Ensuring girls' education, the community way

Updated on: Tuesday, June 28, 2011

To ensure that girls do not to drop out from schools, a community ownership project based on the concept of " Creative Learning and Teaching (CLT)" has been taken up in Pali district of the state. It is creating a positive impact and bearing fruits. This concept has now successfully bridged the huge gender gap in the government primary schools improving the quality of girls' education, ensuring higher attendance of girl students and development in the learning outcomes for all girls with simultaneous emphasis on the community ownership of schools.

Thanks to a Mumbai-based NGO, 'Educate Girls', that all these positive changes took place. 'Educate Girls' has been working in over 2,342 government schools, including aided institutes, across the Pali district. It has leveraged the existing government and community resources to improve school infrastructure. The NGO has developed a comprehensive model that reforms schools and ensures 100% enrolment, higher attendance and retention of girl students without any dropout.

The staff strength of 85 persons in Pali district has an annual budget of Rs 1.40 crore, which is just one per cent of the government budget. Educate Girls CEO Safeena Husain says the project started in 2005-07 on a pilot basis in 50 schools. It has helped government schools improve the learning skills both among boys and girls at the primary level.

The NGO has trained hundreds of government teachers and education motivators in the child-centric CLT techniques with emphasis on activity based and playful learning. The impact has been encouraging and impressive. While only 15 per cent of children could read a simple story in Hindi prior to the project's introduction, the 12-week CLT module increased learning skills in mathematics and Hindi reading by 20 per cent and English reading by 18 per cent.

According to Husain, the results have been encouraging and have been analyzed internally and by research associates at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India, University of Pennsylvania, US.

Educate Girls has recently won the World Bank's India Development Marketplace 2011 competition in its contribution to the significant improvement achieved in girls' education.

The NGO's chief operating officer, Devendra Shukla, said girls have been able to connect with schools in large numbers during the last couple of years as a result of the empowerment of village communities to improve the quality of education. "As a result, health, income levels and overall livelihoods have improved and the villagers themselves have brought about social transformation of rural and tribal societies," Shukla said.

About 20 teachers, education motivators and teams of education activists, who have worked tirelessly since 2008 to make the project a big success, were honoured at a grand function organized at Ratan Chand Lodha Senior Secondary School in Pali on Sunday.

The "Srijan Awards 2010-11" given to them recognized their contribution and distinctive work in a total of 910 schools in the district giving a new orientation to the concept of girls' education.

Times of India

Ensuring girls' education, the community way

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