Learning for Life in the hills - A community school experiment - A case study from SIDH, India (Society for the Integrated Development of the Himalayas)
'We have waited thirty years'* - Village schools and the state system - A case study from Mali
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The problem: · No schools for the 'hard to reach' children The approach: · NGOs as initiators of
community schools Issues: · Are community schools a viable
option? |
THE PROBLEM
No schools for the 'hard to reach' children
Many millions of children have never been to school because there is no school for them to attend. The problem is familiar; the 'Education for All' movement has attempted to tackle it through donor support to governments to build new schools. Collectively these efforts have only scratched the surface of the problem.
The groups of children who are disproportionately excluded from schooling are sometimes described as 'hard to reach'. A large proportion of these are in the remoter rural areas of Africa and Asia, and clearly the demographic problems of thinly populated areas do present special problems to education planners. But the phrase is also used to cover other groups - slum children (where density of population per potential school is hardly a problem), and children in communities with lifestyles different from the mainstream - for instance children of pastoralists in Africa or Asia, Roma children in Europe. Though lack of resources underpins lack of provision, the attitudes of school providers determine how they distribute those limited resources. NGOs who work with marginalised communities are convinced from their experience that those in positions of authority are less concerned about the educational needs of some children than others, and that class attitudes of educated city dwellers towards the rural poor have a lot to do with the issue. 1
1 See Pawan Gupta, View from the South, paper prepared for this project
Viewed from a child's perspective, it is the school which is hard to reach because it is too far away. This section looks at experiments that aim to bring the school to where the children are.
THE APPROACH
NGOs as initiators of community schools
The studies in this section are from remote rural areas in parts of the world where enrolment figures are lowest: South Asia and Africa. Each describes a small-scale experimental project where community schools have been developed through villagers' own efforts, stimulated and supported by project initiators from outside. The studies were selected to show two contrasting approaches. Each raises important issues of sustainability, community management and the roles of different actors.
The importance of external but culturally sensitive project initiators emerges in each as a central condition of success. The villagers' motivation is high, for they see schooling as a route out of the poverty trap for their children, yet their disempowerment is such that without outside support there would have been no school project. The outsiders harness and strengthen community capacity to develop their own responses to their development needs.
The India study
The project initiators in the India study are representative of an indigenous Indian tradition, of NGOs set up and led by a few dedicated individuals with a vision of social transformation. The Society for the Integrated Development of the Himalayas (SIDH) was founded by two people who balance their western style academic education with inspiration from Gandhian ideas and the practice of Vapassana meditation. The study charts the organic development of a project with 'tribal' village communities (elsewhere they might be described as 'ethnic minorities') in the hill country of north India, over a ten year period. It concentrates on the processes and philosophy of SIDH, highlighting the potential of communities to take responsibility for their children's schooling. It is a strong example of responsiveness at work -openness by the project initiators to community inputs, and willingness by all to profit from experience, increasingly to listen to children, and to adjust direction accordingly.
The gains of this approach are tangible. Project village schools have succeeded better than the state system in giving children an effective basic education, measured both in examination results and in more qualitative social benefits. The children have had that rare type of schooling that is an education in the broad sense, developing their creative and critical faculties and sense of social responsibility. The adults have felt their own human capacities enlarged in proportion as they have risen to the challenge of guiding their own development. The model of schooling is genuinely adapted to the specific conditions of these children's lives.
The relationship between the local and international NGOs is founded on the fact that the local group needs funding and the international one can provide it. But the degree to which this relationship too is an empowering one lies in the value the international NGO places on the intellectual and cultural independence of partners. By providing funding with few strings attached in the initial phase, Save the Children gave SIDH the security to experiment, enabling it to bring a responsive process to a point where the mechanisms for change have been understood and can now be shared more widely. A dialogue has begun between state and NGO providers both within the district and beyond, and this experience can now serve to challenge the limitations of conventional school provision.
The Mali study
The study from Mali represents a situation (typical in Africa) where the same problems apply but where there were no local NGOs with the potential to act as effective initiators. Save the Children's Malian staff thus assumed a role essentially similar to that of the initiators of SIDH; but the fact that the project was developed by an international NGO has given it a significantly different form.
