Blackboard revolution: Overhauling the learning curve for 20 mn rural kids

Sampark Foundation makes education a fun experience for both teacher and student, using a low-cost model that spans 76,000 schools in four states

You need scale in order to make an perceptible change in India for its myriad problems.

Education is no different. The state of a majority of government educational institutions is indifferent to say the least and absentee teachers is just one of the problems. The teachers may be running their own shop, may be alcoholic, indifferent or simply irritated with a government set-up that doesn't pay them on time. Or they may have been given various government tasks including election duty, census duty or aadhaar card. The school at the village level and block level may just be a ramshackle building where two teachers are expected to teach students from five to fifteen. Student attendance too varies. In rural India, children are expected to contribute to the functioning of the household, working in fields, not only owned but also for wages in cash or kind for the family. They may fall sick, may not be interested in coming into a classroom with nothing but a stick wielding teacher.  

One non-government organisation that is attempting to bring a quantum change in the country's education system is Sampark Foundation. Arguably the biggest education intervention happening across the world, it is being led by Vineet and Anupama Nayar, completely funded by a corpus of $100 million set aside by the couple. Its target: basic education intervention in Math and English for 20 million, or roughly 15 per cent, of 144 million school going children. That's the magic number Nayar believes is the tipping point to begin a revolution.

Children in Pauri Garhwal are singing along with Sampark Didi

CM as 'owner' of the programme

Sampark Foundation approaches the chief minister of the chosen state, and seeks his sponsorship. What that means is that the chief minister buys into the programme. He owns it so that state education infrastructure falls in place to support Sampark. Of course they have to get the entire state education machinery -- from the secretary to the district magistrate to every official in the hierarchy down to the cluster resource centre monitors (CRC) -- to fall in line. And why not? There isn't a penny that the state has to put into the programme. The plan is to map the state, and every single school at the district, block, village level, train every teacher, teach every school going child.

The foundation's structure has a state head called a 'Spark' in charge of managing the programme, Besides, every district has a 'Spark' too, under his jurisdiction. So if Chhattisgarh has 27 districts, the state will have 27 district 'Sparks'. These are the people on the ground, who visit every school in their district, no matter where they are.

ampark Foundation's partner states
State	No of students	NAS Achievement survey 2013	NAS survey 2017
Chhattisgarh (2014)	2,300	34	26
Uttarkhand (2014)	700	29	10
Jharkhand (2017)	3,100	21	13
Haryana (2017)	900	28	30
No of students in thousands; MoU with Haryana signed in May, rollout in November 2017

Training the trainer

Once the  Foundation is aligned with the state v with material so that the pedagogy is focused, takes into account cost constrain, missed school days, is fun and engaging for students. For the first time, teachers being made into change agents with a new set of tools seem to have helped. Shikha Saini, a 25-year-old Spark based out of Haridwar, says she hasn't met any resistance and government teacher are pleased to be part of a system where they are the one's igniting the learning.“ Whenever we do our school visit, feedback is always positive,” she says. Saini has been on the programme training teachers in Chhattisgarh and Haryana, the newest state to have adopted the programme.

Vikas Jhunjhunwala, CEO, Sunshine Schools, who wanted to work in the social sector and decided instead to begin low-cost schools in areas populated by economically weaker sections is skeptical. "It is very hard to work with teachers in the government school set-up, as they are really not answerable to anyone on deliverables.” Jhunjhunwala feels teachers need to be made responsible to see any perceptible change in the education system.

Addition with the help of base 10 strips in Korba, Chhattisgarh

Board games keep the class rolling

Skeptics and naysayers aside, Vineet Nayar, known for his 'employee first' programme, is attempting to do the same. In a 'Teachers First' kind of initiative the faculty at moffusil schools are placed in the centre of the programme and are trained to use the tools devised by the Sampark team. For the first time they have teaching and learning material (TLM) and a simple measurable tool, a progress chart that maps the learning of each student. In fact, it was the teachers who had first voiced concerns about keeping the learning going on even when they are pulled out for administrative and government duties. That led to the making of 15 board games in Math and English, which students play and learn the assigned curriculum.

The first programme was rolled out in all 27 districts of Chhatisgarh with 33,000 schools participating. Uttarkhand and Jharkhand followed, and this year, Haryana too has signed up with the foundation. Chhattisgarh has moved up in the National Achievement Survey from rank 34, the bottom in 2013, to 13th spot in 2017.

