Innovating Education for Children of tribal Communities in Odisha, India:An Initiative by SikshasandhanAnil Pradhan From the stand point of the education, this means that when children are schooled in ways that permit them to utilize their familiar synaptic connections or cultural consciousness to develop a new knowledge, they will learn more quickly and more effectively. -Culture and Power in the Classroom by Antonia Darder Background Odisha is one of the eastern province of india inhabited by roughly 42 million as per 2011 census , and is bounded by Bengal in the east; Chhatisgarh in the west and Andhra Pradesh in the South.Tribal constitute 23% of the total population of the state .There are 62 tribal groups including 12 primitive tribal groups in Odisha. Odisha is one of the major states of India having larger concentration of tribals.The population of Scheduled Tribes in Odisha is 8,145,081 which is 9.67% of the tribal population of the country and 21.1% of the total population of the state as per 2001 Census.Odisha houses 62 tribal communities out of the 573 recognised as Scheduled Tribes in the country as per the Article 342 of the Constitution.The overall literacy rate of the ST is 37.4 as against literacy rate of Odisha of 63.08 as per the 2001 census. The male and female literacy among the STs of odisha is 51.5 % and 23.37 % as against litaracy rate of general catagory of the state 75.35 and 50.51% respectively. The female litaracy in six major tribal districts are even lower than the state avreage. Mayurbhanj is located in northern part of Odisha and one of the most tribal populated district of the state . the entire district comes under scheduled area. Kaptipada block has the second highest rate of the scheduled tribes(85.57 percent) in the distrcit and 72.63% of the houshold living below povety line. Mayurbhanj consists of 26 blocks, one of them being Kaptipada with total number of 3945 villages. The district literacy rate (63.98 percent) is below national and state average; while male literacy is higher with 74.92 percent the female literacy is a meagre 53.18 percent. The entire district comes under scheduled area. Kaptipada block has the second highest rate of scheduled tribes (85.57 percent ) in the district. The share of 72.63 percent of the households living below (national) poverty line (BPL), is also among the highest in the district. The 5 Gram Panchayats are situated in the south of Kaptipada block. Sikshasandhan is working in 5 Gram Panchayats of the block. The details of the 5 Gram Panchayats are given below: Name of the G.P Population Litera cy in % Year of interve ntion ST SC OBC OTH ERS Kalamaga dia Ramachan drapur Ranipokha ri Nota Saradiha 6122 4379 4027 87 0 44 798 163 99 18 0 0 Tota % of l Tribal Popul ation 702 5 87 454 2 96 417 0 96 356 3 Number of Schools Number of Teachers Contrac Re tual gular 38 20.73 29 19 21 Jan-10 July-10 Jan-11 July-11 July-12 12 12 5 3 5 6 6 7 8 9 13 11 8 8 13 2988 44 531 0 84 Sikshasandhan is a resource centre for education innovating education for children of weaker sections of the society. It functions as a resource centre for education wherein engagement both with the theory and practice of education is given equal importance. Sikshasandhan believes that education is a vital tool in the process of empowerment of poor and under-priviledged sections of society. It also believes that schooling in its present form excludes children of the weaker sections.Education in its present form does not help children to acquire a sense confidence in life, which is essential for enabling them to lead a life of dignity. Sikshasandhan therefore started working with children of tribal communities to get a sense of what educational requirements of these communities were. A resource centre was set up in order to develop further the theoretical understanding of issues through practical applications. Vision Sikshasandhan shares the vision of a society where all human beings shall exercise their freedom, right and ability to learn and grow with dignity and selfesteem, realise their inner potential, and live in harmony with nature and society. Mission The mission of Sikshasandhan is to promote a form of education that is inspired by the life-experiences of people, especially the poor and the marginalised, their struggles, achievements, hopes and aspirations – a form of education that is driven by critical human consciousness, and, therefore, liberating and transformational. Goal The goal of Sikshasandhan is to create such an educational environment where value-based, quality education will be available and accessible to the most deprived sections of society, and where the internal urge of every human being to learn, to think, to act and to express oneself can be freely and creatively fulfilled. The context of education for tribal children: Tribal are original inhabitant of India and the culture and languages of India has been largely influenced by the culture and language of tribal people. However, tribal people all over live in inferiority complex and they have been marginalized due to inappropriate development strategy and interventions which do not take into consideration the aspirations of tribal community; their language and culture. The mainstream interventions are generally meant for assimilation of tribals in stead of integrating them into so called mainstream. Sikshasandhan in this regard had experimented some innovative approaches for improving the standard of education in Odisha during 2000 