 "Children being taught at a Pratham learning camp in Bhadohi")
Sounds of laughter and excitement emanate from the government school classroom in a village in Bhadohi, Uttar Pradesh. I watch from a window as two little children circle a jumble of alphabet strewn on the ground. The facilitator calls out a letter and the two children scrabble about madly to find it. The winner proudly holds up the letter, uses it in a word, writes it on the blackboard and then identifies it once again on a chart. “We find that this simple game enables students to learn the alphabet and numbers much better than any book would do,” says the facilitator.
Meanwhile, the government schoolteacher is watching her students participating in this workshop. “These are such effective teaching methods,” she says. “The students are learning to recognise, read and write the alphabet — and all they think they’re doing is playing a game.”
This learning camp is part of a unique programme to improve learning outcomes among primary schoolchildren from some of India’s most educationally backward districts, conceptualised and conducted by Pratham. One of India’s largest NGOs, it focuses on high-quality, low-cost and replicable interventions to address gaps in the education system. “In 2002, when we were creating this programme, we were faced with a basic challenge,” says Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham Education Foundation. “How could we facilitate better learning outcomes among children already enrolled in government schools across the country?” Their research showed that almost half of the students of class V in rural Indian schools could not read a story meant for a class II student, or solve a simple subtraction sum. The need of the hour, the folks at Pratham believed, was an inexpensive and easily replicable programme to accelerate learning that could supplement existing government infrastructure.
Thus, Pratham’s learning camps were born. Learning camps are short-term modules conducted by trained Pratham staff and volunteers that aim to teach students from class III to V, reading, writing comprehension and numeracy using standardised and easily replicable learning materials. Continuous evaluation ensures that each student is taught at their learning level. In the Bhadohi programme, as in other districts of UP, the camps are conducted in four sessions of 10 days each. Imaginative games, short stories and songs form the resource materials for these workshops. On the cards are follow up sessions, learning materials and even digital tools for students who have participated in Pratham’s learning camps, even though the task at hand is huge.
The NGO has worked directly with 5,000 government primary schools so far, impacting 3,37,000 students. For this, it has over 60 corporate partners. Their research shows that at the baseline, 59 per cent of these students could not even read simple words. After attending the Pratham learning camps, 77 per cent of these students were able to read simple text fluently. Pratham is also working with 13 state governments: Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand to name some, to create a larger impact. In these states they work with cluster coordinators who manage groups of several schools at the district level. “We train them in our methodology and also set up model schools to demonstrate how it works,” says Banerji. Every year, Pratham spends over ~200 crore on its education and skilling programmes, reaching a million children.
Children being taught at a Pratham learning camp in Bhadohi
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Next on the cards is a digital initiative whereby it can maintain contact with students who have attended learning camps using digital media such as tablets. “We plan to give five tablets programmed with our learning materials to every village we work in, as well as train some locals as facilitators there,” says Banerji. Each such programme could cost between ~30-40 lakh, but would ensure that the positive effects of the learning camps last much longer. Also on the anvil are plans to take these learning camps to more and more districts across the country. “It costs us as little as ~1,000 per child to conduct a learning camp,” she says. “We need more corporate and state partners to take this forward as well.”
For more, visit www.pratham.org or follow them on Facebook
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