Older children who have not attended Vidyarambam classes and have dropped-out of school or have become ineffective in their schools are given support classes to bring them up to speed.

For this purpose, Vidyarambam is conducting two programs

1. Support Class Junior for class 2 & 3 and
2. Support Class Senior for class 4 & 5.

Pratham Programmes

Reading is the first essential step for access to accumulated knowledge. Without reading, there is no writing either. In August 2004, Pratham did a pilot survey in selected districts of many States and the observations gave an indication to initiate more extensive survey.

In November 2005 Pratham initiated a movement called ASER 2005 (ANNUAL STATUS of EDUCATION REPORT 2005).

• to know and understand the status of schooling and learning in each district
• to inform parents, elected representatives of PRI, teachers, and administrators about the status
• to find local solutions and start action
• to encourage district-level SSA plans to be based on local needs and ensure effective implementation of plans

About 330,000 children were tested for their skills in reading their mother tongue and doing simple arithmetic. This was done in about 9,600 villages spread in 509 rural districts across India. After completing the survey in randomly selected households in each village, the findings of the survey were compiled into a Report which was submitted to Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Dy. Chairman of the Planning Commission in New Delhi on January 17, 2006.

Some interesting data from the report are in the following tables.

The National Picture

Tamil Nadu State picture

 

The alarming findings relate to reading and arithmetic. ASER did not test the children for age or grade specific competency. It tested the ability of children to read (a simple paragraph or story pitched at grade 2 level) and the ability to solve simple subtraction or division.

ASER 2005 is the beginning. ASER will be repeated every year until 2010, the deadline for universal elementary education through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

How does Vidyarambam approach this problem?

Support Class Junior

The support classes cater to needs of those children who are lagging behind in minimum competencies of basic reading and mathematics. These children could be in-school, out-of-school or working children. Volunteers from the same community best understand the needs of these children. Hence motivated volunteers from the community are identified and trained to be responsible for a class of 20 children in the age group of 8-11 years.
Individual attention to each child is given the maximum emphasis. The class focuses on basic reading and arithmetic skills. Pratham has recently innovated and tested on a large scale a technique that combines different approaches to learning to read. The technique combines the philosophy of child-centric learning with 'reading aloud' stories, use of the phonetic chart for coding and decoding sounds, use of rhyming words, and activities to 'say what you want and write what you want'. All learning in class happens through learning material, games and activities to sustain the child's interest.

With focused teaching, each batch of children is expected to acquire these skills within a period of 4 months. A mid and end programme evaluation is done at the end of 2 months and 4 months to assess the improvement levels. The aim is that in any community that is taken up for work should have all its children reading fluently and confident in basic maths skills.

Support Class Senior and Library Program

A) Level 2 Support Class: Once children have acquired these basic skills, they move on to the next level of Reading to Learn. Here the classes focus on higher achievement levels like creative writing, fractions and other concepts in maths, and other subject based learning.

B) Lessons from school syllabus taught with specially prepared syllabus giving emphasis to explain concepts with practical experiments

C) Hands on experience by testing about 90 Science experiments.

D) The Library Program

Evaluation Results