HUMAN VALUE AND COMMUNITY

OUTREACH PORTFOLIO
“Education for All”

Name of Student – Abhinav Gupta

Enrollment Number – A3104617123
Faculty Guide – Mr Atul Kumar

1
 Acknowledgement
It is my pleasure to present this report
before you, and sincerely would like to show
my gratitude towards all those who helped
throughout my project work.
I am heartily thankful to Mr Atul Kumar, my
faculty for giving me his guidelines for
preparing this report. He has been an
exceptional mentor during this whole report.
It has been a great learning experience of
being a trainee under him. I would like to
express my special thanks to all the other
officials who have helped me a lot during
this project. Their advices helped me to take
this report more effective.

2
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Objectives
3. Facts and Rationale of the study
4. Methodology and Work Undertaken
5. Results and observation
6. Recommendations

3
Introduction
Education in India is the root cause of many social evils, and to
eradicate these evil everyone needs to support from the grass root
level. Keeping in mind these problems regarding education I
decided to provide my services at “Umeed – A Drop Of Hope”
NGO to help the under privileged children. The main motive was
to help these children in getting basic education. These children
had no sources to get educated and neither their parents were
aware that their children have a fundamental right to get primary
education. It is the duty of the state to provide basic education to
all the children until the age of 14. Without primary education it
is not possible for any citizen to express his ideas in the society
and moreover he is underestimated in the society due to his
incapacities. Each human being has special skills and talents but
to explore these talents and nourish them it is important that each
and every human being is equipped with basic education. The
overall motive of the whole program was to group up with Umeed
team and find out solutions to these problems. After figuring out
the solution it was important that we implement these solutions
and help the underprivileged in getting basic level education. The
plan was huge and the solutions were kept as practical as possible
because a plan without implementation is of no use. Our group
was clear about the basic idea of the project and how we need to
proceed so that we can give this plan a perfect work schedule.

Objectives

4
  Inculcating a sense of need for education among the parents
of slum kids.
 Strive to promote values such as India’s common cultural
heritage, egalitarianism, democracy and secularism, equality
of the sexes, protection of the environment, removal of
social barriers, observance of small family norms and
inculcation of scientific temper.
 Should foster among students on understanding of the
diverse cultural and social characteristics of the people
living in different parts of the country.
 Minimum levels of learning for each stage of education
should be provided to ensure the quality of education.
 To promote equity, educational opportunity should be
provided in terms of access to education as well as the
conditions necessary for success.
 Universalization of primary education, total literacy, adult
education and provision of wider opportunities for
continuing education are also some of the aims of education.
 To provide opportunities to those sections of the society
which cannot avail formal education.

Rationale of the study

Education is the basic necessity of human life. It is the tool which
separates humans from other life forms. Without education a human
life is mere animal existence on this planet. To be a fruitful and active
citizen of the society it is necessary that one should be educated. Only
a sensible and educated society can progress and evolve with
changing time and needs. But in India the conditions is not good and

5
even the criterion which has been set up for defining an educated
person is too lame and impractical. In India today, 4% of our children
never start school. 58% don’t complete primary schools. And 90%
don’t complete school1. The govt. claims the success of its
educational programs and based on the govt. data it is believed that
India has made progress in terms of increasing the primary
education attendance rate and expanding literacy to approximately
three-quarters of the population in the 7-100 age group, by
2011. India's improved education system is often cited as one of the
main contributors to its economic development2 Much of the
progress, especially in higher education and scientific research, has
been credited to various public institutions.
At the primary and secondary level, India has a large private school
system complementing the government run schools, with 29% of
students receiving private education in the 6 to 14 age group3. Certain
post-secondary technical schools are also private. The private
education market in India had revenue of US$450 million in 2008, but
is projected to be a US$40 billion market.
As per the Annual Status of Education Report 2012, 96.5% of all rural
children between the ages of 6-14 were enrolled in school. This is the
fourth annual survey to report enrollment above 96%. Another report
from 2013 stated that there were 229 million students enrolled in
different accredited urban and rural schools of India, from Class I to
XII, representing an increase of 2.3 million students over 2002 total
enrollment, and a 19% increase in girl's enrollment. While
quantitatively India is inching closer to universal education, the
quality of its education has been questioned particularly in its
government run school system. Some of the reasons for the poor
quality include absence of around 25 percent of teachers every

1
http://www.teachforindia.org/about-us/india-education-crisis
2
India achieves 27% decline in poverty, Press Trust of India via Sify.com, 2008-09-12
3
Over a quarter of enrollments in rural India are in private schools". The Hindu. Retrieved 21 August 2014.

