Sumita wonders why her 11 year old Nandini does not like to go to school. How much she had pleaded and pestered her husband, a simple agricultural Scheduled Caste labourer, to let Nandini enrol in the close by neighbourhood school, where they would not even have to pay any fee. All she wants is for Nandini to get educated and become something in life like a teacher or a doctor, something that Sumita had aspired to be but never got the opportunity to. Little does she know that Nandini hates being in a class where her peers, children of the rich and culturally superior Brahmins of the village, are not friends with her, do not play with her, make fun of her and refuse to eat with her during lunch time. Her teachers too scold her all the time without reason and do not give her an opportunity to participate in any class or sports activities. She wonders why there is discrimination, hates going to school!

The fact that India is a land of diversity is known to all. But how this diversity leads to exclusion is not recognized by many. Exclusion or marginalization refers to a phenomenon in which certain groups of people are relegated to powerless positions within society due to factors such as caste, class, religion, gender and occupation. The consequences of marginalization lead to individuals and entire communities of people being systematically blocked from availing of the rights, opportunities and resources (e.g. housing, employment, healthcare, education, civic engagement and democratic participation in social processes) that are usually available to all members of society and constitute the key to social integration.

 

India recognizes some marginalized groups constitutionally and some as emerging from within the dynamics of its societal fabric. Illustrative examples of these include: Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, certain religious communities, migratory communities, those involved in certain occupations and women. Marginalization tends to be relative and varies in different situations. Its nature and extent may be measured through the indicators of poverty, education and unemployment. It has been seen that children from marginalized communities, especially girls, experience discrimination in several ways.

Nandini and lakhs of children like her are victims of this discrimination. Their issue has to be addressed at larger levels rather than only in school. One way to do this is to advocate for government policies and programmes for the excluded and strive for integration within communities. The second way is to work on the mind-set of people to accept all as part of the larger community and not practice any form of discrimination. However, this is difficult as generally we witness the resistance of upper caste and general communities to integrate the socially excluded within their societal fabric. The way forward in this context may be through ‘education’.

Research and grassroots interventions affirm ‘education’ to be a strong strategy to address exclusion by focusing on children from mixed communities within school, reaching their families and communities and fostering inclusion. It is hoped that inclusive education may help break down age-old traditions, practices and discrimination, as children from different communities participate together in education. It is also a channel to foster integration within communities. However, inclusion needs substantial and sustained effort at the level of school, teachers, community and the system.

One way this can be done is explained through a discussion of CARE India’s model of ‘quality intervention in formal non-residential and residential schools.’

CARE India’s girls’ education programme (GEP) primarily focuses on strengthening the quality components of the formal education system, creating opportunities for girls to complete quality elementary education, and working with communities to help them demand and exercise their right to education. The approach is to reach out to the most excluded, focus on children and communities with special emphasis on women and girls, promote gender equity, foster the critical link between education and development, and empower families and communities. All this is done within a ‘rights based’ approach and through integrated programming.

 

The notion for equity advanced under this model of quality intervention involves addressing unequal power relations, ensuring inclusion, using non-discrimination and positive discrimination, and addressing issues of vulnerability/marginalization. The issues of equity – gender, social, systemic and geographic – are focused upon in the entire phase of designing, implementation and monitoring of the intervention.

This paper discusses this particular approach of CARE, implemented as part of its School Improvement Project (SIP) and its intervention for strengthening the Kasturba Gandhi Ballika Vidyalayas (KGBVs), government run residential upper primary schools for the marginalized girls.

School improvement, a strategy implemented by CARE in a joint effort with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)¹ for strengthening formal primary schools, is being implemented in all model cluster primary schools² in select districts of Uttar Pradesh³ and Gujarat.⁴ Appropriate elements are also introduced in KGBV schools in UP, Gujarat, Orissa and Bihar as part of the technical support provided by CARE. KGBVs are supported through learnings from Udaan,⁵ following the concept of age and grade approach of CARE’s girls’ education programme. The entire strategy to address this issue identifies a structured and intensive process, involving various steps, some taken together.

 

The first step is to ‘map’ the socially excluded. Based on the accepted definitions, various social groups falling in this category in the CARE intervention areas are the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, minorities, salt pan workers, daily wage labourers, agricultural labourers, fishermen, seasonal workers and amongst all, girls and women. Identification is followed by a need to ‘understand their issues’, which is designed predominantly to show that they are denied rights in accessing existing resources, opportunities and rights and this applies to all age groups and gender in the excluded community.

 

With respect to education, the children are discriminated in terms of access to schools. If they do get access, as under the Right to Education Act, and it becomes mandatory to enrol all children, they are discriminated against in schools. Right from the attitude of the teachers, to the teaching-learning methodology and materials, the opportunities provided to them are all discriminatory, impacting on their learning.

Having understood the contextual issues, the education strategy is devised looking at the two intrinsic beliefs of CARE which strongly affirm that all learners, especially girls and children from SC, ST and minority communities, have a right to quality education and that there needs to be an intrinsic concern for equity.