Save the Children's staff had one clear advantage over a local NGO; despite their geographical isolation they were linked in to the potential for international sharing of experience which an international NGO can offer. They were thus able to pre-plan a process which has been remarkably effective in a short period of time. With the clear aim of developing a model for wider replication, the initiators limited project activities to two villages, closely monitored all stages of the project and, in contrast to SIDH, built in collaboration with state officials from the start. Because of the need to keep the state system on board the project is less open-ended and therefore perhaps less genuinely responsive to village concerns. But there are compensating strengths. Where the SIDH project intends to influence through a diffuse process of sharing insights, the Mali project has a tightly planned set of activities aimed at encouraging ownership of the project by the state system, and has engaged from the start with the problematic question of financial sustainability.
Challenging exclusion in the state system
To complement these studies, this section ends with two summaries of cases where the cause of exclusion was not that the children lived in a remote rural area. The examples are from two countries with the highest overall enrolment rates for Africa, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, but where certain groups of children have been denied the chance to go to school, on grounds clearly linked to attitudes among school providers:
· In Zimbabwe the excluded children are an economically defined group, children of agricultural workers on the large commercial farms. They are also seen as an 'out' group by the authorities, being descended from migrants from Mozambique.· The Lesotho case concerns children with disabilities. As in many other societies it has been assumed that such children could not attend a 'normal' school, but special schools were not an option for most children.
In both cases the starting point was to tackle the attitudes of the systems that exclude. Stated positively, this is a question of cajoling or inspiring the adults responsible for those systems to adopt more inclusive approaches. Save the Children was able to do this because of its 'neutral' status as an international NGO, but also its recognised child advocacy role and international experience.
Possible roles for an international NGO
Together these studies demonstrate a range of roles for an international NGO in trying to overcome problems of exclusion:
· Supporting a local group which can act as a sensitive community initiator
· Taking the role of community initiator, plus liaison with the state
· Using its neutral position to mediate on behalf of excluded children
· Supporting the state system to become more inclusive, through tackling attitudes.
ISSUES
Are community schools a viable option?
The two case studies demonstrate that community schools can be a viable option in offering a useful education opportunity to children who were formerly not in school, under a structure that can be sustained by community management. But they raise many unanswered questions - beyond the scope of the studies, but ones which will need to be considered by anyone hoping to profit from their experience.
Taking the concept of community schools in its broadest sense to mean schools which exist as a result of community contributions in kind (labour and materials) and/or cash, there has been an increase of community school initiatives through the 1990s, supported by local and international organisations, in situations where there is no state provision. This expansion can be causally linked to budget cuts in state education spending and the introduction of mechanisms for cost-sharing, often driven by donor and lending policies. How do we see the future of such experiments? Do they simply provide the state a let-out clause from its obligations to provide basic education for all? If a parallel system of schooling becomes a large-scale phenomenon (as it has been for many years in Bangladesh) will children be able to transfer to the state system and pursue their education? Will community school certificates be recognised by employers? Will they offer schooling of lower quality and thus reinforce cycles of discrimination against disadvantaged children? Will they unintentionally free the state of its responsibility to allocate resources to schools for the most disadvantaged, resulting in an even less equitable resource allocation?
The studies suggest that the answers are not simple 'yes' or 'no'. Both studies highlight that it is important to prepare children to complete the state curriculum, so that they can transfer to mainstream education at a later stage. But each has negotiated space to experiment in content and methodology, convinced that without this children would neither get a useful education nor succeed in more conventional school assessment terms.
On the management side, both studies show that communities can play a more active role in running schools than state systems are willing to recognise, and that this involvement contributes positively in a number of ways. It encourages more children to go to and stay on at school. It promotes local ownership and accountability for schools. It makes schools more responsive to local needs and conditions. The studies also demonstrate that villagers with a minimal formal education background can become effective primary teachers given appropriate levels of support and training, illustrating that teacher motivation is almost certainly a more important qualification than formal training.
Are community schools sustainable?
