Vedanta
E-Shiksha @ Schools Program
While one
considers the great strides taken by India in popularization and streamlining
of education in the Country, the gap between knowledge levels of the urban and
rural students is still large enough. All said and
done the rural students across India have to still battle with non–availability
of the minimum facilities for education. The quality of education is not even
standalone not to say about the levels of the highly priced private education
in the Country.
Although
there is growth in all sectors in India, the most benefits accrue to a small
percentage of populace who stays in the urban environments. The rural
environments do not even get to have the basic infrastructure and reel under
poverty naturally without even being cushioned.
The
Government, the biggest player in rural education, is in-charge of running and
managing around 80% of all recognized schools at the elementary stage. Over the
years, it has launched many programs to combat negative statistics like 40%
illiteracy rate and 85% dropout rate. Education has also been made free for
children between 6 to 14 years of age or up to class VIII under the Right of
Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009. All these have brought
certain small benefits to the rural population in some of the clusters, but the
major part of the country does not seem to have been covered properly.
One of the
most ambitious projects of the Government launched is aptly named ‘Education
for All’ that is ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’. The initiative has to be given full
marks for being the largest of any such education initiatives in the World.
Although a huge investment has gone in to this initiative one has to agree that
the ambitious project has faltered somewhere along and has not been able to
deliver any positive results leave alone the results desired.
One can
understand the fallacies of an initiative of the Government due to inherent
mechanism deterrent to its growth and functioning. At the same time the
Government circles themselves have come up with an excellent method of
combating the problems by going in to the Public Private Partnerships (PPP).
The PPP has brought in miraculous positive results in sectors where it was
thought that the initiatives would fail. PPP has an in-built mechanism of
clearly identified partnership structures, sharing of objectives and have
specified performance indicators for delivery.
One such
success story worthy of the kudos is that of the PPP with Vedanta Foundation as
one of the agencies.
Vedanta
E-Shiksha@Schools is the flagship program of Vedanta Foundation. This is one of
the largest projects undertaken under the Central Government’s Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan scheme. The acceptability and assimilation in this project is increased
as the project uses award-winning e-content for learning the core subjects and
provides computer education in vernacular / local languages. The multimedia
elements present in the e-content are compliant with the state government
syllabus. Hence they help students to understand concepts easily and retain
them for a longer period of time. In addition to the digital content, computer
education books are provided to each school. At the end of the year these books
are handed over to the school library for any further reference by the
children. Once the students gain the necessary skills to manage work on a
computer they automatically become confident and ready to refer to the books in
the Library. The larger objective of the program is to create self sufficient
skilled individuals. The training and skills make them independent.
To impact
10,000 schools, benefiting over 1 million children with technology-led
education
To improve
student performance in academics and facilitate their overall personality
development
To decrease
the dropout rate and absenteeism
To improve
motivation level and knowledge of teachers with a scalable Teacher Training
Program
To implement
an innovative and creative curriculum that enhances the learning process
The Public
Private Partnership in this unique project envisages that the operational
responsibilities of running the program further are handed over to the School
authorities after a period of THREE years. As the school has been a consistent
partner in the program, it has all the input necessary to implement the program
further. Thus there is a smooth transition.
The
continued effectiveness which is the most important factor of this whole
process is organized through Teacher training and empowerment, identification
of locally based suitable human resources, who will carry the program forward
for newer children arriving. Thus the implementation of the project is complete
and positive.
Vedanta
E-Shiksha@Schools has made an indelible impact on the quality of education in
some rural areas of the Country. At present 2933 Government schools across
Maharashtra, Goa, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Orissa have been receiving quality
education through the ICT. The benefits have been accrued to more than 3 Lakh
students across the board.
In order to
assess the academic performance of the students as well as the qualitative
improvement in the infrastructure of the School, a third party baseline survey
is conducted in every state after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding
with that State Government.
Education as
a right of every young citizen of India has been imbibed very deep in the
governance of the country. The education need not be just held as a right but
we must also ensure that the right type of education to every child making the
future functionaries of India globally successful. A purposeful life is evolved
in to a successful life through the kind of education we are providing at
Vedanta E-Shiksha@Schools.
As an
organization dedicated to the betterment of the downtrodden, we take pride in
the fact that we are helping to steer the overburdened rural education system
in the right direction by providing ample opportunities to the less privileged
rural children…
