Gyan Shala

Aim The aim of Education Support Organization (ESO) is to develop and credibly demonstrate a model approach to provide good quality basic education. This model would have three core characteristics, namely (i) effectiveness in reaching children from poor urban and rural families; (ii) replicable on a mass scale while maintaining quality, and (iii) having unit cost well within the existing government budgetary norms. ESO would also actively work for universal access to good quality and effective basic education, through relevant policy advocacy, institutional partnership, and attempts for structural reforms. Framework The social goal of having a literate and numerate population cannot be met unless the ‘quality of basic education’ is good. In practical terms, the early years of schooling should enable children to start reading books and other printed matter available in their own context, and to also write simple text. They should also be able to use simple numeric operations in typical transactions of their life. Only if this is assured, children would have an interest in coming to school, and parents would develop a stake in sending them to school. The Probe Report and anecdotal evidence suggests that many children do not reach this level even while studying in grade IV-V in public primary schools. Almost 50 per cent of the children of the school going age, particularly girls and those from poor families, drop out of the school system before completing the primary cycle. The National Sample Survey reveals that almost half of the dropout cases attribute it to their inability to cope with academic load, indicating poor quality of basic education. Given this, the children who drop out before completing primary cycle would revert to illiteracy within a couple of years of leaving school. This means that a large proportion of adult population would remain illiterate even with high initial school-enrolment. Further, even when such children continue in a school system, they find it difficult to cope with studies and examination, and fulfill the purposes that education is expected to serve. That partly explains why a further 50 per cent fail to complete the middle or high school. The existence of a large number of good schools in India indicates that how to provide quality basic education in a few schools is well known. What is not well known or demonstrated is how to ensure good quality on a mass scale. Gyan Shala aims to fill this gap in understanding and practice by evolving a system to deliver quality primary education on a mass scale. Gyan Shala focuses on the foundation years, which would

ensure highest returns on investments and multiplier effect on later stages in primary years. The designers of Gyan Shala analyzed the leading development programs/ organizations in the World. Based on this, they concluded that providing quality education on a mass scale has to go beyond piecemeal improvements in pedagogy, learning and training material, and teacher training. Instead, the program should seek to evolve a `total system solution’ that provides assurance of the delivery of education service of a desired quality. This should be done within the material, human and financial resource constraints of India. The managerial and organizational aspects are an integral part of such a ‘total system solution’. These, as such, are important in any large program that employs thousands or lakhs of employees (teachers) and many more people (children and their parents) as active participants, impacting on program results. Gyan Shala has designed a three-year module (grade I-III) of study for fresh entrants to a school system. At the end of this module, a child is expected to become an independent reader and writer in her local language and capable of using simple arithmetic in routine transactions. This module aims to provide a strong foundation and act as the feeder stage for higher primary classes. This could also enable a child to retain literacy and numerical skills for the whole life, even if she withdraws from the school system at the end of the primary stage. The Gyan Shala team recognizes that pre-schooling education can help a child acquire important skills. But, it also holds its module can help children attain the competence for grade III, as specified in the state or national curricular framework, with in three years of school education, even if child enters the school first time at 5+ age. From the limited viewpoint of attaining curricular competence, the preschool is not essential, even though it may be desirable otherwise. Program strategy The strategy of Gyan Shala is designed to unfold in three stages. In Phase I (2000-2003), the focus was on evolving and establishing core elements of learning methodology and education organization, and demonstrating the efficacy of the selected aspects of the Gyan Shala approach. This phase was used to lay the foundation of an education design and delivery organization that would be able to implement the program on some scale. In Phase II (2003-2007), the aim would be to fully develop and to test-demonstrate all aspects of the Gyan Shala model, covering the