There are several aspects to the question of sustainability, and finance is only one of them. (The question of ownership is touched on above.) But it is the issue of structural and financial sustainability that most bothers critics of the community school approach, so it is important to see what light the two case studies throw on this.
The two studies show a significant divergence in approach. Both SIDH and the Malian team believe that overall responsibility for education provision lies ultimately with the state, but equally recognise the importance of engaging community resources to extend schooling opportunities to remote areas where the state fails to provide. Accordingly both projects draw on what the respective communities can contribute in kind (labour, materials and the provision of a school structure) and in cash to cover the recurring cost of teacher salaries and resource materials. Where they differ is on what they consider legitimate demands on the community to achieve financial sustainability. SIDH emphasises that the community is among the poorest in the world, and cannot possibly be expected to support a school system. Its strategy is to keep costs as low as possible but to continue to seek external inputs. It mitigates the project's dependence by drawing on a variety of sources. Apart from practical considerations their rationale is one of equity: it is socially unjust to place the burden of school costs on an already poor community when other groups have access to state-financed schooling.
The Mali team take what may be perceived as a more extreme view: until such a time as the state can be persuaded to assume responsibility for a proportion if not all running costs, the community will be obliged to cover all costs, despite their poverty, and even in drought years. Whether this is viable in the long-term remains to be seen but it is certainly a strong example of what can be achieved at community level in extremely difficult circumstances.
The question of responsibility for school provision raises many dilemmas about rights and moral standpoints to which there can be no uniform response. But the principle needs to be maintained that responsibility carries with it the power to decide. 'Cost sharing' imposed by the state without genuine community involvement is an unacceptable mechanism, and has a completely different effect from a community deciding to carry part financial responsibility for schools they have set up themselves. We are brought back to the primacy of quality and purpose: even the poorest communities are prepared to contribute to the costs of their children's education, provided the education on offer is perceived to be both useful and relevant, and has been developed with their active participation.
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'They produce the wealth, but their children have no schools' Advocating for children on the commercial farms in Zimbabwe Commercial agriculture is the backbone of Zimbabwe's economy and is the largest single earner of foreign currency, producing most of the country's wealth through exports of tobacco, horticultural products, tea, coffee and sugar. Yet surveys show that the labour force which ensures this productivity is not sharing in the benefits. Farm workers and their families who comprise about 20% of the country's population are in the unique situation of both living and working on someone else's property, where government provides no services. The farm worker community has fallen between the neglect of government and the indifference of many farm owners to the living conditions of their labour force. In the decade before independence in 1980, a bitter guerrilla war pitted the black majority against the ruling white minority (which included all commercial farmers). Most social development efforts were halted; in many areas schools, clinics and dip tanks were abandoned or destroyed. Since Independence the government's focus has been on the 'communal' areas (where black Zimbabweans live under traditional land tenure.) It has been loath to invest public resources on private property and has been able to ignore the plight of farm workers because they are seen as being an 'out' group ethnically (originating from migrants from across the border) and lack political representation. On the other hand farm owners have been affected by drought, falling prices on global markets, and the uncertainty related to land tenure, and were reluctant to invest in anything not directly related to improved profitability - including services for their workers. Historical distrust between government and farmers has prevented dialogue on action to correct the situation. Save the Children is one of the few NGOs that has attempted to work in this difficult and tense environment. As a partner in a health care programme during the 1980s it established credibility as a broker between farmers and government, and in the 1990s has used this unique position to negotiate for pre-schools to be established to look after children while their mothers are at work. The programme expanded rapidly, drawing in several government ministries, and by diplomatically engaging with the situation on each farm has encouraged active support for the pre-schools from farmers' wives, farmers and farm workers. The quality of care given to children has been lifted through · giving workers the skills to erect outdoor play equipment, with materials donated by farm owners, and to install proper sanitation for play centres The very success of the pre-schools has highlighted the stark
situation that on most farms there are no primary schools for the children to go
on to. The few schools that exist are privately run, with teachers paid by the
farmers. They are not government registered so the teachers do not need to be
