Community-based Education at Rishi Valley

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Community-based Education at Rishi Valley

• Full Economic Citizenship
• Roundtable on Innovations in Education
• RISHI VALLEY INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
  (RIVER)
• KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

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Why is the system failing?

• Centralised curriculum
• Frustrated teacher
• Uninteresting classrooms
• Community losing faith

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Child in the drivers seat
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Teachers formulating curriculum - Meaningful
support structures Community involvement - A
school free of fear
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Teachers formulating curriculum - Meaningful
support structures Community involvement - A
school free of fear
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Teachers formulating curriculum - Meaningful
support structures Community involvement - A
school free of fear
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Teachers formulating curriculum - Meaningful
support structures Community involvement - A
school free of fear
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Teachers formulating curriculum - Meaningful
support structures Community involvement - A
school free of fear
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Learning Ladder

• Sense of achievement
• Self paced learning
• Self driven learner

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Space and time management

• Most rural schools multigrade by default
• RIVER model multigrade / multilevel by design
• dynamic grouping
• Grade, gender and ability not the criteria

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Community Ownership

• Community curriculum
• Mothers stories
• Traditional folk arts
• Mothers committees
• Monitoring childrens progress
• Organising mid-day meals

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Enriching village commons

• Barren wastelands converted into green public
  spaces
• Used variously for herbal gardens, water
  harvesting, solar energy
• Provides for fuel and fodder needs

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Cost effective model

• Design
• single-room, single-teacher
• Teaching - learning materials
• School-in-a-box
• Cost of building and establishment Rs.1,50,000
• Cost of running Rs.15,000
• per month

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16 to thousands of schools

• HOW?

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The first challenge

• Problem
• Backward region
• Mainstreaming girl child labourers
• Strategy
• Creating resource group
• Setting up 200 learning centres
• Achievement
• 96.8 of the girls achieved minimum levels of
  learning

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Challenges in the formal sector

• Problem
• Cynicism of teachers
• Apathy of bureaucracy
• Resistance from the textbook lobby
• Strategies
• Designers workshops
• Setting up 36 model schools
• On-the-job support
• Achievement
• Scaling up in phases 36 to 280 to 10000
  schools

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Reaching out to remote socio-linguistic
minorities
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Regions in India practicing the RIVER model
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Reaching other developing countries

• RIVER- Ethiopia Collaboration
• Several potential partnerships-Peru,
  Pakistan,China

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Replicating strategy moving in partnerships

• Trans-creation of materials
• Setting up model schools
• Scaling up in phases
• Putting in place decentralised support structures
  
• Transparent evaluation mechanisms
• Creating a critical mass of stakeholders

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Capacity building

• Range of training programmes
• Hands-on training
• On-the-job support and monitoring
• Comprehensive training materials teachers
  manuals, trainers modules, training films

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Global Development Network awardMost innovate
development project

• GDN criteria
• Creativity/innovativeness
• Social impact
• Cost performance
• Replicability
• Capacity building

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VISION

• Building regional resource groups
• Consolidate research base through action research
• Linkage with Universities-Metz, Regensburg,
• Harvard London
• Creating a network of networks

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Innovation

• Putting the child in the drivers seat
• Involving teacher and community in creating
  local-specific curriculum
• Designing dynamic space and time management for
  schools
• Making school as a community resource centre

Recap
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Social impact

• Joyful learning leading to negligible dropout
  rates
• Significant decrease in child labour in the
  region
• Enrichment of village commons
• Improvement in quality of life of the community

Recap
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Cost performance

• Sustainable design
• single room, single teacher
• Teaching learning material
• comprehensive package for the whole school
• Rs.1,50,000 to set up a school
• Rs.15,000 a month to run the school

Recap
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Capacity building

• Experiential training
• On-the-job support and monitoring
• Comprehensive training materials

Recap
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Replicability

• From partnership to ownership
• Trans-creation of materials
• Setting up model schools
• Scaling up in phases
• Creating a critical mass

Recap
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Vision

• Joyful childhood - creative teachers - strong
  networks
• Preserve the self-sustaining, self-replicating,
  self-evolving nature of the RIVER model

Recap
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Thank you for your attention