Thus the existing curriculum is fortified with equality/social positioning. In this regard, a social learning curriculum, developed with a view to specifically address these issues and get the teachers to understand and become sensitive, is integrated as part of the regular course. This curriculum is embedded around relationships with self, immediate family, larger society/gender divide, institutions, ecology and economy.

The strategy is to move slowly and surely towards bringing about a social change in which the system respects marginalized children and their rights, is more sensitive to their needs, and gives them space to discuss issues, raise questions and look for solutions. The focus is on widening the horizon of their experience, broadening their knowledge and increasing their understanding of the wider world, bringing in new realization about their rights and responsibilities. This enables them to critically look at their context and perspectives, employ the gained knowledge to this context, and take informed decisions about their own lives.

Another step is to strengthen school management processes. Discussing issues of equity with the head teacher and taking his/her support to strengthen the community-school relationship is considered a vital step in addressing social exclusion. Small group community meetings and home visits with village education committees/school management committees (VEC/SMC), mother/parent teacher associations (MTA/PTA) work to an extent that the community starts to consider exclusion to be an issue and holds discussions around it. Use of folk media and street plays further support community sensitization.

 

Teachers are encouraged to ensure availability of minimum guided learning time to all children and especially ensure the needs of those socially excluded, as they teach different subjects for different grades. Teachers are made aware about their responsibilities towards this group of children and to be sensitive to their needs. Peer learning as a strategy is fostered through creating mixed groups of children from different communities to sit together and learn.

A conducive school environment is understood as a setting where all learners (irrespective of gender and social background) feel wanted, valued and the teachers’ role is that of a facilitator in learning. It is an environment where learners are uninhibited and free and opportunities provided for self-learning, learning from each other, learning in groups and teacher-led learning. Instead of comparing children’s learning, the focus is on mapping the success of individuals and valuing their achievements. The notion of discipline is such where teachers and children develop their own norms jointly and follow them instead of teacher directed discipline. Physical environment includes a safe and tidy place with sufficient space to conduct various kinds of activities. These strategies foster inclusive education significantly.

 

Morning assembly, an activity carried out in most schools, is generally ritualistically organized. As part of inclusive education, it is used as a whole group planned activity of thirty minutes involving activities like reading newspapers, narrating stories from home, reciting poems, asking riddles, and sharing interesting experiences by children from all communities.

This fosters a fearless school environment, while providing opportunities for children to learn from each other, develop confidence and a sense of achievement and enable them to overcome their hesitance and inhibitions in order to perform in front of an audience. Teachers facilitate and also participate in the assembly, gradually melting away barriers between them and the students, discarding their strictness and become friendly, expressive and informal, thereby positively impacting their relationship with children and reducing the fear element. In this forum issues of exclusion are best handled by giving a chance to all children to participate, viz., children from different caste and class groups are encouraged to perform their own local folk dance/music.

Reflection on teaching practices and regular improvisation is the core of teacher development, and builds into a component wherein teachers are encouraged to reflect on their own beliefs, values and practices vis-a-vis exclusion with a hope to create classrooms demonstrating more equitable processes and relationships. As the teacher is supported to be well-versed with the learning objectives and process of concept development for each grade and subject, she is also sensitized to address issues of equity in classrooms at every step of planning, transacting and in engaging with children.

 

Rigour is maintained throughout the support provided to teachers as part of training, regular onsite academic support, regular reflection, exposure to other good practices, with a view to help teachers provide a fearless, non-competitive, non-labelling environment; carefully constructed learning activities motivating students to learn; structured opportunities for students to work on the curricular objectives within a given time frame, considering the needs of all students; providing opportunity for students to discuss and integrate knowledge/information into ‘real life’ situations (creating sensitivity about their home issues and what they face); assistance to learners to work collaboratively, to learn from each other most effectively; appropriate guidance for each child (with an inclusive lens) to learn by assessing her present learning level in each subject, planning for her and transacting as per her level, using appropriate methodology, and encouraging her to break away from her inhibitions and fear of learning.

The motivation of the teacher is maintained through appropriate recognition of her achievements, innovations that she applies, and her ability to create inclusive classrooms. This approach is measured and assessed using an inclusive lens.

The critical step is to facilitate classroom planning. A paradigm shift from a textbook approach to other materials and interesting methodology to transact content under SIP works well in addressing the needs of all, but is particularly critical for marginalized children. Ensuring their needs in planning for content specific learning objectives, teaching learning material and teaching methodology is a challenging task since children have differing needs and levels. For example, they may belong to a tribe with specific local dialect, failing to understand the common language. The teacher is tasked with raising the child’s competency to understand the local language and put an extra effort in terms of developing content plans, material and methodology.

Intensive support is provided to teachers to practice this and plan for varied kinds of learning opportunities for each subject, and for children with diverse needs. For this, she is provided a rich repertoire of ideas, activity banks, supplementary reading materials, library books to define her own individual teaching style. She is encouraged to plan classroom activities accounting for students who may lag behind.

