Those who have been to Dakshinayan's project in Roldih are well aware of the fact that in rural Jharkhand, at least, there are school buildings in practically every village. But where are the teachers?
It's not enough to merely legislate. We had so many Acts (to protect women, human rights, animals, etc) but are they ever implemented? What is the grassroots reality? Do we really have trained teachers? And if we do have teachers, wouldn't it have made more sense to ensure that to qualify as one, they have to spend at least one year at a rural school? This should be the case with doctors too. Before they are granted their medical degrees, they need to spend at least one year in a rural hospital.
Dakshinayan has been providing basic education in one of the remotest areas of Jharkhand. And our experience tells us that the Act will have no impact at the grassroots level unless proper infrastructure is created for the implementation of RTE. This does not mean building of schools. One suspects that the local authorities and contractors are always keen to do this because it means money for them. I'm talking about Trained Teachers and Books and other Teaching Aids.
Had I been in charge of implementing RTE, these are few steps I would have taken to ensure that children did indeed receive education:
1. Select educated young men and women on the basis of a written test and an interview to ensure that they are psychologically suited to become teachers.
2. Provide them with training.
3. Ensure that they serve a one-year internship at a rural school before they receive their degrees.
4. Those who qualify need to set up their own rural schools. They will be provided with teaching material and assigned an area where they will teach.
5. If a school building exists in the area, they need to ensure that there are at least 100 children enrolled in the school and that there's at least 90% attendance before they get their salary.
6. If there are no buildings, then a school building will be constructed if the teacher and the community ensures that at least 100 children are attending school and there's 90% attendance.
7. Annual tests are to held to gauge the progress of the children. These tests are to be conducted by teachers from other schools.
These are but few of the suggestions I have. I wonder if the government will adopt some of them. Or if, like it is at present, we will have schools without teachers, and children without education and an yet another Act that is not implemented.
3 comments:
Hey, I've been away from the blog for a while, but when I saw this one I had to comment.
That's pretty interesting what you had to say about the rural schools. I just wrote a paper in school about access to schools for rural/indigenous groups (worldwide). I would generally agree with your thoughts. What do you think about government schools providing bilingual education, using whatever indigenous language(s) approriate for the locality? That seemed to be a pretty big issue in my research.
Really fascinating subject. Such a shame that there is not better access to education for all. Its ridiculous that the government seem to care so much about wanting to appear like they are doing alot for education when actually they just are not helping in any way and are just giving teachers money that dont do their job. I find your suggestions very interesting Siddarth, but how do we go about changing things as they currently stand?
This is a good article for Indian (and some other countries) newspapers -if not tacked to the board of the politicians in charge.
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