Primary School Devpura has significantly improved attendance regularity of its students owing to the efforts of its head teacher Mr Ram Pravesh Gupta and Shiksha Initiative team. He has used innovative methods like distributing sweatshirts for regular students and meeting parents of the village.
Commissioner Ranjan Kumar along with other government officers visited the school on 6th April, 2016 to see the improvements. They lauded the efforts of the school management and also the Shiksha Initiative intervention for doing an excellent work in improving the attendance in the school as well as scores of students and creating an extremely positive atmosphere for students to learn in the school.
Archives
Our Presence
Since inception, SHIKSHA Initiative has reached out to 500 schools in 6 district of Uttar Pradesh. The names of the schools are as in the below list:
District
Educating Adults
Considering the high illiteracy rates in India (25-30%), there is a need to educate the population which can’t utilize the benefits of school education. This includes children as well as adults outside of the school system.
Considering this in mind, Shiksha initiative started its Adult Literacy program (Shiksha Plus) in 2015, piloting in 20 centers. It is a volunteer based approach, utilizing ICT for most effectively making the illiterates and semi-literates into literates and sustaining their literacy levels.
Volunteers start with community mobilization. The classes are held everyday at a mutually agreed place in the village where the aspiring literates gather and learn under the Shiksha Plus volunteer’s guidance.
Currently we are in the process of developing a highly effective and engaging content using the feedback from the pilot stge. The entire program is guided by an expert with over twelve years of experience in Adult Literacy.
Social Impact
Since inception, SHIKSHA Initiative has touched 25000 students in 500 schools and trained 812 teachers in using ICT to make pedagogy more effective and engaging. Currently, SHIKSHA Initiative is operating in Sitapur, Bulandshahr and Gautam Buddha Nagar to enhance the quality of education, enrich the learning process and nurture lifelong learners.
The impact of this project goes beyond its numbers. It is widely recognized that learners are encouraged and persistently involved in the learning process when concepts and skills are reinforced with technology and sound pedagogy. There is a significant increase in attendance and performance in the classrooms that we work in and also positive behavioral change has been observed among the students. Fostering digital literacy in the classroom help children to diversify the experience and knowledge to make learning more relevant and purposeful.
Moreover, SHIKSHA Initiative has a direct impact on development of teacher’s technical skills, knowledge of new pedagogical approaches and positive attitude towards teaching. Further, parents are also actively engaged in their child’s education and have seen positive change in the behavior of the children. Besides, the project has also been able to motivate the government officials who have visited SHIKSHA classrooms to strengthen their commitment to the education of children in their regions.
SHIKSHA Model
SHIKSHA Initiative uses these three distinct steps to effectively educate students in the classroom in its mission to eradicate illiteracy:
- Teaching – The entire curriculum of the U.P. board for primary classes is converted into an interactive animated learning exercise. High-quality streamlined content is delivered to students through a basic and simple technology, learning aids and interactive sessions. Teaching sessions are conducted by the local teachers who are trained to use the technology. This is a simple technology and any teacher is capable of using this after basic training.
- Querying – Querying and assessment is the second step of the process wherein the learning imparted to the students in the teaching phase is evaluated. Querying helps understand the effectiveness of the learning process utilized and its effect on content retention by students. The assessment is conducted through in-class and after-class question and answer sessions, conducted face to face and individually for each student by their respective teachers.
- Augmentation – The students who are found to be lagging behind in the assessment sessions are selected for special classes imparting deeper learning. These learning sessions are conducted by the same teachers who have earlier taught the chapters to maintain familiarity with the person as well as the teaching style. These sessions provide better and detailed explanation of the same subject/content to the students for their learning and retention based on reports generated by the assessment process.It has been observed that most of the students who need augmentation are those who were absent during the classes when that topic/chapter was taught.
| Teaching | Querying | Augmentation |
| Lesson/Curriculum planning at the state level under the purview of existing teachers | Based on continuous and comprehensive evaluation | Selection of students based on absenteeism and performance |
| Video-based standardized course content to students | Assessment through students’ performance management | Done by the classroom teachers to retain familiarity and teaching style |
| In-video activities/exercises to increase student participation | Assessment through tablets wherever possible to improve accuracy of the process | Tested for an effective delivery through post-augmentation assessment |
| Post class student feedback system |
Shiv Nadar Foundation
Established in 1994, the Shiv Nadar Foundation was conceived and created by Shiv Nadar, founder and chairman of HCL – a $ 10 billion global technology and IT enterprise. Mr. Nadar being a product of education himself strongly supports the vision that education empowers individuals and is vital to reap our demographic dividend. Under him the foundation has focused primarily on creating iconic institutions of excellence in learning across the education spectrum.