learning model, class-process, teacher preparation, learning material, and program management. Gyan Shala is conceived as a selfcontained complete education design and delivery unit catering to around 15000 children. This unit would be capable of (i) nurturing and retaining the required human resource/ skills, (ii) sustaining the systems and processes needed for delivering target quality, and (iii) being replicated under human and financial resource constraints of India. During phase II, a beginning would be made to replicate Gyan Shala in other states in partnership with other NGOs or specific government programs. Starting at mid-point in Phase II, but largely in Phase III, Gyan Shala would work towards integrating its design features within the mass primary education system. The attempt would be made to sell the proposition that lower primary education should be delivered by a multitude of independent units working on the Gyan Shala pattern that would act as a feeder to formal upper primary schools. These units should not belong to any one organization and instead should compete for contracts or grants to run the feeder classes. In this phase, work could be taken up in concert with bilateral and multilateral aid institutions, particularly to address the requirements for urban areas, particularly metro cities, which are growing fast, becoming the center of India’s economy, and are expected to become the home of more than 50 per cent of India’s population, by 2015. The Gyan Shala approach is inspired by the example of AMUL/Operation Flood, in which a model unit—AMUL—was developed first, and later replicated under Operation Flood. The difference would be in the design of a replication strategy that, unlike Operation Flood, would rely on market mechanism, measurement of output, and competitive dynamics among alternate service providers to ensure cost effectiveness and accountability. determinants of education quality Gyan Shala employs five instruments to meet its education quality targets that could be sustained on a mass scale. These incorporate what are widely regarded as `best practices’. Gyan Shala supports child-centered class processes with enough space, time and material available for children’s individual and group work. The class work is divided in three subject streams centered around the first language of children, math and project work/ creative expression. No module exceeds 20 minutes of class work at a stretch, to keep it within the attention span of children. Children are provided learning material in ample quantity, including learning aids for individual and group activities, and a worksheet for each stream every day that add up to more than 650 in a year. The group-activity

schedule is laid down for each day’s work, and specially designed storybooks are composed and supplied as per the language context of the children. The teacher spends less than 30 per cent of her time in the whole class teaching, while the rest is spent in supervising children’s work individually or in small groups. The learning material is continuously upgraded on the basis of class feedback. Table 1 gives a list of learning material and aids typically available in a Gyan Shala class. The list of material used for group activities for math, language and project work too is given here. Second, Gyan Shala provides for continuous teacher training and support that has annual, bi-annual, monthly, weekly and even daily components. This enables a teacher with modest formal education to conduct classroom transactions as per the design parameters. The teachers undergo an annual two-week course, and a mid-year oneweek course covering the overall learning task and methodology. One day of training in each month focuses on the preparation for using the learning material for the following month and on providing feedback to the design team. Each week, a school supervisor visits each teacher, to check and demonstrate the appropriate class practices and to help the teacher to go through the teacher guide for the next week’s sessions. The team responsible for designing the learning schedule and material also supplies the teacher guides for each day’s work highlighting the issues/ examples that teachers must emphasize for that day’s work. Gyan Shala sets up an example of best practice in the sheer amount of support and training to teachers. Third, Gyan Shala has established institutional mechanisms for quality control and assurance. Written tests are conducted each term. The school supervisors are required to monitor and report the completion of learning tasks by children and provide feedback both to teachers locally, and to the design team centrally. Supervisors are also expected to provide additional support to children who are lagging behind. A team is being set up for conducting periodic and regular audit of learning quality/ attainments and to report to the design team and chief executive. Fourth, Gyan Shala consciously strives to establish an organizational culture and an ambience conducive to quality. It starts with the provision of good quality furniture, lighting and ventilation in classrooms that are otherwise located in poor neighborhoods. The teachers, who come from low-income background, are provided annual and monthly training in a good quality training-center and are encouraged to initiate quick action to tackle problems even if the cost is significant. The design team is required to be in direct touch with the teachers and classrooms so there remains least possible gap between the design parameters and actual classroom practice.

Last, the Gyan Shala design institutionalizes a structural design for accountability wherein a multi-tier supervisory chain oversees the performance. The availability of financial resources to Gyan Shala team is linked to the measurable performance of children in an independently held examination at the end of three-year Gyan Shala module. That is also subjected to competitive pressures. A significant amount of turnover among staff, due to accountability pressures is anticipated. A mechanism to replace non-performing staff without disrupting routine performance is built-in. maintaining low cost & replicability Gyan Shala uses such human resources for all organizational positions that are available in plenty and at a competitive low unit cost. There are systems built in to enable such human resource to continually grow and deliver required quality at target low cost. The system is also so designed that each resource is fully utilized. For example, the classroom processes are so arranged that a three-hour class contact in a day is adequate for children in Gyan Shala to meet national curriculum norms. A teacher, thus, can handle two classes in day in two shifts. This results in a teacher- student ratio of 1:60 over two shifts in a day, even though the class strength remains, in actual practice, less than around 25 children per teacher. Since the staff strength in Gyan Shala, except the design team, is in direct proportion to teacher strength, a high student-teacher ratio translates to a low staff strength and salary bill. Gyan Shala pays salary as per competitive norms of informal labor markets in India, from where it draws its human resource, and where unit staff cost is low. Gyan Shala does not cut down cost if it has any negative potential impact on quality. The budget for staff visits to classes, staff training, and for the supply of learning aids and class material is liberal and flexible, with adequate margin for meeting un-anticipated needs. It is estimated that the per child expense on the supply of learning material in Gyan Shala would be comparable to the cost incurred on this count in leading private sector schools, where the annual fee is as high as Rs. 20,000/- while the total unit cost in Gyan Shala is only around Rs. 1500/-. However, the cost is monitored and controlled as per modern corporate norms. Gyan Shala holds that its policy of relying on human resources that are available in large numbers, and the overall low unit cost of education per child makes adoption of its model on a mass scale a feasible proposition. The Gyan Shala model is implemented by a self-contained modular unit that relies on its staff and internal processes to perform all the program activities and undertake staff development. It depends on outside systems only for contract supply of competitively available material and services, and occasional expert advice. The inherently self-reliant nature of Gyan Shala unit makes its replication relatively

