digitalLEARNING-Sept-2011-[28-30]-Tracking SSA in Goa

State Focus

Tracking

SSA in Goa

The efforts of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) are aimed at providing useful and relevant elementary education for all children in the age group of 6 to 14 years and to bridge social, regional and gender gaps, with the active participation of the community in the management of schools. In this article we focus on the educational efforts of Goa and explore the diverse range of activities being undertaken in the State under SSA

By Pragya Gupta The mission statement of the Goa Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan emphasises on an urgent requirement for the appointment of trained teachers and provision of remedial teaching, improvement of school infrastructure, out of school children, children with special needs, and community mobilisation. The focus has been on increasing access, enrolment and bridging gender and social gaps. Retention, quality education and bringing back out of school children have been the key thrust areas. Activities of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan in the state has been working towards this direction.

TRAINING ACTIVITIES IN CCE Carrying forward the steps towards implementation of

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the Right to Education Act in Goa, the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) designed a scheme of Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) to be enforced in all the primary and upper primary schools in the State from the academic year 2011-12. “Goa SSA has shouldered responsibility of imparting training to the heads of the upper primary and secondary schools in the state to actualise the step towards implementation of CCE in their schools. 400 heads of these schools were imparted one day training in CCE between June 20 and 28, 2011�, says Madhav Joshi, State Programme Coordinator, Goa SSA. Joshi further elaborates that presently, the Goa SSA has launched programmes through the Taluka Level

State Focus

School Complex Committees (TLSCCs). About 3500 teachers teaching in the upper primary schools will receive training. Following these programmes, authorities of the Goa SSA programme have planned to take up training programmes for the primary teachers in the State. Around 3000 teachers will be trained in near future. The senior teachers, experts and the headmasters who have already been trained contribute to the teacher training programme as resource persons.

TEACHER TRAINING IN E-LEARNING PROGRAMMES The Sesa Goa – Vedanta Foundation initiated elearning programmes in the upper primary schools

in the State. Initially two teachers each from 295 upper primary schools were involved in the training programmes. Following the first phase of the training of these teachers in the last year when they were acquainted with the e-learning software developed by the Foundation and installed in each of the above schools, the teachers were invited for the second phase of the training programmes which commenced from July 18, 2011 in various centers.

The Foundation has initiated steps to cover 91 additional upper primary schools in this year. The teachers undergoing training are acquainted with the software of e-learning and are exposed to computer skills. Sesa Goa-Vedanta Foundation’s E-learning

Visionary schools are the need of 21st century What are the key elements that make for the visionary schools of the 21st century?

Visionary schools are the need of 21st century – schools that would provide relevant and quality education to all. The 21st century schools have integrated technological advances and our children have to necessarily cope up with this. Even if one teacher has a vision of creating a school that would empower positive change, that is enough to impact and bring about change in the teaching learning process. That is what will be truly visionary.

We have seen that happening in our state, where a single teacher of a school handling 24 students has given new meaning to the teaching and learning process. The teacher has made the optimal use of the grant provided under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan and transformed the classroom into live learning centre. Every inch of the classroom is well utilised to transform into a live learning experience for students of the school.

What are the expectations of parents from schools of today?

What parents are looking from schools is that schools should provide children with all innate abilities and transform them into capabilities to help meet the challenges of real life. Schools should help the child cope up with the requirements of the changing world with technological advancements and children should excel in all fields.

Society is looking for schools that would transform students into becoming a responsible citizen of the country. To meet this aspiration of the parents & society there is a need to develop every school into a ‘Visionary School of the 21st century’.

This is only possible through the vision of the school management team and education stakeholders of the society.

School should provide an environment that facilitates the pursuit of academic excellence and all round development of the child. School should update their technological infrastructure and keep up with the ever changing educational environment. It should help stir the passion of the child, ignite the spark in the imagination & motivate the sense of duty.