qualified. Save the Children is now promoting dialogue between farmers and
government to get schools registered and to find ways to establish new schools
in under-serviced areas. All parties are being encouraged to find ways to
improve the quality of teaching in farm schools - through in-service training,
better resources, more books. The programme is now advocating for a review of
what is taught, to produce a more relevant curriculum than the current highly
academic one. |
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'She came to school without speech, but she now she speaks!' Including disabled children in primary schools in Lesotho Lesotho is a small mountainous kingdom. Herding animals is the main source of livelihood in the mountain valleys, and the lowland fringe where agriculture is possible is increasingly subject to erosion. With too little land to support the people, men traditionally go to work on the South African mines, with resulting pressures on boys to leave school early. But education is highly valued, following a long tradition of mission schools. As in many other societies, disabled children have traditionally been kept at home, out of sight; if schooling is considered, it was assumed it would have to be a 'special school.' In the 1980s, stimulated in part by the liberation movements of neighbouring South Africa, groups of disabled people and parents of disabled children became inspired by concepts of social justice, and there was a rising demand for the state school system to provide for disabled children. USAID funded a study which led to a significant shift in national policy - children with disabilities would be integrated into mainstream schools. Save the Children was invited to support the Ministry to turn this policy into practice. It had a high profile within this small-scale society as an 'education conscious' organisation, having provided sponsorship to see through school many children from poorer families, some of whom went on to occupy responsible positions. It also had considerable experience on work with children with disabilities, both worldwide and in Lesotho, where it had supported a community based rehabilitation programme. The key support offered by Save the Children was to second an educationalist to work as part of the Ministry of Education team responsible for implementing the plan. A Zimbabwean woman, she brought a sensitive understanding of cultural issues as well as extensive experience of work on disability. At the same time, the Lesotho Head of Early Childhood Education was sent to the USA to build up skills within the Ministry. Teachers' attitudes and skills were recognised as the key factor to change. In ten pilot schools a core group of teachers received intensive training and on-going support; they then became powerful advocates for the new approach. A feasibility study had in fact found that integration was no new concept: over 17% of all primary children had some sort of impairment which affected their education and teachers were overwhelmingly in favour of integration and tried to help slow learners. It also highlighted the downside of 'special education' institutions, which cut across the role of the extended family, were costly, unable to meet more than a minority of needs, and were even detrimental to the child's emotional well-being. Teachers, parents and children have all become positive advocates for the approach. 'Mathabo came from home with her mouth always open,' says one teacher's report, 'but now she can close her mouth, even when she is not reminded. She came to school without speech, but she now speaks!' The new approach blended the best of traditional Lesotho
approaches with specialist knowledge from outside. Curriculum materials were
developed indigenously - culturally appropriate and reflecting local conditions.
International inputs were low key, targeted, and complementary to national
capacity. The programme also stressed that disabled children's educational needs
could not be seen in isolation, and brought in broad-based participation of all
those who might have an input: parents, organisations of disabled people,
professionals and different government ministries. |
analysis/writing: Pawan Gupta, Anuradha Joshi
editor: Bridget Crumpton
contributors: Rajiv Tewari, Vanessa Herringshaw
What are the problems for children?
Hill Life and the Schooling System
A particular feature of India, in addition to its high population density, is its enormous diversity geographically and in terms of ethnic make-up. Within this there are important divides between urban and rural life and wealth, with an increasing gap between upper and middle income groups and the majority who live in extremes of poverty. A legacy of colonialism is the importance attached to education. Though the state is in principle committed to providing basic education for all, the scale of need and resources required to extend access to India's many remote areas stretch beyond the capacity of government structures. Problems of access are compounded by problems in quality as reflected in high levels of non enrolment, drop out and levels of literacy which fall to as low as 15% in the more remote areas.
Across the country over the past decade, there have been many new initiatives to pilot approaches to improve both the availability and quality of education in rural areas. These have generated a range of examples of good practice that should feed into wider policy making. This case study describes the process through which the local NGO Society for the Integrated Development of the Himalayas (SIDH) has made possible meaningful education opportunities to children in Jaunpur, an especially marginalised 'tribal' hill region of the Himalayas of Uttar Pradesh (UP).