to 2008 with the support of Welthingerhilfe. We ran AEC (alternative education centre) for children of tribal communities with the active participation of the community where the school timing was fixed by the community as per their convenience and holidays were fixed as per their own festival calendar and weekly market day. Teachers were trained to prepare a syllabus incorporating their socio-cultural components (agriculture, crops, rivers, mountain, folk tales, songs, riddles, games, flora and fauna, history of tribal people, exploitation process etc.) in it. The medium of instruction and class room transaction were in children’s language (languages of tribal people). This model programme was a successful one but Sikshasandhan could not continue this programme due to non-availability of long-term funding support. Based on this experiment and learning from this process, Sikshasandhan advocates that the medium of instruction must be in mother tongue at the primary level. For this Government has to select teachers from the community or locality and there need to curriculum in the local language. Teachers in this regard should be facilitated to prepare a course curriculum for each school that to be inspired by life experience of the people and taking into consideration to the people’s environment, life and livelihood, language and culture. For ensuring this government should decentralize the educational administration and course curriculum and text books to be prepared at Panchayat level. The much awaited Children’s Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill became Act in 2009. Sikshasandhan felt that even if this Act is implemented properly, it cannot secure schooling of children of marginalized community especially tribals, because there are no provisions for addressing the diverse needs of the children in the Act. The Odisha state rule in this regard has also failed to properly address the need of this important group. However, Sikshasandhan wanted to see the impacts of the Act in the tribal dominated areas of Odisha. Welthungerhilfe came forward to support Sikshasandhan in this initiative and started working in Kalamagadai Gram Panchayat of Mayurbhanj district in January 2010. In the mean time , Sikshasandhan has extended its area of operation to 4 other Gram Panchayats of Kaptipada with the support of Terre des Hommes, CRY, Oxfam India and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust(SDTT). Identification of Problems Survey and understanding the situation Conducting a survey on certain key aspects like: 1. Identifying children belonging to 6-14 age groups. 2. Identifying out of school children (never enrolled and drop-outs). 3. Appraising the status of teachers and infrastructure in the light of RTE guidelines. 4. Analyzing the composition of population (gender, sex, caste and tribe). 5. Profiling individual children for tracking. 6. Identification of major problems of education in the area. School related Problems : Non-functioning of government schools. High irregularity of teachers in schools. Teaching-learning process in the schools mostly neglected by the teachers. Teaching in Odiya language is a major hindrance of the children in learning and understanding. Lack of community participation and no effort on part of the teachers to involve community. Lack of basic infrastructure including drinking water, functional toilets, class rooms, playground etc. Lack of authentic data on children Children related: Most of the children help their parents and many work as baby sitter. Almost all the children are first generation learners and lack absolutely any guidance from any source for at least a manageable level of proficiency. Parents : Almost all the parents are Illiterate and are below poverty line. They lack exposure to the outside world and feel inferior to the so called mainstream people. Big family size and due to cultural and other factors they change the name of the children frequently.Some times they are not aware of their chidren name. Geographical and Psychological: The area is highly inaccessible and the community members feel scared to government officials and non-tribals. Language problem also become a matter of hindrance on part of the tribals as they become unable to interact with the outside with outsiders and govt. officials properly. That apart the attitude of govt officials and educational administrators is also a matter of concern as they look down upon the tribals in many cases. System Related : The system of education is not designed as per the needs of the children of tribal community (appointment of teachers, medium of instruction, course curriculum, books and process of community involvement etc.). Even if some attempts were made to build a more appropriate system on part of the govt, the grounding was not done properly and such efforts lacked sincerity. Example of One Gram Panchayat Base-line Educational status of One Gram Panchayat(Kalamagadia Gram Panchayat) Kalamagadia is one of the most under developed Gram Panchayat of Kaptipada block of Mayurbhanj district. The Gram Panchayat has 34 hamlets comprising 8 revenue villages served by 12 government schools. The total population of the Gram Panchayat is 7025 as per the baseline survey conducted by Sikshasandhan in 2010. Scheduled Tribes constitute 87.1%. The literacy rate was 38%. Children generally constitute economic assets to hand of the family. Children help parents in collecting Sal leaves, non-timber forests produces and help in