing group and self learning
activities eg. Worksheets, teaching aid etc. to help the EV in classroom
transaction. The situation would be even more difficult in certain AIE centres where the groups of learners may be more diverse. Teaching learning materials would need to be developed/adopted specifically for such multi-level centres. For bridge courses/back to school camps innovative materials that support flexible pace of learning and completion of gradewise curriculum would be required. Such materials have already been developed by several state run projects and VA programmes. Development of such TLM
(and also the training programmes associated with them) would require a
massive capacity building exercise for state and district level resource
persons and groups including personnel from SCERTs, and DIETs. This
work would need to be completed prior to a large scale invitation of EGS
schools/AIE centres. 7.4 Testing,
Certification and Mainstreaming Since the thrust of EGS
& AIE is on mainstreaming of children into the formal schools, each
state would need to ensure a system of testing & certification of
children studying at these centres / bridge courses. Education Volunteers
/ Headmasters of formal schools, CRCs /Sub Inspectors of Schools could be
involved in a simple assessment procedure for such children to ensure
their smooth transition into formal schools in an appropriate grade. Also,
admission in the schools for children coming from such centres should be
allowed throughout the year. The Education Volunteers/ teachers in the
formal schools would need to be sensitised to ensure that the children
admitted into the formal schools get adequate attention and are able to
cope up with the work in the class. 7.5 Duration of the
programme 7.5.1 The
centres would function for a minimum of 4 hours a day. The centre timings
should not be in the late evening or night-time, except in rare cases. The
Education Volunteers would be required to put in at least an extra hour of
preparation time (beyond the time for which the centre function) to plan
for the day including documenting child wise progress, maintaining
teacher’s diary, finalising the TLM etc. for the various subjects,
contacting the community / parents of children etc. 7.5.2 There is no specific
period of duration of the scheme in a particular village / slum. While EGS
schools would continue to function for several years till upgraded, even
centres for other categories of children could continue till `out of
school’ children in that area are covered. It is not expected that all
children would complete education upto class IV / V in 2 years only.
Bridge courses / residential camps would continue for varying duration
depending on the requirement of children of different age groups. It is
possible that a particular bridge course continues throughout the year and
different children take 3 months to 1 year to reach the educational level
of the grade to which they are to be admitted.
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