Nagraj Honnekeri State Project Director, SSA-Goa What are the key leadership qualities that are required today?

I really admire the words of Shiv Khera that “Leadership is a combination, not a key. A safe cannot open with a single number, you must use right combination of numbers to be able to open it.” Similarly one quality is not enough to make a leader. A leader must have a right balance of combination of vision, values, competence, courage and character. One without the other will not work.

To imbibe these leadership qualities we need to focus on curriculum of teacher education, autonomy for schools & teacher education institutions, community ownership of the schools, free & flexible administrative set up, and a certain level of investment in school education.

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State Focus

The Community Mobilisation Cell designed detailed plan for orientation of all concerned in the areas of RTE implementation and other child related issues including those of out of school children programme is a joint initiative of the Government of Goa, Directorate of Education with Goa SSA which supports the programme under its Computer Aided Learning (CAL) intervention. 350 teachers have benefitted with the training and have found the initiative quite motivating.

ICT INTEGRATION FOR QUALITY ENHANCEMENT OF LEARNING The Programme Approval Board (PAB) of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India has approved the Goa SSA proposal of initiating Total population of Goa is programmes in inte13, 47,668 among which gration of Information and Technology (ICT) in 6,87,248 are males and day-to-day classroom 6,66,420 are females. processes under its Within this population, the Computer Aided Learning (CAL) Intervention total literacy rate is 81.75 for the year 2011-12. percent according to the Joshi adds that the Goa 2001 census, wherein SSA is preparing itself to organise the training male literacy rate is 88.17 of the Master Trainers percent and female literacy through national experts rate is 75.34. Among rural in the field. “Resource support will be sought population of 6, 77,091 from experts at NCERT people, rural literacy rate and IGNOU who will be invited along with the lois 79.65 percent cal experts in the field.

The Quality Monitoring Cell of Goa Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan is working out details of the programme”, he says.

RTE IMPLEMENTATION The Government of Goa has vetted the State Rules under the Right to Education Act (RTE) which still awaits notification. The Goa SSA has however taken steps to ensure that the admission norms are fol-

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lowed in all the schools particularly, for the out of school children who are required to be admitted to the age appropriate classes. The AIE Cell of the Goa SSA has been interacting with NGOs in charge of the erstwhile AIE Centers which would provide special training to the learners admitted to the age appropriate classes.

Fourteen NGOs and two Madarsa Centers having their Residential (RBC) and Non residential (NRBC) centres in 50 different locations in the State are involved in this task and are associated with the SSA for monitoring their activities.

EDUCATION OF THE CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS (CWSN) Activities for education of Children with Special Needs are also being carried out at present. Medical assessment of the children with special needs is conducted regularly. Medical certificates are given to the children having more than 40% disability. The needy children are provided necessary aids and appliances. 1156 children with special needs are currently learning in schools while 4 children are being provided home based education. Presently, four Resource Teachers are employed with Goa SSA. They have received 20 days training as Multi Category Master Trainers at Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

COMMUNITY MOBILIsATION AND TRAINING Following the introduction of RTE in the State, it has planned to develop awareness in the community, its leaders, heads of the institutes, teachers and parents on the child-related mandates of RTE and sensitise them on child rights and need of protection of the child’s rights. The Community Mobilisation Cell designed detailed plan for orientation of all concerned in the areas of RTE implementation, preparation of School Development Plan, implications of the CCE Scheme and other child related issues including those of out of school children. These programmes will be launched in the second fortnight of September 2011.

RESEARCH AND EVALUATION In a joint effort of Goa SSA with Nirmala Institute of Education, the State took up a project called ‘All Can Learn’, which addresses the issue of slow learning.

This project is monitored by one of the faculties at the Nirmala Institute of Education. First phase of the project is currently in progress. Teacher training programmes and development testing tools for their use in the classrooms have already been created.

School Education in Goa will certainly see a move towards inclusion and excellence in the coming years.