agriculture. Children also help their parents in domestic chores. The elder sibling takes care of the younger ones when the parents go out for work. Kalamagadia Gram Panchayat is one of the most inaccessible area with very poor road communication and lack other infrastructure facilities. The houses are mostly scattered in and around forest. It is very difficult to conduct community meetings especially during evening time. Teachers’ absenteeism was rampant in all primary schools. Schools used to open only for few hours daily. The teachers would generally come at 11.30 am and go by 2.30 p.m. The Pupil teachers’ ratio was also high in most of the schools. Schools used to remain closed in Saturday though it is a working day. Most of the schools were single teacher school. There were only 17 teachers in 11 schools, Only 5 teachers are regular and 12 were contractual teachers. Each regular teacher was in charge of 3 to 4 schools. No teacher was there in case Prafulla Chandrapur New Primary School. After Sikshasandhan interventions, government made temporary arrangement of a teacher in the schools for 6 months. Then a Sikshasahayak has been appointed. Most of the cases Mid-day Meal was non-functional. In most of the cases, school buildings were half-constructed and community were completely unaware about the various provisions under SSA and not involved in schooling activities. In certain schools even attendance and admission registers were absent. In some schools, prayer was not conducted daily. Even though, Government of Odisha was having the Community Participation Rules 2000, but nobody was aware about this rules. Probelms of Quantifying the eligible students Owing to the lack of clarity on the numbers of eligible students in the Gram Panchayat, the attendance level, the number of drop outs and never enrolled children, Sikshasandhan decided to conduct a baseline house hold (HH) survey. The baseline survey was conducted in all the 26 hamlets and 8 revenue villages from April to May 2010 (Data of 2009-10 academic year). The survey provided insightful information on the total number of eligible students, the numbers of never enrolled children and the drop outs. It also brought out the reasons of children not getting enrolled and the causes of drop out. While the government data suggest that there are only 17 drop outs in the whole Kaptipada block and only 2 to 3 drop out students in Kalamgadia GP. The reality provided quite different picture. Table based on baseline survey: Total children age of GP 1671 1006 266 399 1272 children are in school inside or outside the GP 100% 60% 16% 24% 76% 6-14 in in group Enrolled inside GP Enrolled outside GP Never enrolled Remarks never enrolled, 399, 24% enrolled in GP enrolled outside GP, 266, 16% enrolled in GP, 1006, 60% enrolled outside GP never enrolled Out of the total enrolled student of 1272, 1006 were found enrolled inside the GP and 266 were found enrolled outside the GP (in 2010) (In the successive year however it was found that 40 students have been taken out of the GP. This is not reckoned here to avoid confusion). Among the enrolled about 78 children were dropped out, of which about 48 were resent to the schools. The rest could not be due to over age. Photo Profiling Even though the survey did address a set of problem, the wholesome picture could not be ascertained as there were discrepancies in the school registers. It was found that in many case one student is enrolled more than once in a same school; one student is admitted into more than one school; dead children names were found; children who do not exist in reality exists in school records so on and so forth. In order to address this problem, a photo profiling of the students was the need of the hour, which has been undertaken. Under this, photo of all the children are taken and a detail of Identity prepared with name, age, class, parents name, village name etc. It was found that out in the school registers 1162 students names were found as in 2009-10 academic year. Photo profiling of 848 students have been done. The rest 304 students were not available owing to several reasons reflected in the table below. The following table provides a clear picture of various types of discrepancies in enrolment. Table based on Photo Profile (As in 2009) slno Name school of the Total enrolled as record per Actual prese nt Other criteria TC MI ISO Not comin g Doubl e entry Nobod y is their Deat h marriag e Above Age Total not in profile 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ambadahi Balichua Dugudha Gokul ch.pur Kathachua Kalamagadia Pungichua Prafilla ch. Pur Rugudi Surnga M.pasi Sripadamanjri Sarisua Total 12 no.of school 48 108 113 121 87 194 60 59 94 63 107 108 1162 42 82 104 94 46 151 30 37 70 32 80 90 858 02 07 04 09 27 39 11 12 10 20 18 06 16 5 01 03 04 01 07 01 05 02 01 03 02 04 34 01 02 02 02 01 07 02 02 01 01 03 06 04 03 01 01 01 02 04 01 01 01 02 01 04 19 07 05 13 01 01 01 04 01 03 03 02 01 03 01 02 06 26 09 27 41 43 30 22 24 31 27 18 304 07 01 03 04 02 02 25 01 04 01 16 01 20 • • • • • • TC- Transfer certificate children are going to study another education institute MI- Migrate labour, contact labour ISO- Isolated house hold from where the children are not coming Double entry-double enrolment in school register or say fake enrolment Nobody is there- none such person exists in village Above Age- who have crossed 14 year 3% 1% 0% 1% 2% 1%2% 2% Actual present 14% TC MI Iso Not coming Double entry None is there Death Marriage Overage 