Agent for mainstreaming learners

Humana People to People have attempted to address one of the major issues, out-of-school children (OOSC) that besets school education. They have succeeded substantially in the regions that they have worked and they are scaling their effort. Hence, they richly deserve the Nexus of Good Award being given to them.

It was 2017. I had taken over as Secretary, School Education, Government of India, a few months ago. I was on a visit to a government primary school in Haryana. The sight was an incredible one. This was not a typical set of children in a school. They were neither of a similar age nor in school uniform, and yet, they appeared extremely keen and eager. A couple of adults in the room were, also, not the usual teachers, as I walked into the room along with Snorre Westgard and BR Sinha. These two gentlemen were tasked to manage the work of Humana People to People in India. I was subsequently informed that the children in the room were out-of-school children. An effort was being made to mainstream them. The children in the room had either dropped out or never been to a school, and each had a different reason for doing so.

In 2005, Humana People to People India (HPPI) decided to address the challenge of the OOSC, especially those living in slums, urban and semi-urban areas. The project was initiated as 'Academies for Working Children', and varied from a handful of children seated on a durrie (mat) to proper class-rooms in rented buildings. From 2005 to 2015, around 15,000 children benefited from these 'academies'. While around 50 per cent of the children were mainstreamed in government primary schools at some time during their education, the project was 'independent' of government and was dependent on full funding from private contributions, which limited the scale of the programme.

With the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) in 2009, an idea emerged for developing a pedagogical and operational model that was aligned with the RTE Act and the specific Ministry of Education (erstwhile, Ministry of Human Research and Development) programme for OOSC under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, now, Samagra Shiksha. From around 2013 to 2015, the teaching-learning materials, tools and techniques were developed and designed, and the model was piloted on a very small scale in different CSR-funded projects. The attempt, now, was to develop a strategy based on public-private partnership and scale up the out-of-school programme.

The first large-scale programme with 2,000 children was implemented in cooperation with Bharti Foundation and RSK Madhya Pradesh in the session of 2015-2016 in two of the state's tribal districts, Bharwani and Jhabua. After the initial success in Madhya Pradesh, in July 2016, an agreement was signed with Educate a Child – a programme under The Education Above All Foundation, Qatar — for mainstreaming 30,000 children in Haryana over three years. In October, the same year, an MOU was signed with the State Project Office of the Department of School Education in Haryana. The Department committed to pay for the Kadam Teachers (Education Volunteers) and the printing of the Kadam toolkits for each child. These contributions by the state took off during the second year of the project. By July 2019, the project had enrolled over 40,000 children and successfully mainstreamed over 34,000 children, after closing their learning gaps. An assessment of the mainstreamed children showed that over 90 per cent stayed in school, and performed average, at par with the other children of their grade.

In 2017 and 2018, the regional workshops organised by the Ministry of Education enabled HPPI to present the Kadam model in four of the five regional workshops and discuss extensively with states. This gave a boost to the Public Private Partnership Model and resulted in Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. A model for bridge education was also developed under the name of Kadam+. This approach for remedial learning and bridge education for in-school children has reached out to 1,08,987 children in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. The partnership between HPPI and Haryana for out-of-school-children was extended for the second phase in 2019, for yet another three years; and till July 2022, a total of 82,024 children have been integrated at age-appropriate grade level after closing their learning gaps.

Identification of OOSC is where it all begins. It is perhaps the most challenging part as well. Areas with a large number of OOSC are identified and the catchment area of the Gram Panchayat Samiti in that area is defined. The Kadam Teacher starts with a door-to-door household survey, mapping all OOSC in the catchment area of the school. The teacher mobilises the children and the parents to enroll in the school. The school allocates a class-room, a veranda or a corridor for the Kadam Centre (a Special Training Centre). The Centre ideally runs for 9-11 months. The Government Primary School (GPS) is involved in the programme. The Head Teacher supervises and supports the Kadam Teacher and the activities. The Kadam Teachers are organised in groups of 10, who meet weekly and share experiences and collect data for the online Management Information System (MIS). Once a month, a bigger meeting with all Kadam teachers in a district is organised. The District Project Office for Samagra Shiksha leads the operation in a district, with support from a HPPI District Organiser.

A baseline determines the entry step, and their age determines the end goal for the exit step. Each child has an assessment card called TmP Card – Tracking my Progress Card, which makes the progress of the child visible to him / her as well as the other stakeholders, including teachers, parents, BRPs, etc. The children in the Kadam programme work in groups of three, called trios, and spend 70 per cent of their time doing exercises that are directly linked to NCERT-defined learning competencies. In all, the programme is significantly based on 540 competencies and 10 steps across five grades and four subjects. The competencies and the corresponding exercises are organised in a logically progressive manner so that the children learn by constructing new knowledge based on the previous one, and moving at their own pace up through the desired competencies and the steps. In the remaining 30 per cent of their time, the children are engaged in theme-based, hands-on activities which provide them with real-life learning. A monthly theme headline determines the scope of these activities which, at the end of the month, culminates in Children's Day. Once a month, the parents are invited for a parent-teacher meeting. Engaging with parents is an important component of the programme.

During the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kadam Programme for out-of-school children and the Kadam+ Programme for in-school children moved to the homes of the children. The children met in smaller groups in their homes and the Kadam work-books were a great help to keep the education going. The teacher could visit the groups 2-3 times a week and sometimes also communicate using the WhatsApp messenger or video where this was available among the children. While the results were not as good as when the children attended school or a special training centre, the children that carried out the Kadam Programme at their homes, continued to learn and achieve significant learning gains during the school lockdown.

National Education Policy's (2020) Chapter 2, 'Foundational Literacy and Numeracy: An Urgent & Necessary Prerequisite to Learning' and Chapter 3, 'Curtailing Dropout Rates and Ensuring Universal Access to Education at All Levels', emphasize the importance of ensuring access to education for children those are out of school, and that all children actually learn in school. Teaching and learning have to be purposeful for the learner so it equips every student with the knowledge, understanding and capacities to be active participants in forming the future and in building resilient communities able to address the issues that face humanity today. NGOs like Humana People to People demonstrate that issues relating to OOSC and foundational learning can be addressed substantially through public-private partnerships.

Views expressed are personal