Takeaways from Coffee for Cause, Edition 5
– Conversations around sustainability and CSR

Conversation Round 2:  Virtual education for children from marginalised socio-economic backgrounds

Virtual education is actually an instructional learning environment where teacher and student are separated by time or space, or both, and the teacher provides course content through the use of methods such as course management applications, multimedia resources…  

Points to ponder upon
Is it practical?
Models that have already been deployed
Opportunities vis-a-vis challenges at the grassroots
Is it sustainable and can it be integrated with existing infrastructure at government schools?
Possibilities of public-private partnerships

With regard to online classes, do teachers have the needed tools as well as the required knowledge of the tools that are needed to impart education online,   especially teachers at rural schools who may not even have access to the necessary hardware, leave alone the needed internet bandwidth and basic digital awareness… Are there any programmes/initiatives of the government or under the social responsibility mandate of corporates for helping upgrade the skills or digital understanding of government teachers?  

Avanish Kumar, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation: We follow a unique model wherein we build the school  infrastructure and get professional organisations to run the schools. For example, some of our schools are being run by DAV Society and Chinmaya Mission, who have extensive experience of running educational institutes. These schools with modern infrastructure are providing good-quality, English-medium, CBSE-affiliated education to rural children.  

During the Covid-19 outbreak, as schools had to make a shift to online classes, we were faced with a set of new challenges. There were several issues, starting from the availability of essential hardware, internet connection and bandwidth, to technical know-how of teachers and their comfort level with conducting classes online. After multiple trials with WhatsApp and some other platforms, we realised that it was a huge task and holistic education was certainly not possible through digital learning models.

Another major challenge during the lockdown was not just about imparting education but also ensuring that children, especially the slow learners, did not forget what they had been learning. Seeing no practical way out, our teams of teachers reached out to as many children as possible, actually going door to door, shared workbooks and simple assignments on concepts that they had already learned… When the lockdown restrictions were eased a little, we also initiated study circles wherein students from a particular locality would meet the teacher at a common place – following necessary safety protocol – and do focused study sessions.

Robin Sarkar, Shiv Nadar Foundation: We realised that the teachers needed to be empowered with digital learning, they needed to know about and use the technological tools that would guide them in introducing ICT in the classroom. So we introduced a focused learning programme for teachers and included teachers from across the hierarchy in the government education system – for example, a highly qualified teacher as well as a para teacher were included as beneficiaries of the programme…  

The motivation levels of a few teachers or their willingness to enhance their skills did present a challenge. We worked around this primarily by taking teachers into confidence and letting them know that we were not ‘teaching’ the teachers – we were, instead, empowering them with new tools that would not only make teaching easy but also make it more impactful and hold the students’ interest…

Shalini Singh, Tata Power: Education is one of the thrust areas of Tata Power and our focus has been on primary education for school children wherein through multiple interventions we make sure that children do not drop out. Another area of intervention has been the children in eighth, ninth and tenth grades – our engagement with them focus on preparations for board exams as well as support that helps them in choosing career paths or acquiring employability skills that ensure a promising future…

Interestingly, as we had started digital coaching across our centres with younger children way before the pandemic hit us, they were quite accustomed to that format and the lockdown did not make much of an impact on the programme. However, the academic coaching for older children – focused learning that used to happen in a classroom environment – did get impacted. To ensure that the normal course of education continued, we linked all the children to state boards’ websites that had enough revision content to learn from. Another initiative was to get all our children registered on an online learning platform that conducted coaching for students on a regular basis. The pull strategy that worked here to get students to be regular was linking these classes to select skill-development courses that would increase their chances of getting jobs later. The family incomes for many of these rural students had been impacted during the lockdown and they all wanted to somehow support their families, and skilling courses were a good opportunity for them.  

Talking of the effectiveness of these initiatives, digital reach obviously remains an issue. The first challenge was of course the hardware, the availability of a device… to address this we had to create WhatsApp groups and send a device, either a phone or a tablet, that could be shared amongst children living in the same locality. Our teachers were trained on specific content modules covering Maths, Science and English.

Another interesting linkage that we facilitated was connecting the older students on Google Kormo, where they could pick up part-time jobs and supplement their family incomes while continuing with their education.

Abhishek Ranjan, Brillio: When you look at a school, children do not go there only for basic education; it is a part of their daily life, a necessary routine. More so, in government schools”where we work and so do many other corporate groups, children get their nutritious food, their stationery supplies, their uniforms, and many other such things. So the first thing that we did with our schools was to identify regions where all these children came from and ensured that at least the food supplies continued. In another intervention, we created a pool of government teachers, got them all on WhatsApp, and gave them basic digital-literacy lessons so that they could start online teaching for students. Our company volunteers and non-profit partners created WhatsApp groups for almost all students and connected them with their respective teachers, who then started online classes. There was no mandate from the government for them to do so; it was their intent and dedication to their job that had almost all teachers partnering for this initiative.  

