E-Paper
Have classes out of classrooms
Seven years after the passage of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, India can safely claim that its primary school enrolment (96%) has been a success story. Unfortunately,
Seven years after the passage of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, India can safely claim that its primary school enrolment (96%) has been a success story. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about learning levels of primary students in State-run schools; over the years, several reports have said that children in government schools are not achieving class-appropriate learning levels. Some more bad news: A fresh set of government data (Census 2011) has two more distressing pieces of news: First, 7.8 million children are forced to earn a livelihood even as they attend school while 84 million children don’t go to school at all — that’s nearly 20% of the age group covered under the Act. Among students who work, 57% are boys, the remaining 43% are girls.
Is there a way to educate those who are forced to skip school? Certainly there are: Take, for example, Unicef’s popular ‘School-in-a-Box’ programme for students who are trapped in war-torn areas and cannot access schools, either, because they have been destroyed or it is too unsafe to go. The School-in-a-Box is a portable aluminum container stuffed with supplies that enable children and teachers to create an instant classroom — no matter where they are. The primary objective is to help re-establish learning as the first step towards the restoration of normal schooling. These pop-up classrooms can also work to attract out-of-school children or those who are working at a place and time of their convenience. For example, what about starting such a programme in insurgency-hit/ remote areas of India? Then there is the concept of mobile schools. In Belgium, an organisation has devised schools on wheels, with extendable blackboards. The mobile school’s learning games can be installed everywhere and used on sidewalks, squares, parks and slums of the big city. Several such experiments have happened in India too but some faced ‘technical’ problems: In 2012, a mobile school was shut down in Bengaluru because the RTE Act does not have the provision. But things are changing now. The Gautam Budh Nagar administration is planning to launch a “mobile school” for children of domestic servants in the district later this year.
As the Census report shows, too many children are out of school in this country, and the government cannot afford to let this situation continue. If the State is unable to roll out programmes to educate out-of-school children, it must get NGOs to do it. And as for funds, why not get private companies to start such schools as their CSR ventures?
