Developing Model Schools Project

Palamoor is one of the most backward districts with low literacy rate in Andhra Pradesh. The literacy rate in the district is 45.53% according to 2001 census and it is 57.87% in males and 32.83% in females respectively. Many studies shows that the district have high number of child labor and school dropouts. There is a need to address the issue of low literacy and minimize the school dropouts’ rate through improving the education standards and providing quality education in the schools.

In this context Palamoor NRIs Forum organized a consultation meeting with the Head Masters and proposed to strengthen the schools in the district. On Feb.20, we had a very good meeting in MBNR town with all High School Headmasters in Palamoor. About 600 Head Masters attended this meeting, which was organized by DEO Hameed and addressed by members of the Palamoor NRI Forum . All the Head Masters were very excited to know that NRI Forum is coming to help the rural students.

During the meeting, we collected the “School Profile” information from each HM.

NRI Forum announced the following program to develop “50 Model Schools” in the district. The overall objective is to improve the standards and quality of education in the selected Government Schools.

Characteristics of a Model School

All the children from the village in the age group of 6 to 14 years should be in the school

  1. Minimize the dropouts rate, achieve 100% within a period of 3 years
  2. Have a “ School Education Committee”(SEC) with the parents of the school and the SEC shall meet once in a month/quarter
  3. The School will have extra curricular activities in the evenings for example one day debate on a theme, another day quiz competition, sports etc.
  4. All classes will have separate rooms for their class
  5. Have the subject teachers for all the classes
  6. The Head Master and the teachers will regularly review the performance of the children, not only in terms of exams and results but in other activities also.
  7. Have a science laboratory, mathematics equipments to the children
  8. Teachers will have the responsibility to give the quality of education
  9. The school will conduct regular classes on history of their own village and district, untouchability, problems and issues of their village and district.
  10. Once in a month they organize a special class to all the children to share the experiences of Freedom fighters in the district/state, eminent personalities in the country etc.
  11. Half a day voluntary service program should be planned, where students will learn “the good act of voluntary service”. Snacks and refreshments should be provided.
  12. Organize “Counseling” for out going children on what are the different subjects, interest of the child and future opportunities with the subjects.

Taking the above issues into consideration, the school have to work towards to achieve the goals in a time period of 3 years.

The School Head Master, Teachers, Parents committee and the Village Sarpanch have to organize a Grama Sabha and pass a resolution to participate in the program and also to work along with the Palamoor NRIs forum. The MEO and DEO will also sign on the same resolution. The initiative will start in the next (2006-07) academic year.

Palamoor Foundation will closely work with the selected school to make it as a School. There would be a close collaboration with the District Administration and NRIs Forum to improve the standards and provide quality of education.

Process & Timeline:

  1. DEO will send the notification to all High Schools about the program and request them to sign up, if they are interested.
  2. Palamoor Foundation will constitute a team, which will execute the program on behalf of Palamoor NRI Forum.
  3. The interested school should provide the “Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)”. This plan should explain the basic problems they encountered for not getting good results (Identify problems). Then, they should propose the solutions. Within the solutions, they should identify what efforts the school team (HM & staff) will put in and what they needed from NRI Forum to support and reinforce their efforts. This plan should have details like how they can improve the standards by providing extra classes, extra coaching, extra tests, parent meetings, village participation programs etc. Head Master, teaching staff and village community should participate in the process.

HM should conduct at least one meeting with staff and one meeting with parents & village community to identify the issues and prepare the PIP.

HM and village community leaders should sign the PIP, as a token of their commitment for what they said in PIP. It will serve as “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)” between school and NRI Forum.

NRI Forum will provide assistance only to improve the standards by providing some incentives, motivational, teaching material and teaching support. (See Appendix I).

  1. Once, we receive the applications; our team will screen them and select 20 schools in each division. There are five divisions in Palamoor. Our team will physically visit the schools and evaluate them to qualify to participate in the program.
  2. Then, 10 schools from each division will be selected.
  3. Selected school will get a signboard saying “This school is selected for Model School Project by Palamoor NRI Forum. Sponsored by Shri [Name of the sponsor] (NRI)” which will be prominently displayed at the school.
  4. Then, our team will interact with schools individually and in-group to support the school as per it’s needs and help it to reach the goal of improving the standards as per the agreement.
  5. At the end of the academic year, School should demonstrate the substantial improvement and set the example for other schools.
  6. Our team will compile the experiences of each school and catalogue the “Best Practices” for others to follow.
  7. A felicitation will be organized to recognize the best efforts and thus motivate other schools to follow the suite.