6
day4. States of India have introduced tests and education assessment
system to identify and improve such schools5.

Though the ground level reality is nowhere close to what govt.

claims? Govt. schools are the most inappropriately equipped schools
in the country and both the student and teacher turnout rate is low. In
the name of Right to Education, Government has opened satellite
schools in remote areas. These schools are often run by ill trained
'teachers' who are paid a pittance. They are often single classroom,
multi-grade affairs. The reasoning seems to be that it is alright to fob
off those living in remote areas with substandard facilities so long as
one can tick the box of having provided a school. These substandard
schools lead to poorly educated kids, which in turn leads to poverty
and an illiteracy trap.
Even if the child does get enrolled in a school, there is no guarantee
that he will attend. There are number of factors that keep the child
away

 Teachers are held accountable for enrolment, seldom for

attendance; they don't see the need to push.
 The child needs to work, at home or in the family enterprise
(farming, trading etc) or in another enterprise to bring in money
to help feed the family.
 The pedagogy is so boring and the subjects so irrelevant that no
self-respecting child will be lured to stay on.

4
Sharath Jeevan & James Townsend, Teachers: A Solution to Education Reform in India Stanford Social
Innovation Review
5
B.P. Khandelwal, Examinations and test systems at school level in India UNESCO

7
  Teachers are often uninterested in teaching. Their knowledge is
limited. Delhi University is offering students options of quitting
a 4 year diploma course in 2 years, if they want to be primary
school teacher. That it is all right for poorly qualified people to
be primary school teachers. Teachers are often used for all sorts
of extension work by government. They are often 'returning
officers' in elections and that makes them powerful. They are
feared by the students. In India over 15 years we have seldom
seen a classroom where the teacher did not have a cane on the
table. There were occasions when he did not have chalk but he
always had a cane.
 Teacher truancy - if the teacher skips classes with impunity all
the time, why would the kid want to go?

About 93% of elementary school students attend government schools.

There are multiple issues linked with the government run elementary
schools: high dropout (about 50% dropout before completion of
primary school, poor infrastructure 47% do not have separate female
toilet, and 33% do not have any toilet, poor accountability of teachers.
Almost 25% teachers are absent on an average day, and half of the
teachers are involved in ‘non-teaching activities, and poor quality of
teaching about 50% of 5th grade cannot read grade II level and about
58% cannot perform simple division and subtraction.
India today boasts of its educational system being the second largest
in the world. It consists of nearly 610 thousand primary and 185
thousand upper primary schools, about a quarter million non formal
education centers, about 1.87 million teachers and 110 million
students study in primary classes in the recognized schools (1997-98).
As per 1991 Census estimates there were about 115.6 million children

8
in primary school going age group in the country6. The latest
educational statistics indicate a GER of 89.7 percent for primary
classes (81.2 percent being for girls and 97.7 percent for boys)7. The
number of students in primary classes in India is larger than the total
population of the neighboring Bangladesh. No doubt, the system can
claim it to be one of the largest, but it cannot make similar claims for
efficiency, quality and achievement of learners?
Various five years plans incorporated programs and strategies based
on periodic assessment of the progress of education by the Ministry of
Education, Commissions and Committees appointed by the central
and state governments. The National Policy on Education (NPE),
1986 and the revised NPE, 1992, reiterated the urgency to address the
quality concerns in schools education on priority basis. Quality cannot
improve by itself. It requires reforms in teacher training;
improvements in the facilities and infrastructure in schools; teachers’
motivation; and a change in the style of teaching to make it attractive
to the students. However, in actual practice, there has always been a
trade-off between quality and quantity, in favor of the latter. This not
only affected the internal efficiency of the educational system but also
resulted in a situation where only a few graduates of the school and
higher education system could attain the expected skills and
competencies. The labor market policies and predominance of public
sector employment opportunities did not put enough pressure on the
educational systems to change as the degree was more important than
the acquired knowledge and skills. The gap between the planned and
the realized goals of education continues be so large that even the
basis of educational planning and underlying assumptions can be
easily challenged. The basic educational planning models have gone
off the trajectory both at the central as well in the states. Bringing it
back on the tracks remains a serious challenge for the development
6
The data on the number of school going age group children is computed from Social and Cultural Tables,
Census of India, 1991.
7
Selected Educational Statistics, 1997-98, MHRD, New Delhi.

