Gujarat 2003-04

BACKGROUND

Pratham has both urban and rural initiatives in the Western Indian state of Gujarat. The state has a population of over 50 million, which is spread across 18,000+ villages and 240 cities / towns. 60% of the population live in rural Gujarat and the rest 40% in the urban areas. The literacy rate in this state is 69%. The males, with 80% literacy rate, have a distinct edge over the females at 58%.

There are about 37,000 schools in Gujarat with 8.1 million students and 195,000 teachers and 46,000 para-teachers. This makes the student teacher ratio to be 40:1. The government figures indicate that there are about 300,000 children out of school.

The urban initiatives are in the cities of Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodra. The rural initiatives are in the Kutch region. The following table provides some basic information about these areas:

Is it possible to obtain Gujarat data for inclusion in the following table?

	Population	% Slum Population	Population of Children between 3-14 yrs	Number of Government Primary Schools	Number of Children in Govt Schools	Teachers
Ahmedabad	3,500,000	21%	750,000	563	2,23,000	5074
Rajkot	1,000,000	40%	-	92	40,000	922
Surat	2,500,000	60%	175,000	265	1,50,000	3177
Vadodara	1,500,000	22%	430,000	130	54,000	1284
Kutch	1,600,000	-	-	1475	203,035	4686

In Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara, the Government Schools cater to a diverse range of language speakers, apart from Gujarati. Ahmedabad, for instance, has Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam and English medium schools. Baroda has Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi and Sindhi medium schools. Surat has Gujarati, Marathi, Urdu, Hindi, Telugu, Oriya and Sindhi schools. Rajkot, however, has only Gujarati medium schools.

PRATHAM ACTIVITIES IN GUJARAT

Operations in Gujarat started in Vadodara in 1999 with both community based and ischool-based programmes. In an effort to ensure that 'every child is in school and learning well', Pratham Vadodara developed a model to enrol the out of school children and their subsequent retention support. It is called the 'School Readiness' programme. Over the last 4 years Pratham Vadodara has worked in 124 municipal schools and 10 communities impacting 20,000 children in the age group of 4 to 14, which includes roughly 9,000 boys and 11,000 girls.

Pratham Ahmedabad became functional in the year 2001. It started after the earthquake, which had crippled normal life, with financial support from Azim Premji Foundation and NOVIB (a non profit funding agency from the Netherlands). Till now Pratham has worked in 90 municipal schools and 70 communities, impacting 15,000 children in the age group of 5 - 12 years.

The Rajkot chapter of Pratham also got going in the year December 2001. The financial assistance came from NOVIB. As usual, the Pratham approach here has been both community based and in-school. 74 municipal schools and 40 communities have been covered by Pratham Rajkot, within this short span of time. 2,900 children, (1,400 boys and 1,500 girls) have so far have come in contact with Pratham.

Surat has recently been added to the Pratham map. It started functioning from April 2002, with financial assistance from Azim Premji Foundation and NOVIB. 2978 children, 1332 boys and 1396 girls, in 75 schools and 30 communities have come within the Pratham net.

Pratham intervention in Kutch started in July 2001, following the visit of a team from Pratham Mumbai, aiming to normalize the school operations in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. Work started from Anjar, then followed Bhuj, Bhachau and Rapar. Both in-school and community programmes have been undertaken in Kutch. Over the last 2 years Pratham has worked in 315 schools and 204 communities impacting more than 17,000 children, in the age group of 6-14. This includes 8465 boys and 8557 girls.

HIGHLIGHTS

AHMEDABAD - School Enrichment Programme (SEP): The school enrichment programme was aimed at creating incentives within the school for improving the attendance of children. 40% of the enrolled students had stopped attending school after the riots and the school system was below average. To counter the situation, Pratham Ahmedabad decided to introduce a programme of extra-curricular activities through Pratham Balsakhis. The target was children in class I to IV in 30 municipals schools. To achieve this, the Balsakhis were trained by the Centre for Environment Education, on different games and activities involving creativity and general knowledge. The SEP class was introduced once a week in these 30 schools. The activities varied from autographs on leaf and printing them, to making decorative articles like dining tables, chairs, fridge, television, computer using match sticks. Also, plays were enacted by the children to spread messages like maintenance of communal harmony and the virtues of cleanliness etc. The programme not only increased the daily class attendance but also brought out the latent skills of the children. At the year end, a function was held in one of the schools. Plays were staged. Also, the various articles that the children had created were displayed. In attendance were the head of the teachers union, state administration officers, the principals and the teachers of the school.

