December 2004

From the Editor's Desk

Hello readers!
Welcome back to Vikramshila’s world of activities. Winter is arriving, and all of you must be in great spirits. Even our work after the phase of Durga Puja, and Diwali has regained its momentum. I welcome all the new readers of our newsletter, and hope you and us will have a long association and you people will enjoy knowing what Vikramshila stands for. In this issue, we capture the essence of the seminar we had held in the beginning of October, and then move forward to the Vikramshila’s Diary section. Enjoy reading!!
- Anupama (Editor)

Capturing some innovative interventions and a road ahead…..

Despite many achievements on the development front, a large section of our people still remain backward, as a result of their lack of access to opportunities. Some specific minority groups have remained more marginalised than others, particularly the Muslim community and the Tribals. Generally, whenever the educational issues of religious minorities are discussed, it is in terms of affiliation to Boards/Universities or reservation of seats. In the process, a range of issues that are more basic and fundamental to the process of development tends to get ignored. We felt that many grassroots organizations are trying to or have succeeded in some innovative interventions in order to upgrade the educational level of the minorities, which need to come up. In view of this, we organized a two-day national level seminar titled “Elementary Education and the Minorities in India” on October 15th –16th 2004, which managed to bring together diverse stakeholders who have concrete experiences of working at the grassroots level in the field of minority education. The seminar was held in the prestigious Indian Chamber of Commerce Auditorium, and was inaugurated by Mr. Bhabesh Moitra (Educationist, erstwhile President, West Bengal Board of Primary Education), and eminent people like Prof. Iqbal Ansari (Human Rights activist), Prof. Mihir Bhattacharya (Educationist), Dr. Rathindranath De (Director, SCERT) acted as the chairpersons of respective sessions, and provided valuable inputs to the proceedings. Presentations were made by West Bengal State level officials (having field level experiences) and NGOs, who came from other States. The plenary, which happened to be the penultimate session, was chaired by Dr. Atindra Sen (Registrar, Delhi University) and it turned out to be an engaging summarizing phase, from which many recommendations were drawn in, and during this session Hon’ble Member of Parliament Mr. Mhd. Salim made some insightful observations.

The many interesting issues and the innovations that came up from the presentations, certainly acted as a pointer to create a road map for the future. In a capsule, the needs that arose were: for disaggregated educational data or detailed studies on the various issues related to education among minority communities, to facilitate the processes of systematic grassroots level problem identification, to document curricular innovations, to facilitate expansion of the role of Maktabs in achieving UEE, to encourage decentralization, analyse economic factors etc. The effort all of us put in paid dividends in the form of wonderful learning we had from the entire deliberation, and our presentation on child-centric curriculum followed in our Nabadisha centers, which addresses this very issue on which the seminar was held, finding warm appreciation!

 

Vikramshila's Diary

An Impact Study

The Shishu Shiksha Karmasuchi programme runs under the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) of Government of India, with partial support from UNICEF. It was launched in the year 1997-98 with the objective of creating community managed, flexible, child education centres that will provide educational access to those children who are left out of the mainstream system. It has been running for more than five years, and there was a felt need to undertake a study of the programme, to assess its relevance and impact. Vikramshila was entrusted to do a sample study of 50 centres, spread across 10 Blocks, in 2 districts of West Bengal. We completed the study successfully, and it was a great hands-on learning experience for all of us- getting to know and evaluate a system from such close vicinity. Many positive things emerged from the study, like that of the positive role of the sahayikas (the teachers in such centres), high parental aspiration for sending their children to school, increased attendance of girls etc, but the reason for feeling bad was that after all this was a transitional arrangement, and every child has a right to formal schooling. Addressing this issue will only ensure moving towards a non-discriminatory Common School System.

What the adolescent girls are doing…

Remember, we had mentioned of our new venture of forming an adolescent girls group in our Lake Nabadisha centre community, in one of our recent issues? You would love to know that the girls are doing a wonderful job. We had formed this group with the aim of empowering them to take up issues of concern in their communities in future, and they have already started intervening! For example, two families residing in the community had frequent quarrels over usage of the time bound supply of water- this situation was very maturely handled by the group, who have helped in improving the relations and been able to convey the message of cooperation. Apart from this, they are meeting regularly, and are learning and enjoying activities like making beautiful gel candles, herbal oils and face packs. Needless to say, their confidence level is soaring high.

‘Talk’ on the role of NGOs

Our Director, Mrs. Shubhra Chatterji, was invited to give talk on “The role of NGOs in the emerging context” in the month of November. One was held in the Administrative Training Institute (ATI) kolkata, for several Additional District Magistrates (ADMs). Another one was in the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM, Calcutta), which was attended by several students and faculties of the institute.

Being part of another State Resource Group

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA, West Bengal) invited Vikramshila (the only invitee from the NGO sector), to participate in a meeting on October 18, 2004, in which the agenda was to form a State Resource Group (SRG) for para teachers. The primary purpose of the seven-day workshop, which followed, was to develop modules separately for primary and upper-primary para-teachers. The areas in which we gave specific inputs was on the basic concepts of competency, methodology, self-learning, child-centred education, team motivation, TLM, classroom environment, and effective classroom communication. This was a satisfying experience, since we realised that a great deal of our thoughts and inputs had found resonance from the participants, who were from the government sector.