74% Appreciating confusion? As two surveys were done, attempt was made to bring a correlation between the two. But as the bases of both the survey were different (One is HH survey and the other is based on school register), only confusion resulted. In ideal situation, this confusion should have not arisen. But this confusion is taken as a positive revelation on the process being followed in enrolment in the schools. The school teachers and the officials at different levels associated with primary education hardly knew that such confusion exists. Confusions e.g. double entry, names of dead children and married children etc. Pradeep Sar, the consultant who conducted the photo profiling says “While we went to the villages for finding the children whose names are there in register but are not coming to schools, on occasions we found difficulties in getting right information as the parents could not provide it. They simply may not know the official name of their kid.” Practical problems in enumeration Pitambar Sankua, the project coordinator sums of the problem in enrolment process as follows. Generally the enrolment into the class 1 in the schools is done by the teachers based on the Anganwadi registers. In the tribal culture there, people give only nick names to the new born babies. And several relatives provide several nick names. A formal name is generally not given to a child at birth. And the parents generally do not give any importance to the date of birth, they hardly remember the same. In the Anganwadi (AW) register under ICDS scheme, the date of birth of all the children entered at one time is the same! Either the nick name is made the official name or some arbitrary name is given to the child by the AW while registering them with the AW. While the names given to the children in the AW centre are taken as it is to the school register, the defects lying in the AW register also get transferred to the schools. And these defects are never rectified thereafter. Ideally in the beginning of the academic session, the parents are supposed to come to the school with their children for enrolment. It hardly happens in this area due to lack of awareness and interest of the parents. The teachers who are mandated to reach out the parents rarely take that burden. Therefore the system runs lackadaisically. In tribal culture, a child’s surname changes and father’s name changes if his or her mother marries to another man. So during verification, this new information is provided by the parents creating confusion in the identity of the child. The problem also arose during the opening of the EGS (Employment Guarantee Schemes) centres under SSA before 4-5 years. Time line was provided for opening the centres where a local person was to be appointed as a teacher. With no mechanism existing for cross verification, the concerned teachers adopted both fair and unfair means to show the strength in the schools. Moreover with opening up of residential schools, some parents take their kids to the new school. But the name from the old school is not deleted. In the new residential school no TC (Transfer Certificate) is needed as the child may enter fresh to class one! Several such reasons exist which has created confusion in the enrolment. The Cluster Resource Centre Coordinator (CRCC) admits the existence of such discrepancies, which is says, would be to the tune of 10-15%. The data gathered by Sikshasandhan has been shared with the DI, SI, CRCC and the Head Masters. Efforts are being undertaken to redress the system. (Effectuating Right to Education in Tribal Areas: The Experience at Kalamagadia by Pradip Baisakh(2011) STRATEGIES FOR ADDRESSING PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES: All the aforesaid issues and challenges needed a systematic approach and serious engagement for a qualitative change in the prevailing situation. Our intervention in the Kaptipada block was basically aimed at bringing a systemic change associated with attitudinal change of the parents, teachers and educational authorities. However the major strategies of the intervention of Sikshasandhan are as follows. 1) Mobilization of community and children: Sikshasandhan has appointed two Field Assistants in each Gram Panchayat from the tribal community to conduct village meetings in tribal hamlets in their own languages. Sikshasandhan also conducts Padayatra (Education Rally) where slogans are given in ‘Ho’ language. These activities helped to mobilize the community and create an educational awareness in tribal villages. Now parents could trust that proper care will be taken for their children’s education (they will be interacted in their mother tongue, school will be functional and learning will take place, there will be no harassment by the teachers, no discrimination, no physical punishment, etc.). This attitudinal shift helps in bringing children to school and retaining them till they complete the primary education at least. To make the process more childcentric we also organize creative workshops, children’s festivals, winter camps which help in building confidence and generating interest in education. Awarenes Generation and Capacity building: RTE Act has made a detail provision for SMC to play an effective role in improvement of the functioning of schools education. The success of the act mostly depends upon the effective functioning of SMC as they are major player as far as monitoring and development of school is concerned. Sikshasandhan is trying to build their capacity so that they will perform their duties and create effective demand as far as facilities in the school are concerned. We believe that communities are the ultimate owner of the schools and once this process is successfully done, the govt. schools can come back to their golden days. Sikshasandhan has done wallpaintings in selected places and developed posters and booklets in both tribal and Odia languages. 