easy. The expansion or replication of Gyan Shala pattern would, however, require a policy environment where resource allocation is linked to measurable performance. mechanisms for development of human resource The basic goals of Gyan Shala are three-fold, (i) to provide effective access to quality education to children in poor neighborhoods, (ii) keep unit cost per child at socially relevant low level, (iii) and make mass scale replication feasible. To meet these goals, the Gyan Shala needs to use only such human resource that is willing to work in poor neighborhoods on a sustained basis, is available in large numbers to meet the requirements of mass scale replication and is low cost. In practice, this would mean reliance on easily available and modestly qualified human resource that is enabled to deliver quality performance. The training and grooming of such human resource has to be the defining strength of Gyan Shala. core training program Each entrant to Gyan Shala, at all hierarchical levels, including of chief executive, is required to undergo the core teacher-training program that is designed to help trainees conduct Gyan Shala classes. It introduces the design of class-processes, curriculum and learning material, and core aspects of program management and culture. Gyan Shala does not train its staff to become good teachers on their own, or in any general class situation. Rather, they are trained to become effective in conducting classes based on Gyan Shala pattern. For example, they are not taught general principles of effective teaching. Instead, they are told how to conduct each module of class-process in Gyan Shala as per design parameters that are laid down by its design team. Table 2 lists the topics covered in this two-week training that illustrate its operational focus. The training of all the staff in this core program ensures that they all have common understanding of the Gyan Shala system and processes. It also assigns central importance to the task of class teaching. Over the last three years, the Gyan Shala team has provided core training to more than 400 people and evolved-stabilized the program at a high level of effectiveness through many cycles of improvements. The Gyan Shala team is also evolving a training module for school supervisors, some elements of which have already been tested. It will take another few years and induction of a few batches of supervisors before this module too attains the effectiveness and reliability of the core teacher training module. For the training of senior supervisors and core team members, so far no standard training program has been thought of. At present, the key instruments to develop these

cadres include exposure visits to other programs, occasional training by external experts and continuous guidance and support by the senior staff and team leader. Developing junior staff is rated as a critical competence of staff at all levels. Should Gyan Shala reach a possibility of large-scale replication, requiring many teams, some formal mechanism to train and develop the design cum management team and the senior supervisor will have to be evolved, probably outside the Gyan Shala team structure.

organizational processes Gyan Shala follows the policy of assigning independent responsibility to each staff member, which could be formally assessed. In addition, forums for internal discussion and review have been instituted to enable both competitive and comparative review of performance, by peer group and a multi-tier hierarchy of supervisors. The feedback from such reviews and the responsibility for achieving measurable results helps each staff to improve the performance continually. The development and grooming of junior staff is regarded as a key measure of core competence of senior staff. All senior staff, including the members of design cum management team, are required to spend considerable time in the classroom and to be in direct touch with the teachers. An annual review of the overall program is conducted to reconsider even basic design parameters afresh. Gyan Shala has four hierarchical staff positions. The gap in the core competence of teachers and supervisor, on one side, and between senior supervisor and design cum management team, on the other, has been kept low. The lower hierarchical level in each pair has a larger number of staff, so at any time; a number of staff at lower level are being groomed to take up vacant positions at the higher level. With a sturdy and tested mechanism for inducting new teachers through a short two week program, and the depth of informal labor market in India, Gyan Shala remains confident of having a steady stream of staff emerging within to occupy all positions in the organization. participation in computer-aided education project Development Research Network (DRN), a sister organization, has won a infoDev (World Bank) project grant to work with the Gyan Shala project to develop and test a system to use computer aided learning module, in conjunction with Gyan Shala methodology, for raising learning levels in math and language in lower primary classes. Under this project, the Gyan Shala team and DRN will collaborate in developing educational software and then later testing it 20 Gyan Shala class locations. Low cost desktops, in the form of old/used machines, will be obtained. Four desktop units would be kept in each