 

In this process, using varied and active learning opportunities is critical. Recognizing learning to be a process of exploring, discovering and reflecting to develop concepts and derive meaning to construct knowledge, the effort is to make the educational processes experiential, life-centred, relevant to the learner and her life experiences so that it is effective. These experiences are valued as educational resource, and the learners are encouraged to be cooperative, collaborative and supportive and to have a sense of achievement and success.

Variation in teaching methods and use of diverse materials has the scope of creating enriching learning opportunities for a range of learners with differing learning needs and levels. Extensive learning opportunities help maintain interest of learners and enhance scope for application of the learnt concepts in different contexts. All learners being the co-constructors of their knowledge and equal in the learning process get an opportunity to participate.

The teacher is encouraged to ensure that the classroom teaching-learning process is interesting and provides an opportunity for equitable participation of all learners, irrespective of social background and pace of learning. The lesson plan includes these issues and the teacher is helped to develop an understanding of the content and how it may be transacted. She is also helped to comprehend the nature of problems faced by children and address these for effective teaching-learning process.

 

Discussing and building an understanding of social and gender equity during teachers’ training is the primary focus for fostering inclusive classrooms and know-how on how to have regular discussions and sensitization on equity issues with stakeholders. Theory is supported through regular onsite support to the teachers. This critical support involves clarifying concept understanding, discussing appropriate teaching methods, use of TLM and reiterating the need to have inclusive classrooms.

All the above steps ultimately reflect on the child’s learning, best gauged through an assessment process. Children in different grades may be at different learning levels, not necessarily equivalent to the grade they are enrolled in; some grade III children may actually have learning levels for grade II/I. This is especially true for first generational learners, those who enrol much later after the academic session begins, dropouts and those who have not gone through equitable education.

Thus each child is addressed and grouped as per her assessed learning level, her needs addressed through specific lesson plans, varied methodology to teach her and regularly tracking her assessment. She is moved across levels as per her progress tracked through comprehensive continuous evaluation (CCE),⁶ supplemented through an annual assessment. The above pays special attention to the needs and pace of learning of the excluded children. Teachers are oriented to understand their issues and accordingly adopt a sensitive procedure for assessing their skills.

 

Strengthening systemic academic support processes becomes critical if we expect teachers to perform well. The block and cluster resource centre (BRC/CRC) coordinators are capacitated to hold academic discussions at school and block level meetings and in organizing community seminars. This encourages them to effectively take on the mandate of academic support, while also keeping a heads-up on equity issues. Providing onsite support to around ten schools in a cluster, they are able to percolate good practices learnt from nodel cluster schools to other schools. Their sensitization and acceptance for inclusive classrooms is critical in getting the system to be sensitive to this issue.

A significant component of the entire strategy rests on community-school relationship. The effort is to create a school environment and processes such that parents believe it is worth sending their child to school. This is possible through a genuine dialogue between teachers and parents and other community members about education being a priority for their children, their ward’s participation and school functioning. They need to understand the importance of sending children to school, irrespective of the biases that they may face on virtue of being socially excluded.

Another strand of community engagement involves working with representative groups like VECs, SMCs, PTA/MTA and make the members aware of their roles and responsibilities as also enhance their capacities to understand and take up school issues, including relevance for equity.

Regular community seminars (parents and teachers meeting with focused discussion agenda examining their ward’s progress in school) provide a platform to discuss domains of school performance. Sharing progress of children with them is an effective way of recognizing the issues that children may be facing due to discrimination in school and community.

 

Albert Bandura’s social learning theory on social stereotypes, explaining how people learn from one another and acquire values, is affirmed by CARE.⁷ The theory emphasizes the importance of children’s imitation of the behaviour of others (models). Socially excluded children learn to accept their subjugation through observation, imitation and modelling. The same theory can be used to explain the difference in thinking created through CARE’s quality intervention experience, broadening their vision and helping them demand their rights, and strengthening their capacity to challenge exclusion faced by them.

 

Footnotes:

1. SSA is the Government of India’s flagship programme for achievement of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time bound manner, as mandated by the 86th amendment to the Constitution of India making free and compulsory education to the children of 6-14 years age group a fundamental right.

2. National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level identifies one out of ten schools in a cluster as Model Cluster School (MCS), visualized as model schools for the rest, demonstrating good practices.

3. Project districts, UP – Balrampur, Bahariach, Shravasti, Lucknow and Hardoi.

4. Project districts, Gujarat – Surendranagar, Rajkot, Patan and Kutch.

5. Udaan: Residential camps for out of school girls (11-14 years) to help them complete primary education in 11 months through an accelerated learning approach and build life skills. Being run through local partners in UP, Bihar, Mewat and Orissa.

6. CCE provides a holistic profile of the learner through assessment of both scholastic and non-scholastic aspects of education spread over the total span of instructional time in schools, helping to identify those positive attributes of the learner which are not usually assessed through annual examinations.

7. A. Bandura, Social Learning and Personality Development. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NJ, 1975; and A. Bandura, Social Learning Theory. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977.