Why Gyan Shala?
The school enrolment in
At present, around Rs. 6000/- is spent per year as primary education budget
for each child enrolled in government schools. In metro-cities, this amount is
higher. At this unit cost, bringing all 5-14 year olds in the school system
would cost upwards of Rs. 1200 billions. This is
simply beyond the budgetary capacity of government in
Universalization of literacy and primary education in
Gyan Shala would focus first on
addressing this challenge in urban areas which are growing very fast, absorbing
the bulk of poor migrants from villages, and where even poor parents are send
children to private schools if the government funded schools do not provide
acceptable quality education. Gyan Shala would also evolve
equally effective solution for rural context.
Detailed reports and
presentations about Gyan Shala
are given in the reports section, that include (i) a
conceptual analytical exposition of Gyan Shala presented as a conference paper at MIT, (ii) An
analysis of the impact of Computerized learning package developed by Gyan Shala by Dr. Leigh Linden of
Columbia University for Infodev (World Bank), (iii) excerpts
from a paper by Sushil Vachani
and Craig Smith published in California Management Review, (iv) a powerpoint presentation about Gyan
Shala program selected for Harvard Centennial
Celebration, (v) excerpts from a power-point by Prof. Amika
Bhargava of Oakland University presented at many
conferences, (vi) Gyan Shala
Program Review report by Dr. HridayKant Dewan and Dr. Sanjiv Phansalkar, (vii) A review report by Dr. Rashmi Paliwal, and (viii) Annual
Report of the program.
The mission of Gyan Shala is to ensure the quality of basic education to the
children from poor rural and urban families on par with what is available to
high income or elite social groups. This would be ensured through the school
based education, as the children do not receive educational support from family
or parents, who themselves have not been to school. Gyan
Shala aims to meet this goal while keeping the cost
per child at around 1/3rd to 1/4th of the cost incurred
by the government, which alone would ensure that the systemic solutions evolved
by Gyan Shala have a good
chance of being applied on a mass scale.
Gyan Shala project has three
objectives. First, it would evolve a system of education that ensures high
quality on a mass scale, at a moderate cost, affordable in
To maximize the impact of
its efforts, Gyan Shala
first focused on the foundation years in the primary cycle in its early years.
The education aim in this stage is to enable each participating child to become
an independent reader and writer in his/her local language within the first
three years of school cycle. Children also attain appropriate level of skill in
handling numbers and arithmetic operations and analytical-observation skills
that constitute the building blocks of scientific understanding of the physical
and social world, and are required for normal life transactions.
This would ensures that children retain life-long literacy and numeracy skills throughout their life, even if they drop
out at the end of primary, which is typical for many children from poor
families. Strengthening the foundation years would also make children more
suited to join higher grades IV-V in the mainstream primary system. Gyan Shala will slowly extend its
expertise to cover the higher school classes. Gyan Shala would also work with the government schools to
introduce such elements of its practice that demonstrably raise the quality of
education there.
Gyan Shala made a modest
beginning by starting primary school-classes in ten slum locations in Ahmedabad
in June 2000. Around 255 classes, covering both the slums and rural areas, were
functioning in 2005-2006. This number rose to 300 in 2006-07, and is expected
to rise to around 500 in a couple of years. In Gyan Shala design, each group of 500 classes covering around
14000 children would act as a decentralized, self-contained and autonomous
education unit, which can be replicated to cover larger number of children
without any deterioration in quality or increase in cost.
By providing value for money, and having a modular structure, Gyan Shala makes its expansion
and financing a feasible proposition. Starting with a base in
Programs
The flagship program of Gyan Shala currently is the
elementary education for out-of-school children living in slums and villages. Gyan Shala had around 8000
children in this program in Ahmedabad slums in the school year 2007-08.