RAJKOT:By January 2003 Pratham was using its Reading Technique in 70 schools. The technique was an instant hit and lead to a demand for training the municipal school teachers in this technique. 77 teachers of Class II were trained in February 2003 by the Pratham training team comprising of Alpesh Parmar of Rajkot, Vasant and Jigna Ben of Ahmedabad.

VADODARA - CAL: Computer Aided Learning is an effective way to improve learning and increase attendance in schools. Pratham implemented the CAL programme in partnership with the government run schools in Vadodara, in 2002-2003. The year before, the Government of Gujarat distributed computers to the municipal schools in 6 major cities of the state. 98 schools of Vadodara received 392 computers, an average of 4 computers per school. CAL has been extremely useful in getting the children acquainted with the technology and the specially designed software has increased their language skills and maths proficiency.

SURAT - The Outreach Programme: According to Pratham's observations there are 15,000 to 20,000 child labourers in Surat city. Pratham has pioneered the activity to tackle this social problem in Surat. Pratham Surat is already working with 600 such children. The programme focuses on the following:
- Tries to provide emotional support to the children.
- Attempts to stop harassment at work place.
- Sees the possibilities of re-uniting the children with their family.
- Tries to mainstream them to formal school education.

SURAT - The Open School Programme: Pratham is an accredited National Open School Institution. To mainstream out of school children Pratham Surat first teaches out of school children and then hold the open school examination. The successful children are then admitted to a municipal school. Last year 54 children received certificates for succeeding in Class III and V examination. This year Pratham Surat expects to teach 300 children to take the examination.

KUTCH - TLM Workshop: Kutch by nature is different from other locations in Gujarat. The need here is different so is the intervention strategy. So to train the local Pratham teachers to use local material a TLM workshop was organized in Bhuj on the 27th and 28th of January 2003.

PLANS FOR 2003-2004

Pratham Gujarat recently conducted two surveys, an in-school survey and a community survey. Based on the results of the survey a programme strategy has been chalked out, for future course of action.

An In-school survey was conducted in the month of September, 2003. Nearly 47,000 children were tested on reading competency and maths proficiency, on a scale of 0 - 4.

Comptency Level	Reading Ability		Maths Proficiency
	No of Children	%	No of Children	%
0	6628	14	9015	19
1	8769	19	9461	20
2	7755	17	9354	20
3	7737	16	6989	15
4	15922	34	11992	26
Total	46811	100	146811	100

Based on these results a total of 730 Balskhis will be deployed in 546 schools throughout Gujarat. During the current year the units will focus on improving the reading competency of the children between 7 - 12 years, it will carried out in two phases, September 2003 - December 2003 and January 2004 - March 2004.

A community survey was carried out in March - April 2003. The selection of the target area was based on factors such as, Pratham's previous experience in the area, proximity to the government schools, activities of other NGOs in the area, socio-economic condition etc. 41573 children in the age group of 6 - 14 years were tested on reading competency and maths proficiency, on a scale of 0 - 4.

Comptency Level	Reading Ability		Maths Proficiency
0	35,138	38	44373	51
1	21846	17	25636	15
2	23017	15	24285	16
3	31910	17	31893	18
4	14276	13	0	0
Total	126187	100	126187	100

Based on the community survey, Pratham Gujarat has decided to start the following:

Pre-school reading programme: Will target children, aged 3-5, who are likely to join school in a year's time. The programme will begin in March 2004 and will last for 4 months.

Community reading centre: Will target the in-school children, aged 6-14, who lack adequate reading skills. The Pratham accelerated reading technique will be used to improve children's reading skill. The programme will be split up in 2 phases, each 4 month long. (November 2003 - February 2004 and March 2004 - June 2004). .

National Open School (NOS): will commence from November 2003 for 8 months. It will equip the out of school children, aged 8-14 years, to take the NOS examination after 8 months. Successful children will be mainstreamed to formal school education.

Community Library Programme: Initially the chosen communities will be given 200 books each for circulation.

However, in Kutch a shift in the programme strategy is planned from April 2003. The model will be one of greater community participation and community ownership of the programme. The primary goal, thus, is going to be bringing in an attitudinal change in the people and move towards the Pratham goal of "Every Child in School and Learning Well".

Kutch Resource Centre As already mentioned earlier, the operations in Kutch is vastly different from the other areas. This being a rural initiative, the urban models become difficult to replicate here. Hence a need to develop a Kutch Resource Centre arose. The centre will train the teachers, develop teaching and learning material, carry out research and teach the support staff on proper maintenance of documents.