class, so that each child could get an hour of work practice on computers each day. Two children will work on one machine at one time, so there is some crosscheck and mutual learning. The teachers and field supervisors of Gyan Shala will be trained to maintain the hardware and software in the field, though the software is developed for children to work independently on the computers. The learning levels in the classes where computers are introduced will be monitored carefully and compared with those in equal number of control classes. The Gyan Shala team would work with DRN in converting the lessons from the project implementation into policy advocacy papers and guidelines for those intending to use computers in primary schools. The DRN and Gyan Shala team would seek partnership with other leading organizations that are working on using computers for educational purposes. Should the project result are satisfactory in the sense that learning gains from computer aided program are worth the cost of acquiring and operating the computers, Gyan Shala team may consider integrating this component in the core Gyan Shala module. finances Gyan Shala has been designed to keep the total cost of education of one child around Rs. 1500 per annum. The program cost in the development phase is obviously high as a significant part of current capacity is built up to prepare for future and planned expansion, besides meeting the operations and maintenance of current task. In spite of this, the program was close to meeting its unit cost target. Financial resources for Gyan Shala came mainly from (i) Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai, (ii) Volunteers for India Development and Empowerment (VIDE), USA, and (iii) Utthan Seva Sansthan, Ahmedabad. Mr. Sunil Handa of Core Emballage provided office and administrative facilities, infrastructure, and utilities support, all free. The project also received around Rs. 1.88 lakh as fee. Total program expenditure came to around Rs. 35 lakhs. Following table gives the breakup of revenue and expenses. Gyan Shala had a total of 87 classes in 2002-2003. The total annual expenditure on these was Rs. 34,90,000/-. This amounts to around Rs. 40,000/- per class. Most expenses of Gyan Shala are in direct proportion to the number of classes, although, the cost of printing worksheet is proportional to the number of children. The average number of children in Gyan Shala classes was less than 30, so the cost of educating one child was marginally more than Rs. 1500/- per year, at present, but as the program stabilizes, the cost per child will remain within the target range of Rs. 1500/- per child per year.

contact address Education Support Organization 302, Indian Institute of Management Vastrapur, Ahmedabad – 380015 Tel: (079)-6306381 Gyan Shala Project Core House, Near Parimal Garden Off CG Road, Ellisbridge, Ahmedabad, 380006 Tel: (079)- 6461629 Fax: (079)-6563681 Email: [email protected] web: www. gyanshala.org Partners •

Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai was the first donor who provided core funding to Gyan Shala at its start.

•

Volunteers for India Development and Empowerment (VIDE) was our second major institutional donor/ supporter who helped Gyan Shala launch its program in rural areas, in the Earthquake affected villages in 2001.

Currently, it is supporting middle

school program. •

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Mission, Government of Gujarat is supporting the education of out-of-school children, and also the training of AMC teachers who are adopting Gyan Shala package.

•

Social Initiative Group, ICICI Bank, India has provided core funding since 2004, by meting cost of program components that is not covered by SSA grant, since 2004.

• • • •

Jan Vikas, Ahmedabad, had supported Gyan Shala rural program in Panchamahal district for three years over 2004-07. Share and Care Foundation, USA has supported part of the cost of both elementary and middle school programs. Mr. Pulak Prasad of Nalanda Capital, Pte. Ltd., Singapore, is funding the Bihar project of Gyan Shala. Michael Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) has offered to support various programs of Gyan Shala in Ahmedabad over 2008-2013.

• • • •

•

Mr. Sunil Handa of Core Emballage and Eklavya Education Foundation, Ahmedabad provided office infrastructure and support free of charge, from inception. Shri Kamal Mangal of Utthan Seva Sansthan and Anand Niketan School has been active in mobilizing support and initiate sponsorship support Alumni batch of 1983-85 of Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) had decided to support some Gyan Shala classes, over 2003-2005. Many individuals have provided support as sponsorship of one or more children's education, or furnishing a class. An individual who wants to remain unknown has sponsored a set of 10 classes for five years. Development Research Network is a professional institutional partner in an action-research project funded by infoDev (World Bank) to develop the system and methodology for computer-use in primary classes to raise learning levels in math and language.