Independent reviews had shown that grade-III children in this program
out-performed their counterparts in government/ municipal schools by around
100% in the test of language and math competencies, even though the unit
program cost was less than 1/4th of what government spent on its
schools. This program is partly funded by the Government’s Sarva Shikha Abhiyan
program for out-of-school children.
With donor support, Gyan Shala program was
implemented in two rural clusters, each covering around 30 village locations,
for 3-4 years. The rural locations were chosen in backward regions. Although,
the program achieved similar educational results as in urban program, these had
to be closed down due to resource constraints.
Recognizing the success of
the program in ensuring quality, the Ahmedabad Municipal School Board and Gyan Shala had started a pilot to
try out Gyan Shala
elementary school model in a representative sample of schools in 2006. The
pilot was being studied scientifically to determine its educational impact, and
on being found successful, it would be expanded to cover most municipal
schools.
Gyan Shala had initiated its
own pilot program for grade 4-7 in eight locations in 2006, whose objective is
to develop a similar to its elementary education model. The early results
appear promising, but it would be scaled up only after confirmation of the
impact of this program in delivering high quality education at a significant
scale, but at a modest-low cost. In course of time, Gyan
Shala would extend its coverage to cover all classes
up to grade X.
Over 2003-07, Gyan Shala designed and
implemented a World Bank (Infodev) funded Computer
Aided Learning package in both its rural and urban schools to study and test
the efficacy of computer aided program in improving children’s learning.
Its impact was studied by Poverty Action Lab, MIT, whose report is
awaited.
Gyan Shala has also initiated
replication of its program in
Design
for quality
Gyan Shala is designed to
create a class environment that supports activity-oriented learning, is
sensitive to children’s needs, and is rich in learning material that
enables children to use their inherent capacity to learn. Organizational
processes have been established to generate high quality curricular decisions,
learning material, and curricular practices in the classrooms. Gyan Shala benchmarks the quality in its classes with national
curriculum norms and actual curriculum attainments in the countries that lead
the tables of international comparative school performance.
From the very first day in the school, each child gets used to write/ complete
three pages of worksheets each day in the class, and handle books and printed
matter, even though she still can not read/write the text. The learning
material provided in the classrooms aims to match the recognized high quality
norms.
One teacher works with a group of 30 children. The work is so organized that
each child receives individual guidance and feedback for improvement every day.
The teachers are provided extensive training and they receive
supervisory/support visit at least twice a week.
The class schedule is designed to minimize idle time and maximize the
time-on-learning task for each child. The individual topic module is kept short
to match the attention-span of small children. School timing is set to minimize
the interference by the local social life cycle in school functioning.
Children’s Progress is
tracked each month, and formally assessed every six month, to initiate
corrective actions to keep each child on the intended progression track.
Classes are held close to children's home so that young children can come to
the school unescorted. This is critical for their regular attendance. Each
classroom has colorful and well-designed furniture and adequate lighting and
ventilation.
Scaling
up while retaining quality
The organization structure of Gyan
Shala is designed to integrate the management of the
program with the development and supply of learning material and teacher guides,
the annual and monthly teacher training and weekly supervision-support to the
teachers.
This is done in a decentralized mode so as to fit the learning needs of a
chosen group of, less than 15000, children with similar socio-economic profile.
The teachers are supported/ supervised by a team of senior teachers. A core
team of subject specialists is responsible for the design and development of
learning material and teacher training, all of which is linked to the feedback
from the classes.
The design establishes a chain of supervision/ mentoring for quality assurance.
Explicit attention is given to creating an institutional ambience of discipline
- professionalism.
Distinctive Features
of Gyan Shala Design
Ensuring children are regular
Ensuring teachers are
regular
Ensuring effective learning
outcomes
Viability even at large
scale
Estimated operational cost
per year per child (2007-2008)
Parents/community
pay for hiring the class room.
The furniture and facilities entail a one time capital cost of around Rs. 15,000.
Note: The operational cost per child in Ahmedabad Municipal (Government)
Schools exceeds Rs. 8000/- per year.