9
planners. The inter-state and intra-state variations in school facilities,
quality of teachers and learning outcome are large and so are social
and economic conditions of the areas where the primary schools
operate. While indicators to measure the access, retention and internal
efficiency of the educational system in terms of participation rate,
accessibility, repetition rates, promotion rates, dropout rates and
input-output ratio have been developed, but little information is
available about the learners’ achievement of cognitive and non-
cognitive competencies. Under the no detention policy, followed by
most of the states, a child is not even tested on the learning outcomes
for many years after entering the school. The no detention policy
prohibits the use of examinations in first few years of schooling. The
proposed system of continuous and comprehensive evaluation is yet
to be implemented on sustainable basis. Reforms in the quality of
education have not received serious attention of many states.

Though my contribution is at a very low scale, but it is a step towards

initiating a change in the society. This may not affect the nation at
large but as it is said that charity begins at home. If we make some
changes at the basic levels then only we can expect some big changes
in the human society.

Methodology and Work Done

At the housing society I grouped up with R.W.A. executives and
carved out the basic idea of our plan. It contained following broad
objectives

1. Data collection
10
 2. Awareness
3. Admission Guidelines
4. Basic tutoring
5. Co-curricular Activities

Data Collection
In this regard we started collecting data about the children of house
hold maids, daily wage laborers, hawkers etc. This data gave a clear
image about the exact no. of children and whether or not they are in
need of any educational aid. We found out that around 70% of these
kids were not attending any kind of school and neither had they gone
through any basic education. They spent their whole day roaming here
and there or helping their parents at home. Some of them even were
quite rowdy and unruly due to bad friendship circles. The data was
collected only at the housing society level and was collected by our
group. This data was based on the information received on personal
level as proper survey was not possible.

Awareness
After collecting the data it was important to convince their parents. As
they didn’t valued education and neither they had resources to send
their children to school they looked over this aspect. Hence it was
necessary to create awareness among them and how educating their
children could give them and their children a better life in future.
They were called for a group session with R.W.A. and were explained
in detail about our plan and some aspects of educating their children.
They were explained about importance of education in pure laymen
language so that they could easily understand our objectives. This
helped us in getting their consent.

11
Admission Guidelines
Parents were given some basic information about getting their
children enrolled in govt. schools at as cheap rates as possible and
even to use government policies to get free education for their
children.

Basic Tutoring
The group also started tutoring at basic level. It included people from
all age group. Though the no. was less but we tried to impart some
primary education like reading and writing, Hindi grammar, their
basic rights being an Indian citizen, mathematics etc.

Co-Curricular Activities
So as to ensure active participation some co-curricular activities and
sports were organized. This was done at the R.W.A complex and
children played various games which they discovered themselves and
even we didn’t know that such games existed.

Results & Observation

The program started by us helped numerous children in getting

admission to govt. schools and their parents were quite happy about it.
But it was not possible for everyone to get admission. However few

12
children possessed basic education till the end of my 12 week journey
with the NGO. The basic tutoring program proved to be beneficial for
the children as they were able to grasp a lot within limited time. And
as per the standards set up by the government of India they will be
considered as literate. But I do not agree with these standards. Some
adults who attended the tutoring classes were also able to learn to read
and write. But it was a hectic task as it is not easy to teach grownups.
The team also successfully accomplished the task of creating
awareness amongst the labor class and this awareness will bear it
fruits in distant future. They were able to understand that education
will act as a tool for better employment. This will help their children
in securing better positions in the society. These small efforts made
by our team resulted in implanting the ideas of better education and
better life. These steps have helped the unprivileged to know this
world in a better way.
The objectives are not easy to achieve and need long and continuous
efforts in the area as illiteracy is rampant in India. Knowing how to
write your name and read can never be a scale of determining literacy.
A person unaware of the present conditions, law, rules, regulations,
rights and policies can never be an active citizen of the country. This
illiteracy can only be eradicated with a very strong political
determination. As it is the duty of the state to provide free education
to its citizens. It is also a fundamental right guaranteed under Article
21A of the Indian Constitution. Acts like Right to Education was also
passed but such acts will remain useless unless they are implemented
at basic level. Its implementation requires a large scale infrastructure,
proper govt. support and funds. What we did at our society can be
done at other residential societies but to do that a large work force is
required.
The tasks performed by our team and our sincere efforts helped those
who never even dreamed of studying. In the 24hrs internship period I

13
learned how this problem can be tackled at basic level. But there is a
need off involvement of administrative bodies to see better results at
large scale.

Recommendations
These types of programs can be beneficial at local levels,
following steps can be taken to popularize this program and
spread it at large scale.
1. Involvement of other local NGOs

2. Involvement of local government

3. Taking the help of administrative officers

4. Arrangement of funds through govt. policies

5. Creating awareness in colleges and educational institutions

6. Promotion of peer to peer learning system

7. Awareness drives in daily wage labor concentrated areas

14
15
16
17
18