Vikas poses for his teacher after completing a sum in Jamshedpur

Celebrating education Bollywood style

Sampark Foundation has a curriculum and pedagogy team, led by Anupama, which looks at the state education board curriculum. Based on each state's content, it has created a  unique sound box, made to create the immersive, almost hypnotic experience rife with song and dance inspired by Bollywood.  The first sound box 'Sampark didi' that is introduced is that of math. Simple concept for students of grade 1-3 are introduced and manipulative, three dimensional tools which are struck on board help students get number sense. Twenty-three basic concepts, 120 lessons with 100 activities are designed to teach students Math.

Similarly, for English, a red-coloured box with 120 lessons, 500 vocabulary words and 100 sentences are taught to grades 2 and 3. That's basic English following the principles of LSRW (listening, speaking, reading and writing).  

Last year, on August 15, students from grades 1-3 presented a 16-minute play in the village square on 'My family'. Parents couldn't understand the language but they understood that it would benefit the future generation, and for the teachers and the  state machinery, it was a huge victory.  Chhattisgarh has now bridged the gap in the national achievement survey.

Next on the agenda are workbooks and an app for upscaling the teachers for higher classes. The Sampark Smart Shala is a light-touch app, being designed to be downloaded on to a teacher's smartphone. The teacher can use the uploaded lesson plans and videos designed to teach senior classes.

Multiplication with numbers in Panchkula Haryana

Cost is the advantage

Apart from the infrastructure, which is being funded from the Nayars' corpus, the cost of teaching each student is under $1. A programme will run for five years in each state with the belief that it is finally changing teacher mindsets. The Nayars do not believe in high-cost tablets and computers. So the team created the sound box, a repository of knowledge with elements to ignite learner interest. It is quite economical ast Rs 5,000, and has 16 hours of battery life to overcome power shortages in rural areas. Its boom speakers can carry across the classroom and stimulate student enthusiasm.

“Scale and cost are our two constrains, so solutions have to take both into account to be sustainable,” says Nayar.

Self-assessment by the kids

With no more than 120 days in which to complete the curriculum, the programme focuses on accelerated, intensive learning. Outcomes need to be measured. Besides the national achievement survey, Sampark measures outcomes and gives a monthly report to the chief minister.

Every classroom has a monitoring chart with a child's name written on it. It is a physical chart, with students' names written on the left and the expected outcomes for each concept on the right. Once a student learns the concept, he ticks it on the chart as part of a ceremony called 'Dhol bajao' which essentially celebrates the achievement. So every kid knows where he is in relation to his peers.

There are different charts for English and Math. At a micro level, this simple mechanism of the progress chart helps the teacher assess the child's ability. Keeping an eye on progress, she can focus on remedial action and intervene if required.

Under the cluster resource centre monitor (CRC), a government official visits the school weekly, looks at the resource chart and asks the student questions to evaluate the child's ability. Once authenticated, the data is captured and  then recorded on an app that is beamed to Sampark. A Spark auditor visits the school every month and audits what CRC has submitted. This data is then sent to a third party to analyse submit it to Sampark. In this case the analyst is Feedback Business Consulting. “It is a huge amount of data which is captured and analyzed by us. It works like an audit,“ says I V Rajashree, Vice president, Feedback Business Consulting.

This data is shared with the Chief Minister to update him on monthly progress.
 
Reaching out after 2025

The seeds of the end are defining the pace of progress and speed with which the programme is being implemented. Nayar has set a date for the programme to end in 2025. Therefore, milestones on deliverables, such as reaching the 20 million mark of students within five years under Samparks's methodology is on. Four states have signed up, with Haryana joining only late last year.

The foundation has a presence in 76,000 schools, training seven million students.

Nayar now plans to put the entire programme in the public domain. Proof of concept and efficacy on scale has been demonstrated successfully. Any states willing to adopt the programme will be offered the complete kit free of cost. Sampark would need 50 people committed in every state who can be trained to become master trainers.

The ministry of human resources and development is holding regional workshops in the coming months across the country, at which the foundation proposes to present and offer this programme. Currently in talks with eight states, it plans to take on two more to manage and run. Himachal Pradesh and Punjab have shown interest.

What happens after 2025 is another dream and a story for another day.