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National Conference on Enhancing
Learning in Elementary Schools |
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| Speeches |
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Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s inaugural address at National Conference on Enhancing Learning in
Elementary Schools, July
23, 2004, National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Bangalore
Good Morning Friends. I am very happy
and delighted to see you all here. I understand a number of
educationists have assembled here and every state has three
representatives besides representatives from the Centre. I am very
happy to meet all of you.
Honorable Mr. T.N Chaturvedi, Governor of
Karnataka, Honorable C Dharam Singh, CM of Karnataka, Mr. Azim Premji,
Chairman, Azim Premji Foundation, Ms. Kumud Bansal, Secretary
Government of India, and Mr. Dileep Ranjekar, CEO, Azim Premji
Foundation and all of you who assembled here to interact and have a
beautiful day. I wish you all the best. More
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Address
of Mr. Azim Premji at the Inauguration of the “National Conference on Enhancing Learning
in Elementary School” Organised
by Ministry of Human Resources Development and Azim Premji Foundation
Bangalore, July 23-25, 2004
His Excellency, the President of India Dr. Kalam, His Excellency, the
Governor of Karnataka Mr. Chaturvedi, Honourable Chief Minister of
Karnataka Mr. Dharam Singh, the Secretary of Elementary Education
& Literacy to the Government of India Ms. Kumud Bansal, ladies
and gentlemen.
I am neither an academician nor a classroom
practitioner. Therefore, the views I am going to express here are in my
capacity as a businessman, and a concerned citizen of our country. More
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Valedictory
address by Ms. Kumud
Bansal
In the last two and half days of this workshop titled very aptly as the
“Learning Conference 04”, I am sure all of us have learned something
about the immense challenges in achieving Universal Elementary
Education. Also, the insights by experts, identification of critical
areas by the participants and sharing of the wonderful experience by
the NGOs and the representatives from the state governments will
strengthen all of us and will help us in perceiving the issue of
children’s education in a holistic and comprehensive manner.
It is said that adults have limited
retention capabilities and I think we will all do well if we at least
take back with us two crucial observations made by none other than our
respected President that we should ensure the child retain her smile in
the schools and that our education system should enhance the inherent
creativity in the young children. More
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| Papers presented |
Plenary Address: “Perspectives
on learning in Elementary Schools”
Professor
Krishna Kumar
Events have a
language of their own, so have incidents, so have accidents and so have
controversies. One could pick up a theme from any these categories, to
learn about the system of education which we are here to contemplate in
the next two days. More
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Learning Guarantee
Programme:
Creating Voluntary Spirit for Accountability
By
Mr. S. Giridhar
Learning Guarantee
Programme is an initiative of Azim Premji Foundation in partnership
with Government of Karnataka. The overarching goal of the programme is
to create among schools, communities and educational functionaries, a
voluntary spirit of accountability towards ensuring learning of
children. The programme throws up a challenge at schools to come
forward and be evaluated by an independent team of evaluators on
pre-defined criteria of enrolment, attendance and learning
achievements. Schools that satisfy the criteria are eligible for
recognition and rewards. Out of a total 9270 schools in the 46 blocks
in the 7 districts of North East Karnataka, nearly 1900 schools (20 %
of the total government schools) are voluntarily participating in the
programme. More
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Language
Learning in Rishivalley Multigrade Schools
By Mr. K
Padmanabha Rao
Rishi Valley is situated in the rural interior of South India, in a
chronic drought area in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The population
consists largely of marginal farmers, shepherds who have tended their
flocks since Neolithic times and daily wage earners on seasonal
employment. For more than twenty-five years, Rishi Valley Education
Centre has engaged in a variety of educational programmes that reach
out to its neighbours in this impoverished countryside. These
educational innovations have found wide application and are presently
being adapted in several parts of India in programmes for
universalising elementary education. More |
Catalyzing
change towards quality education through rapid, step-wise,
short duration programmes in ‘learning to read’.
By Dr.
Madhav Chavan and Dr. Vasant Kalpade
Since 2003, Pratham’s field experiences show that in many parts of
India, including Maharashtra (in that year!), about 20-50% children in
schools in the age group (7 to 14) can barely recognize alphabets, let
alone read paragraphs. (This figure varies by region and state). t is
no surprise then that about 40% do not complete std IV or V as
governmental statistics indicate. The person on the street (and also
unfortunately in higher places) says that poverty causes dropping out.
More enlightened people have correctly called these ‘push-outs’ of a
system that is boring and ineffective. Together with many others,
Pratham, has maintained that lack of learning achievement in schools
together with the unfriendly and non-supportive teaching-learning
environment activates the poverty related links leading to a child
dropping out of school at an early age. More |
Key factor
in Sustainability
By Sister
Cyril
The effort to enhance learning achievement at Elementary Level has,
indeed, resulted in the development of a number of innovative practices
all over India. Whether such efforts can be sustained over the
prolonged period required for them to move from innovation to standard
practice and then to be scaled up for common use, will depend largely
on certain key factors, both in the initial introduction and later on
as they move for experimentation to real life practice. More |
LEARNING:
ISSUES OF ACCOUNTABILITY: The Assam Experience
By Mr.