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Box 1: Hill Life High mountains on one side of the winding road, and sheer drops to the Aglar river on the other, with tiny villages perched dangerously along the steep sides of the mountains. These are familiar sights while driving, on an early morning, towards Jaunpur in the Central Himalayas in India. The sight of rugged mountains which don't have slopes but sharp drops can often fill a newcomer with wonder and dread. It seems physically impossible for any creature to climb that steep mountain side, but one suddenly sees a few shapes emerge onto the road from somewhere below. The first is a young boy with heavy cans of milk on his back. He is on his daily 4 hour walk to the town of Mussoorie to sell his milk and will return only very late in the evening. The other figure looks strange - like a tree with legs. One
recognises the form of a woman below the waist but she has no face; only
foliage. And this is just one of her many journeys in a day. She has already
fetched water, cooked food and is now staggering back with the fodder. She must
come again with her cattle, leave them to graze while she
collects firewood. Somewhere along the day she also has to eat, clean and take
care of children. Of course her daughter is looking after the little ones at
home, but she is young and finds it difficult to manage. Her son started going
to school but, as the nearest government school was in another village, he was
not able to make the steep climb to school till he was older, by which time he
left because felt ashamed as he was so much older than the rest of the children.
Now he helps his father by going to Mussoorie to sell the milk while his father
is free to work in the fields. |
The problem of isolation is common to most mountain villages in India. What sets them apart is the fact that they are administered from a state where the majority population lives in the plains (UP population 150 million, 12 hill districts population 6.5 million) and their tribal culture, for which they are feared and considered "backward". These factors serve to further compound their marginalisation and chances of education. The average literacy rate for Uttar Pradesh is 55% whereas in Jaunpur it plummets to 30.82% for men and 12.10% for women2.
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Box 2: Tribal Culture of Jaunpur It is the tribal culture of Jaunpur which makes the people
distinct from the rest of the hills. They trace their origins to Pandavas of the
days of the Mahabharata, a famous epic of India. Both polyandry and polygamy are
practised and the people feel it is their way of keeping the land and family
together - physically, socially and emotionally. They brew wine and both men and
women drink and dance together. Because of these differences, the region and its
people are both mocked and feared outside Jaunpur. People from Mussoorie are
scared to go there for fear of being 'bewitched' as it is considered a land
inhabited by witches and black magic. Along with fear, the people from Jaunpur
are also considered to be quite 'backward'. "Don't behave like a Jaunpuri." is
quite a common remark one overhears between friends in Mussoorie. This has made
the people from Jaunpur very defensive and introverted. They do not trust
easily, suspect outsiders and take a long time to make friends. |
· Distance from school
Primary schools are currently provided to the lowest administrative unit, a gram sabha comprised of 6-7 small villages. Given the small, scattered nature of hill villages, it is not considered a viable proposition to have a school in every village. In practice, this means that the bulk of smaller and inaccessible villages are left out of the schooling system as young children cannot physically undertake the climb, easily 3 hours in each direction, to the nearest school.
· Low enrolment of girls
The ratio of girls to boys is uniformly low throughout India, mirroring women's low social status. Although the Jaunpur tribal culture is polyandric, granting women relatively higher status than other parts of India, girls still have heavy domestic responsibilities and cannot accommodate both the lesson time and walking time. The result is a more acute girl boy ratio in the hills.
· Child labour
In common with many rural communities, family livelihoods in Jaunpur depend on the contribution of children ranging from tending animals to looking after younger siblings. Child labour and education is a shared issue with the Mali case study and is covered in more detail in the Pakistan case study in section 2.
· Irrelevance of education
The government curriculum does not reflect urban/rural or geographical differences and bears little relation to the realities of hill-life. Within these, distance from school emerged as the dominant problem alongside the need for greater flexibility and responsiveness of provision. This analysis combined with the widespread desire for education provided the opening and direction for SIDH's work in the area.