2) Appointment of teachers from the tribal community: In view of language and cultural problems Sikshasandhan has appointed educated local youths as community teachers. Initially when we proposed for appointment of language teachers in the schools, our funder were bit hesitant regarding availability of educated tribal youth with adequate educational qualification from the tribal community. However we collected bio-data of perspective candidates and conducted interview for the same. Local educational administrator like CRCC and teachers were involved in the selection process of the teachers. There were many criterions for selection of teachers like: 1) Academic capability to handle classroom situation 2) Attitude for learning for self, learning from the community and children 3) Capability of performing extracurricular activities. 4) Ability to mingle with the community 5) Candidate to be from tribal community. After selection of the language teachers they have been trained by the team of trainers and posted in the schools. There has been post-appointment refresher training to build their capacity in a sustained way. Objectives 1. Bridging the language and cultural barriers between parents and teachers and teachers and students 2. Improving classroom teaching Role and responsibility of Teachers Mobilization of parents and children by visiting their home in a daily basis. Create awareness on various provisions of CRFCE-2009 and other constitutional provisions. Create awareness on government efforts towards improving educational situation of the people. Teaching in the schools in children’s language. Keeping record of the attendance of the children in a daily basis. Collecting village history , folk tales, songs, riddles etc, for developing TLM Developing innovative approaches of teaching learning process. Building confidence of children on tribal languages and culture and convincing them that they are not inferior to the so called mainstream languages and culture. Working as bridge between school and community. Language teachers to work as the cultural workers for the community. Teachers to bring children into schools through cultural action and linguistic identity. How it helps ? Creates linkages between school and community. Increases confidence followed by self esteem level of parents and children. Increases accessibility and ownership of community. Facilitates tracking of children’s and teachers’ attendance, school environment and functionality of services. Helps assessment of comprehension level of children. Strengthens SMC and brings all stakeholders together in the educational issues. Facilitates improved teaching learning process. Increases activity like prayer, morning assembly and facilitates personal hygiene and sanitation. Policy questions : Academic career of tribal youths are not good and they have secured less marks in the examination, therefore , they can not impart quality education to children in the mainstream perspective. This is a myth created by the non-tribals. Our experience says that even though, academic career of tribal youths are not up to the marks, the academic competency is very good in most of the cases in comparison to the the non-tribal youth who have good academic career.Because they are self made and they did not get any support in terms of tution,support from parents etc for their academic enrichment which most of the non-tribals teachers had. In view of this Sikshasandhan recommends to the government to have some relaxation for academic qualification of teachers in case of tribal areas. Pedagogy: Based on the following Principles a) Near to far: Children learn first from the soroundings and gradullay learn about outside sorroundigs/world. b) Each child is unique: Methodology of facilitating for learning will be unique for each child. c) Teacher as a facilitator: Nothing an be taught(Sri Aurobindo).Therefore teachers only faciliate to nurture inborn talents of the children.The more you teach the less children learn. d) Instruction of teaching in mother tongue: Without this we can not faciliate for integral development of a child.This also helps for learning other laguages. e) Schooling of children should not be done in view of their age: schooling should be done in view of the mental development of the child. f) Child mind is not like a plane slate or empty vessels before coming to school. Neither child is like clay which can be moulded as per the wishes of the teachers and parents. g) Co-relation between work and education should be there: Children should respect manual labour and enjoy in working. We should not create such situation where freedom of the children will be restricted. h) Celebration of diversity.Diversity is our strengths and promotes innovations: Innovations means looking things in different perspectives. i) Children competency can not be measured in uniform yardsticks: Contexualisation of Learning Assessment tools is needed. Strategies to implement all the above mentioned principles at the field: Sikshasandhan saw that ICDS centres in tribal areas are not imparting pre-school education and most