Rural Education Challenges

Joining school is essential yet spending time in school doesn't guarantee quality outcome. Classroom lessons need to be augmented and reinforced by guided studies at home and completing homework. First generation learners receive little parental support and motivation at home. Missing preschools in rural area delay the cognitive development among learners. Finally a school leaving certificate neither guaranties a job nor it is able to build an entrepreneurial aspiration thus of limited practical value to the villagers.

We approach education in rural space with a   thinking beyond formal schooling. While formal schooling needs overhauling in terms of methodology, content, tooling and trainers. In our Rural Education Framework we  look in to the following aspects of education:

• Early Childhood Education and Care
• Supplementing school education to bridge the gap of parenting and quality
• Building life skills and capabilities
• Rural School of remedial studies for adults
• Society for embracing liberal arts and scientific spirit in daily life

  Cognitive development by color recognition, spatial awareness, seriation, pattern recognition and puzzle solving. Early language skill to cover expression of thoughts, need and feeling, ability to describe, recognition of letters and comprehension. Early numeracy to cover counting, comparison, basic arithmetic operations and simple problem solving, social and emotional development. 

Offering at least one balanced meal daily, monitoring growth and health conditions regularly, following up with immunization coverage and continuous parent-teacher dialog are the subjects of critical importance. 

 1st generation school goers lack parental guidance at home. Also lack of teachers and study materials often act as a deterrent to the quality of education in a rural school. ‘Flip the class’ is a successfully practiced method in some parts of the world where students attend recorded audio-visual class lectures at home and go to school for doing their homework.This method has high potential to address the existing challenges in the education of rural India and offer a powerful framework to guide the students in their academic journey. Under this program we compile and distribute audio-visual class lectures to the students and followed it up by small-group coaching  both online and face to face.

  Skills of practical significance are far more important than completing high school and obtain school leaving certificate. Here we are talking about skills that can be applied in improving quality of daily life or setting up entrepreneurial initiative. This will cover- tailoring, knitting, carpentry, electrical works, electronics repair, pottery, bird and animal rearing, healthcare works, working with agri-machinery, computer programming, app development to start with.

Skill needs to be complemented by the capability for value generation. We consider "capability" as one’s ability to look around, and  undertake actions that can better the life of his own and his community.

All educational initiatives of the Government and most often of the voluntary organisations are focused towards younger generation for natural and right reasons. Yet not creating any opportunity for the rural adults who were deprived of education in their childhood is neither fair nor optimal when driving overall development of the rural community. Our adult literacy and numeracy programs are centered around enriching their work life, intellectual life, entertainment, habitat issues, community collaboration and man-nature relationship. We believe this a way of building conscious civil society capable of defending their human dignity and constitutional rights.