APPENDIX I

Our objective is – to bring best out of children, teachers and parents by offering some incentives and motivating ideas. We are NOT offering any infrastructure development (building rooms etc.) help. Our objective is not to replace ongoing govt/departmental initiatives/programs, but adding some flesh and blood to the existing structure.

Incentives:

Incentives have magical effect on human nature! Appreciation and recognition is key for people to motivate and work more and work hard.

I. Student Incentives:

An incentive goes long way to motivate children to work hard. It does wonders on children! A small prize for their efforts will motivate them immensely to do more next time.

Examples:

We can give small gifts to students who top the weekly/biweekly tests.

We can organize “Essay Writing Competition” once a month and give gifts to top 5.

We can have “Elocution (Speech) Competition” once in 2-months and give some prizes.

II. Teacher Incentives:

A teacher who takes initiative and organize above competitions can be recognized for their efforts.

A teacher can adopt a student/group of students for preparation and when student(s) gets prize, teacher also gets for his efforts.

III. Parent/community Incentives:

Provide some food in parent meetings, it works!

Give small gift to parent who attends the meeting

When student gets an award, parent will get a reward.

Community leaders also should be recognized appropriately, if they attend

School should conduct monthly meeting for 10th class parents and bimonthly for 8th & 9th.

IV. Organize special events on August 15 and Jan 26th and plan for some motivational lectures

School should plan ahead and bring very good motivational speaker to address the students.

V. When an NRI comes for visit, organize a special event and request NRI to motivate children. After all, many NRIs graduated from that school, so children can relate the success.

VI. School Valedictory Function should be organized with much fanfare.

School should take this opportunity to recognize all the people involved in the process. Some paper certificates, plaques and awards should be given.

Above activities are given to quote some examples, however school can get more creative and bring new ideas and plans within the budget limits.

All above individual activities and events need small amounts of money, but they do wonders and recharge the environment with excitement. We are providing one or the incentive to every stakeholder in the process. So every one will look forward to participate and get something!

Tentative Budget:

Student Incentives: (Budget Rs. 7,200)

Biweekly Tests:

2 students x 3 Classes (VIII, IX, X) x 12 Times ( 6 months) x Rs.50 = Rs. 3600

Essay Writing:

2 students x 3 Classes (VIII, IX, X) x 6 Times ( 6 months) x Rs.50 = Rs. 1800

Elocution Writing:

2 students x 3 Classes (VIII, IX, X) x 6 Times ( 6 months) x Rs.50 = Rs. 1800

Teacher Incentives: (Budget Rs. 4,000)

At least one incentive per year per teacher.

20 teachers x Rs 200 = Rs. 4000

Parent/Community Incentives: (Budget Rs. 2,000)

On different occasions, for different reasons (best student attendance, attendance to parent meetings etc.), we can give some incentive gifts to parents and community leaders. We can spend about Rs 2000 under this.

Events (Budget Rs. 7,000)

Three Main Events (15th, 26th and Valedictory) will cost Rs.1500, Rs.1500 and Rs.4000, respectively. This is additional to what school gets from department.

Total Budget Rs. 20,000 (7,200+4,000+2,000+7,000) or $500 per school per year. It is on minimum side. If school needs or sponsor willing, the budget can go high.

School can customize above incentives upon approval. For example, they can give more incentives to X class and less to VIII. But it should adhere to over all budget limits.

This is the minimum commitment we are expecting from sponsor. If sponsor can give contribute more, we can do more. We can raise the amount the school spends on incentives or school can do some more creative programs.

Some additional teaching support and material support is not covered here. It can be done on case-by-case basis.

Additional Help:

1. Scholarship: The goal of this program is to identify the best merit and poorest of the poor students and offer them financial help needed to pursue higher studies. If we announce a scholarship at the beginning of academic year, it will be motivation for students to study hard and secure top position. A scholarship amount of Rs. 2000 per students and number of scholarships can be determined by sponsor.

2. A library with books for children would be helpful to the children to read and also participate in essary competition, elocution etc. The library is a source to the village (other school children) to access different books on different themes. General libraries are there in the villages, but they are moreover for reading newspapers etc. We can add some budgets like Rs.5000/per School.

3. Education Volunteers: Some schools might need extra teaching help and we can add the Volunteer Honorarium. The honorarium could be around Rs.1000 – Rs.1500/per month.

It is very useful for younger minds to understand the difficult concepts by simple experiments. A very comprehensive lab can be designed using some of the inexpensive materials. If the science teacher is interested we should provide some support to teach science in practice.

5. Study Tour:Excursion tours are a great way to explore the world and discover the knowledge, culture, history and life around us.

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