Humana People to People India
For children from socio-economically marginalized backgrounds, access to quality foundation learning is the first step towards a better and brighter future. In India, the Government runs one of the largest primary school networks in the world aimed at providing free basic education to every child. These schools account for over 70% of enrolments in rural areas.
However, this success in access has not been accompanied by quality of education. Various challenges like skill deficits in teachers and lack of child-centric resources available to children have resulted in a situation where 3 of 4 children in these schools progress past the primary stage without acquiring the basic learning skills.
HPPI has developed and is implementing the digital-DMM solution in partnership with State Governments in India with an aim to improve the quality of training of primary grade teachers in child-centric pedagogies and innovative teaching methodologies.
Over 60% of children in Government primary schools in India are crossing over the primary stage of education without even acquiring basic literacy and numeracy levels. Considering that India has one of the largest networks of Government supported primary schools (1+ million schools), it can be roughly estimated that over 60 million children suffer the long-term consequences of low quality of education in the public schooling system.
A key reason for this persisting situation is that teachers in the Government schools use out-dated rote method of teaching and have skill deficits when it comes to child-centric methods of teaching. This prevents children from socio-economically marginalized backgrounds from gaining quality learning.
Additional factors compound this problem- India’s socio-cultural and linguistic diversity; predominantly rural population (which requires a large number of schools to be set up on rural and remote areas) and the high costs of designing and deploying innovative teaching learning resources.
A complementing factor to all the above is the fact that education is a state subject in India- which means that geographical replication requires the cycle of systemic integration and replication to be repeated in each of India’s 28 States, a time consuming process.
HPPI’s solution to the problem is called digital DMM- a fully integrated set of resources for teachers and children.
Digital DMM builds on HPPI’s “People to People Pedagogy”. Humana People to People India’s education initiatives sees the teacher and the student as co-creators of knowledge and skills, where the student as much as possible takes the driver’s seat in the process of learning. The learning process involves acquisition of information and knowledge, processing that into understanding and to action for positive change.
This permeates all educational programmes developed by Humana People to People India, with the objective to empower the learners with knowledge, skills and the capacity to engage in a world of life-long learning.
Building upon more than a decade of grassroot experience, HPPI has indigenously developed a full set of child-centric pedagogical models, tools and resources that span from pre-primary education to primary education to post-primary stage as well as teacher education.
Going ahead, HPPI aims to complement the direct implementation and support approach with a digital platform that will enable teachers in government primary schools to access high quality resources free of cost that will enable them to transfer the quality education to their students.
Digital DMM is aimed at impacting teachers and children in government primary schools.
This principal focus is intended to maintain the emphasis on India’s Right to Education law which mandates free education for all children of the ages of 6-14 years.
Specifically, HPPI’s approach is focussed on the following categories of beneficiaries:
A. PRE-SERVICE STUDENTS
Digital DMM was primarily designed for use in pre-service training of teachers in DIETs (District Institutes of Education and Training, district level training and support institutions set up and managed by the States). By focusing on a high-investment area (DIETs are well equipped and states invest resources for 2-year training to each new teacher), HPPI’s aim was to maximize the benefits accruing to the young teachers.
B. EXISTING SCHOOL TEACHERS
Digital DMM is also useful for in-service teachers, since it integrates a wide variety of themes and topics of interest to teachers. Additionally, HPPI is in the process of integrating specialized resources that are designed for the classroom environment- called Kadam. This resource will help teachers cope with multi-level classrooms in a child-centric manner.
By transitioning the teaching process from a rote methodology to a child-driven approach where the teachers acts as a facilitator, and children peddle their own path.
By reducing the technical burden on teachers in this way, the model aims to increase adoption and effectiveness in the classroom. Additionally, the inbuilt learning level outcome measurement tools enable the teacher to judge the learning progress of the child in an objective manner.
C. IN-SCHOOL CHILDREN IN GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOLS
Reputed surveys like ASER highlight the persistent learning gaps of children in government primary schools.
HPPI’s educational resources are designed to increase child-driven processes in learning, thereby helping children peddle their own path. This approach is expected to enhance lifelong learning and progress in further education that is required for a better future for these children.
D. OUT-OF-SCHOOL CHILDREN
Additionally, even though India has a high enrolment ratio, the size of the population means that the out-of-school children are large in number. HPPI’s children centric approach, where children drive their own learning progress and peddle their own path, is estimated to have high impact on out of school children- who often have multi-year learning deficits which hinders their ability to catch up in class.
E. PARENTS AND COMMUNITY
Parents and community play a key role in the development of children in any location. HPPI’s project models reinforce interactions between teachers, parents and the community to foster greater engagement and meeting to identify and solve issues.
This approach is estimated to result in greater sustainability at the local level.
- Support teachers to adapt their pedagogy, facilitate personalized instruction, and communicate with students and their families in remote and hybrid settings.
Learning process in schools is driven by teacher and student. By focusing on the needs and capacity of both, digital DMM project aims to address the crucial bottlenecks in formation of better classrooms.
Digital DMM resources are designed for holistic development of the student with a wide resource set of activities and themes that are useful for teachers.
Additionally, by including a transparent and objective learning assessment system, both teacher and student benefit and a truly child-centric approach is made possible in the classroom- as a teacher is aware of where each child stands and where he needs to be.
- Scale: A sustainable enterprise working in several communities or countries that is looking to scale significantly, focusing on increased efficiency.
HPPI is selecting the “Scale” stage of development for digital DMM as this is most appropriate.
Specifically,
Digital DMM is now a proven concept- of using programme-based methodologies and child centric learning pedagogies.
Digital DMM has been fully developed and is a working model.
Digital DMM has been successfully piloted in multiple States with evidenced outcomes.
HPPI has partnerships with 7 States in India that provide the foundation for large scale implementation and impact.