For the last 18 years SNF has striven to promote inclusive education, make higher education more effective and quality-oriented catering to the specific needs of the job market, enhance the focus on research and contribute to areas of global and national relevance.Since its establishment the Foundation has been focused on “quality” and not on “quantity” as is the need of the hour. The aim has been to create leaders in every field from the most underprivileged sections of the society.
Today the Foundation is reaching out to students at both the school and university level across urban and rural India. The objective is to leverage the power of inclusive education and make measurable high impact difference in the lives of the children and the youth. The Foundation aims to achieve this through the route of Creative Philanthropy. The Foundation is unique in its creative rather than corrective approach and has a more focused outreach rather than the mass-based approach bearing in mind that we are committed to creating leaders, who in turn will become the change agents of tomorrow.
Visit of Shri Vinod Pandey, Ex MD of SBI Foundation in Government Primary school, Chitehra, Dadri
SHIKSHA Initiative welcomed Shri Vinod Pandey on the last day of the financial year. He is the Ex-MD of SBI Foundation and symbolized an important step for SHIKSHA Initiative as well as Shiv Nadar Foundation, who reach out to like-minded foundations and organizations to share knowledge as well as on ground experience.
Shri Vinod’s visit was planned and coordinated by the corporate outreach team of the Shiv Nadar Foundation and the visit was arranged by the SHIKSHA operations and delivery team. He visited the Government Primary School in Chitehra village of Dadri Block in Gautam Buddha Nagar district.
Shri Vinod interacted with the SHIKSHA Initiative teacher in the ICT classroom, Mr Deepak Daka and the students of classes 1 & 2. He also got a demonstration of a running class where ICT is used for content delivery to the students, making the Learning interactive, more fun and highly effective for students. He got the feedback from the students and the teachers as well as an overview of the program from the SHIKSHA Initiative team and was very impressed with the project delivery. He encouraged the team and wished them all the best for their wonderful work.
News & events
On Ground Implementation
In a normal day at a Shiksha initiative classroom in a government school, trained teachers use the digital Shiksha content to teach in the classrooms. This ensures students get more involved in the learning process and participate enthusiastically. Once a unit gets completed, the teacher does individual querying for the entire class and need-based augmentation periodically, for each unit.
A Field Supervisor visits weekly to interact with teachers and students. He/she checks if the teaching process is standard and engaging and the students are learning as expected. He/she helps the teacher with any delivery issues, content issues and also collects attendance and assessment data for further analysis. An IT-Engineer ensures that schools don’t face equipment/software issues and visits schools periodically according to a fixed schedule and immediately on call.
All members of a cluster (block) meet at the end of each working day to discuss their achievements, challenges and the way ahead. Moreover, all the clusters meet once a month together with the core team for reviews and a healthy exchange of ideas. Regular trainings are held for teachers and block teams for new technologies, processes and content modules. Refresher trainings and on-the-run trainings are done periodically as well on need basis.
Eradication of Illiteracy
The literacy percentage in India still hovers around the mid 70s mark. Moreover, this does not take into account functional literacy, which would have a lower score. Since literacy percentage is a generally accepted benchmark for a developing nation for its social and economic progress, we aim to improve literacy rates in India.
With a goal of eradicating illiteracy from India in ten years, we at SHIKSHA Initiative, provide ICT intervention in primary schools (currently all in selected district of UP) for an effective learning.
Substantial efforts by the Central and State Governments under certain schemes to improve primary education in India has already led to increased enrolment levels in schools. However enrolment levels of marginalized groups remain much lower. Moreover, number of children dropping out is alarming, and again quite high for children from marginalized communities. We aim to not only reduce the dropout rates drastically, but also create a more conducive and effective learning environment, motivate the teachers, engage the students better in the learning process and create lifelong learners.
This is done through various steps:
Providing schools with Class Management System: IT infrastructure for playing digital content. (Laptop with digital content aligned to the curriculum, projector, batteries and required accessories) Training the teachers on IT as well as in pedagogy for an effective content delivery (Comprehensive as well as refresher trainings) Equipping teachers with teaching plans for the entire session Regular assessment of the students (after each unit) Weekly monitoring of the pedagogy through field supervisors and infrastructure through IT-Engineers to minimalize hiccups in content delivery Regular analysis of assessment scores and Augmentation done wherever required to reach a goal of 90% students retaining 90% of the content.