neglected part of the programme. Sikshasandhan tried to convince the teachers that without this pre-school education, it will be very difficult to impart elementary education to the children. Sikshasandhan suggested the following pre-school activities for at least one month. The following are the objectives of the programme: Bridging the gap between home and school Equiping the learners with basic learning and language skills Dissipating the fear for formal schools in the learners and creating in them a positive attitude to schools Preparing learners for formal schooling - a kind of school readiness programme. Brinding the gap between school environemnet and home Environment: Teahers are suggested to clean up place within the school boundary or outside the school boundary depending upon the availability of space.Conduct some out door activities such as story telling, games, riddles, songs and Total Physical response(PTR) etc.The stories, songs, riddles are in tribal langauges and collected from the community. Through these activities children not only learn language but also basic of mathematics, IQ, heigine, socialisation etc. these pre-primary activities are to equip the children with basic skills of learning as identification, discrimination,prediction,guessing,remembering , recalling,ordering,claasifying, and sub-claassifying etc. First these skills are dveloped through appropriate child friendly activities and later through picture books familiar to the children.While making the children do the tasks, the teachers use local specificf languge, at times two ar three languages, where necessary. Sikshasandhan is now in the process of contexuasing the class-1 primer. The following are the philosophy of language learning : 1. Languages of the World are about 80% similar.Only there are peipheral differences.This implies that learning of one language helps learning of other languages and the best medium of instruction is the mother tongue of the learners. 2. A language is best learned if it is taught following the principles of language acqusition(not learning) and the common features of languages:(a) the role of the rules of grammer in learning a language is minimal (b) Language is best learned through meaningful exposure in context.(c) while learning language more stress is to given on fluency than accuracy. 3. The order of teaching language skills is -Listening--Speaking---Reading ----writing. Listening and speaking skills skills lay the foundation for reading and writing and effective way of teaching a lanmguage is to integrate them for the complete impact. 4. The other name of language is context . it is always used in context and in whole which is why humans are capable of mastering a very complex phenomenon like language. language properly understood is more mental than verbal.i.e. learning of languages takes place in brain and most of us the time talk mentally without being conscious of the fact. Materials developed so far: Picture Cards, story books, village histories, and handwritring books. The teaching of mathematics: They also familiarize the concept of number to the tribal children citing example from their traditional number concept and context. They collect natural artifacts from the surrounding and use them as Teaching Learning Materials(TLM). Social science, Science and Geography are also taught outsides the classroom periphery from the surrounding. Village history is also collected by the language teachers which are being discussed in the classroom within the tribal children to generate interest about their own culture and community. Training for teachers from government schools: Attitudinal changes of the Teachers and Capacity building for managing classrooms in difficult, multi-lingual and multi grade situation. In view of this training for teachers is also being conducted to change their attitude towards children of tribal communities. Sikshasandhan has also developed a training package for training teachers on multi-lingual and multi grade situation. These training programmes have been designed catering to certain specific need of the tribal children. The approach in this regard is not to prepare specialist in tribal language but to facilitate the better and greater utililization of available teaching and learning materials and opportunities to help the first generation tribal learners. In this regard we are focusing upon the preparation of the cultural context curriculum based on the identified needs of the tribal learners and pulling up resources from experts both from the local level and academicians in the fields. That apart we are also trying to develop a CCE(continuous comprehensive evaluation) process that can better evaluate the tribal learners and would focus upon what they know, rather than what they do not know. Activities for children : Tribal children do not get appropriate scope to express their creativity beyond their natural environment. Sikshasandhan has planned some activities such as creative workshop , children’s’ festival and winter camps etc where they can get opportunity express their creativity and participate in activities that helps in adding to their curricular and co-curricular performance. This also helps in exploring their creativity though these activities which results in confidence building and awareness generation. These programmes in many ways dispels certain stereotypes regarding the academic and non academic performance of the tribal children vis-s vis the socalled mainstream