• Let’s talk about some programmes that support education for children from marginalised and poor backgrounds.

Robin Sarkar: We run a niche scholarship programme that is solely focused on talented children from marginalised and poor households. Under the programme, we select about 200 students through an entrance exam. The selected students get 100 per cent free education starting from Class 6 until they graduate. Also, as it is a residential programme, all of their essential needs including food and boarding are  taken care of by the foundation. Among the outcomes of this programme is that some of the beneficiary students are now studying at universities in the US and other countries… the scholarship is a springboard for talented young kids to go to the best education institutes in the world, which they otherwise will not be able to afford.

Shiksha ki Goonj is another initiative that I would want my peers to get cues from and maybe embed something like that in their projects too. The programme only focuses on broadcasting main lessons through a loudspeaker from the school to the entire village. The idea is not to have children sit in front of a computer or a tablet, but be passively engaged in their classroom lessons that are being read, repeated or taught by their teacher via the loudspeaker from their school. This initiative helped in keeping children connected to the school during the lockdown.

Shiksha Kiran is an initiative under which a van with an attached LED screen goes to various rural areas and imparts preloaded engaging lessons to children of various classes. The idea was to take ICT out of the classrooms directly to the homes of the students and it worked quite well.

Avanish Kumar: We initiated a Gifted Children Scheme under which all the schools within our ambit reserves 15 per cent seats for students from the lower socioeconomic strata – they get free education and support until they land their first jobs.

Another thing we ensure at the foundation is to complement the government’s efforts and leverage from their schemes. For example, during the lockdown, the government started several education programmes on Doordarshan, which were easily accessible across rural India – most households that might not have had access to digital devices or the internet did have a television and could easily watch these programmes. What we did was to ensure that each child attended these programmes. We shared class-wise programme schedules with teachers, made calls to the parents, and brought as many students possible in front of their TV sets…

• How are we looking at the post-Covid-19 scenario? Will all or some of these new initiatives be sustained? Also, are companies going to look beyond the existing intervention models in education?

Robin Sarkar: The innovations during the pandemic as well as the new education policy have brought about many options for corporates to invest their CSR funds in. One thing that I have learnt over the years is that interventions focused on academics should start from the formative years of children. We should intervene at the anganwadi level and move to formative schools and then to primary with the same set of beneficiaries, so that when they reach Class 5 or Class 6, their fundamentals are strong.

Avanish Kumar: Companies need to go beyond infrastructure development and embed ICT in schools as well as empower teachers with digital tools that can help them not only in teaching but also in assessing the progress of students. For instance, we have developed a software that records progress of each child on various parameters and provides complete update to a teacher to see where a child stands, what the scope for improvement is, and what s/he needs to do to help the child perform better.  

Robin Sarkar: As discussed earlier, as much as we need to complement the government’s initiatives, we also need to share our learnings and the tools that we have developed with the government so that the schools that are beyond our reach also get to benefit. At Shiv Nadar Foundation, we have collaborated with district magistrates to replicate some of our initiatives.

Abhishek Ranjan: We all know about the build-operate-transfer model. In CSR domain, we have seen that companies build and then transfer. However, the focus should also be on operating – run the initiative for a certain period of time, bring it up to a level where it is embedded in the particular school’s system, and make sure that the administration is capable of sustaining the same on its own, before the transfer… The onus is on us corporates. Do we just want to build something, inaugurate the same, take photographs, and then forget about it?

One model that you would advocate and maybe ask other companies to adopt/replicate.

Shalini Singh: In order to scale and reach out to every child in India, we need to leverage technology. Hence, the model that I would advocate for is the Google Classroom model for distance education…  

Abhishek Ranjan: Whatever programme one may implement, make sure that the school’s principal and teachers are the first stakeholders in it. Involve them at the planning stage and value their feedback as they are the ones who are going to sustain it.

Robin Sarkar: The model should be in sync with the objectives of the government and complement at least one of their schemes. If the project that you implement can make an impact, the only way to reach out to the masses is to make it replicable by the government.

Avanish Kumar: The Navodaya model is a good example of a school with all necessary facilities and good academic performance – their alumni is doing quite well. They charge bare minimum fees too.

Brig. Williams: Talking of models and CSR interventions, let me highlight another important issue. There are several government schools that do not even have the required number of teachers… While supporting infrastructure of the schools, corporations should also take on this additional responsibility and start looking at the human resource component. At the end of the day, regardless of the infrastructure or the facilities – there may or may not be a blackboard or an LED screen – it is the teacher-student connect that is the foundation of any educational institution.

The full conversations are available on the CauseBecause channel on YouTube.