Dhir Jhingran
Our success in putting in place a sustainable accountability mechanism
was limited. The support required from the policy and political levels
was inadequate. Political actors were unwilling to back this
arrangement of accountability as it would have reduced the legitimacy
of the discretion-nepotism oriented system that they encourage, where
accountability to people is minimal. More |
LEARNING
ACHIEVEMENT AT THE END OF PRIMARY CYCLE IN DPEP STATES
Dr
Srivastava
Achievement surveys are conducted to provide data on quality of
education in terms of scores on achievement tests administered to
students at a given grade level. Such surveys have been conducted
across a number of counties by international organizations such as IEA
and OECD in the past. One of the recent surveys of this type was
conducted as a part of the Third International Mathematics and Science
Study (TIMSS) that was carried out by Boston College and IEA in 45
countries in 1994-95. More |
Professional
Development of the Educator
Vibhu
Nayar
The education delivery system is dependent on the performance of the
educator at the classroom level , for any systematic improvement in
outcomes. With this foresight, it is important to focus energies and
resources on self-actualization, motivation and training of the vast
number of Educators. The Tamil Nadu experiment focuses on developing a
Participatory Capacity Building model and executing it through a
Continuum process of imparting training to 20 thousand educators
impacting about 12 lakh Children and their learning outcomes. More |
Paradigm Shifts in Learning
Poonam
Batra
The practice of teaching is known to be driven by commonly held
assumptions about the nature of subject matter, how children learn and
what learning is. Yet, the existing discourse on learning amongst
practitioners and policy-makers suffers from a lack of attention to
what learning entails. The assumptions teachers work with are taken for
granted and it is believed that once the 'instructional regime' is set
right, learning (as measured by 'assessment regimes') will follow. More |
Nali Kali:
The Joy of Learning
Anita Kaul
'We saw that those children were working entirely on their own. Our
children were not so active in the classroom. Maybe, because we were
not teaching through activities. When we saw how actively children were
participating, we realised how hard teachers must've worked with them.
We thought if we use the same methods, we might be able to bring our
children up to the same level' said Mahadevaiah, a schoolteacher from
HD Kote. More |
Innovative
Practices in Mathematics Education
K.
Subramaniam
The teaching and learning of mathematics is a complex activity and many
factors determine the success of this activity. The nature and quality
of instructional material, the preparation and pedagogic skills of the
teacher, the learning environment, the motivation of the students are
all-important and must be kept in view in any effort to ensure quality
in mathematics education. Often when one refers to innovations, one
only has in mind the first of these, namely, instructional material;
even here ‘innovation’ commonly means teaching aids or manipulatives. A
large number of such devices that are excellent aids to mathematics
learning are indeed available. However, it is important to remember
that the other aspects mentioned are equally important and together
determine the range of actual and possible innovations in mathematics
education. More |
Synthesis
Report on Students’ Achievement in DPEP Districts
Gautam
The District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) was launched in the
year 1994 with twin purposes, one, to operationalise decentralized
planning and management and two, to accelerate the pace of
universalization of primary education in the country. Consciously the
districts, wherein the female literacy was lower than the national
average and where the total literacy campaign has generated enough
demand for the universalization of elementary education were selected
for the implementation of the programme. More |
Delhi
Text books initiative
Dr.
Janaki Rajan
Children do various activities that increase in complexity with
increasing grade level.Learning starts from the child’s own
surroundings and draws on as little equipment as possible. More |
Background
papers to Dharam part1
Modern Indian Education System
represents an intriguing fusion of the Eastern and Western values,
albeit in a feudal fashion. Most of the visionary Indian educationists
of the pre-independence era like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh,
Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, criticized and rejected the
western approach to Indian education. Rabindranath Tagore did his
experiments with education system in Shantiniketan, and Viswabharati
University and set a new trend in education; while Swami Vivekananda
concentrated on national resurgence through the Ramakrishna Mission
movement; Sri Aurobindo on spiritual regeneration; and Mahatma Gandhi
on achieving Swaraj. More |
Background
papers to Dharam part2
Special emphasis on the assessment of learning achievements was given
in the 1990s with the National Policy on Education specifying the MLLs
at the national level. The focus on learner achievement came about in
an attempt to ensure that all children get education of a comparable
quality More |
AAS PASS
KI KHOJ (A Pilot Project for Learning Assurance in Schools)
A. K.
Mittal
Aas Pass Ki Khoj, a school level pilot project was taken up by the
elementary school children to develop an understanding of inter
relationship of local history and ecology, in a discovery mode. The
children in the guidance of teachers accomplished this in the form of
an activity to understand the local Jana (people), Jal (water), Jungle
(forest), Jamin (land) and Janwar (livestock). More
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