children. Children’s club Children collectives are a potent weapon in creating a lot of changes in and outside the school environment. As part of the strategy children are mobilized to form children clubs for creating awareness on child rights and developing conscious behavior in matters of protection of their rights. Taking one step forward these children clubs are also looking after the attendance of the children and other issues like personal health and hygiene etc. Beyond everything these clubs have also pushed enrolment in school as they have been motivating their peers to come to school regularly. Involvement of PRI, Educational Administration, People’s representatives, educationists, and community leaders: From the very begining Sikshasandhan has ensured participation of PRI, education departments at various levels, community leaders and people's representives in its programme. Sikshasandhan is organizing interactions inviting all the above mentioned stakeholders into one place where they can sit together and discuss the real issues that affect their school and community education process. This approach is absolutely crucial as the community ownership of the schooling process would be the most important factor in ensuring quality education. Therefore there has been a series of programmes that includes the participation of PRI members with all the stake holders in the school process. Results/Impact of our intervention: The concerted effort from all these activities mentioned above have gradually brought certain visible impact in the overall process of streamlining the teaching and learning process in the area. The following result in this regard could highlight certain interesting observation in this regard. Government schools are opening regularly which not the case was before. School environment (physical) improved in terms of cleanliness. Enrolment(97%) and attendance of the children increased(30% to 60%). Greater community involvement in school management increased. Awareness level and interest in education of the community increased Addressing grievances improved as a matter of greater demand generated from the community. Activities yet to be done: There are certain activities which are supposed to be developed in the second phase of the programme as the primary concern now is regularization of the school and ensuring enrolment. Such programme includes development of a contextual syllabus , TLM, and CCE a tool for learner’s evaluation and documentation of the results in a systematic manner. Sikshasandhan is planning to develop a monitoring tools for comunity. It has already federated SMC at Gram Panchayat levels. Learning from the field and Challenges: Culture and Languages play an important role for the improvement of the education in the tribal area and therefore that should be one of the major thrust in all mainstream approach in mainstreaming tribal children’s education.Persuading government to have a policy on education for children of tribal communities is a challenge. School holidays in the line of festivals of tribal should be their.But implementation of the provision is a challanging task. Contexualisation of text books is a major challange. Bringing rest of the children to schools and ensuring regular attendace of the children is also a challenge. Community interest in education can be ensured through cultural action and imparting education in mother tongue as evident from the appointment of language teacher in our project area. A uniform act and policy is irrelevant in addressing the diverse need of the children. Diversity is strength to bring innovation in education and diversity to be respected. Special provision should be made for imparting education to the children of tribal communities in the RCFCE Act and state rules.Mobilising government to bring ammendment to have special provisons for children of tribal communities is a challenge. Academic enrichmnet of children without back-up support at home is a challenge. Ensuring a good pre-school education to the chidlren of 3-6 is a challenge. Maintaining balance between community and government teachers is a challenge. Branding of the programme: Sikshasandhan would like to brand this programme as Parichiti. Parichiti in odia means identity in a cultural context. Efforts will be made to realize children and parents that languages and culture of tribals are as rich and beautiful as the educated norm and that therefore they do not have to be ashamed of the way they talk. This is a programme based on certain proven facts of education of tribal children catering to the cultural and lingual needs of the learners. This programme designed is for bringing children of tribal community into schools using languages of tribal communities through cultural awakening(They will feel proud of their culture and at the same time they will be able to evaluate their cultural norms. They will not imbibe the so called mainstream culture passively and blindly rather they will be able to evaluate the same ) The programme is currently running in 45 schools, 5 Gram Panchayats of Kaptipada Block of Mayurbhanj district in Odisha. Sikshasandhan would like hear comments and suggetsions from like-minded organisations and individuals for further improvemnet of the programme. References 1. Effectuating Right Kalamagadia to Education in Tribal Areas: The Experience of 2. Baseline survey conducted by Sikshasandhan in all 5 Gram panachayats
Report "Innovating Education for Children of Tribal Communities in Odisha"