The Response
The role of SIDH
When the founders of SIDH first made contact with villages in Jaunpur, they had no funding and no development experience. They were a middle class couple from the city with Ghandian orientation, the husband an engineer, the wife a primary school teacher with Montessori experience, who were inspired by Vippassana mediation to 'get out of the trap of urban life and start something which we thought was more meaningful.' (Anuradha Joshi and Pawan Gupta, Founder Members of SIDH)
Four beliefs encapsulating the spiritual and practical have underpinned the work of the Society for the Integrated Development of the Himalayas (SIDH):
· The importance of a 'micro' approach. SIDH's ideology is that small is not only beautiful but more effective to promote diversity and innovation and resist the trend of 'monoculturalism.'· The importance of responsive programming achieved through on-going monitoring, reflection and modification.
· The importance of respect for local traditions and knowledge as a way to empower and restore identity to marginalised communities and develop culturally relevant and effective training and education programmes.
· The importance of personal transformation and self-esteem for the promotion of social change.
At the insistence of the community, the founders of SIDH warily agreed to support education provision in one village. Against advice sought from development practitioners ('don't start a primary school, it requires long-term commitment and long-term funding') and drawing on the former education experience of Anuradha as well as other education experiences, they registered SIDH as an NGO and set out to pilot a community primary school initiative.
The First Primary Schools
The aim to maximise community responsibility for the initiative was present from the outset, based on an awareness of the limitations of the state to extend school provision to individual villages and the value of community ownership to secure any level of sustainability.
The decision to start a school modelled on the state system reflected the wish of the community: only this would offer their children the option of continuing their studies to ahigher level in government schools.
The first primary school was planned for a village 3 hours walk from the nearest school where approximately 10 out of a total of 40 children aged between 6-15 were currently attending school. The roles of each party were agreed: the villagers would provide the volunteer teachers, the classroom and teaching material while the founders, Anuradha and Pawan, would offer teacher training to the volunteers, undertake some teaching and facilitatemanagement of the school. Within only three months, the community had cleared land, built a small two-roomed building for the school and designated four young boys who had passed Grade 10 as volunteer teachers, marking their level of enthusiasm and commitment. The training of volunteers initially consisted of observation of the couple's teaching of the government curriculum and special tutorials in the main subjects of maths and language. As the demand for schools in the area increased, a 5 day crash course for all volunteer teachers was introduced on a monthly basis to train them in teaching the curriculum of the following month and subsequently two new schools were opened.
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Box 3: Vippassana meditation and its importance in the SIDH programme The beginnings of SIDH as an organisation can be traced to a time in mid 80s when we attended a 10 day meditation camp in 'Vippassana' (literally meaning, to observe oneself), a Buddhist technique of meditation which made a radical impact on their lives. A scientific meditation technique, 'Vippassana' is completely non-sectarian and devoid of any rituals, mantras or imagination. It seemed an effective way to bring about an attitudinal change and to internalise concepts like work ethics, commitment, finding a meaning in social work, and above all in understanding 'Dharma' as 'law of nature' instead of belief in any particular religion, sect or ritualistic practices. 'Vippassana infused us with enough courage to get out of the trap of urban life and start something which we thought was more meaningful. We felt that it was an important technique to trigger off the process of personal transformation. We have used it to orient our team towards internalising values of social responsibility. All the 50 Sidh team members have undergone at least a one -10- day- course in 'Vippassana'. It helps them to cope with frustrations and negativity's (jealousy, hatred, greed, anger etc.). The best way to cope with negative feelings is not by suppressing but confronting them, which can be done by simply observing the breath. As long as the negative feeling remains, the natural rhythm of breath gets disturbed by either becoming faster or slower. By simply observing the breath and not reacting, it slowly comes back to its normal state. And when the breathing is normal one finds that the negativity has also disappeared'. This technique does not always bring about dramatic changes in adults, but the results of a 3-day children's meditation course (only with children over 8 years) have always yielded positive results. Every' morning the children in SIDH schools begin their day with a 10- minute practice of observing their breath. Teachers who meditate regularly with students claim truly remarkable results. There is a marked improvement in concentration, memory, as well as behaviour of children. One teacher even succeeded in reducing the number of petty complaints and thefts in his class by asking children to confront their greed by observing their breath and was surprised to notice that the number of complaints from children dropped from 3-4 a day to only 4-5 a month.! Anuradha Joshi and Pawan Gupta, Founder members of
SIDH |
The experience of these initial primary schools has lead to a general policy of starting primary schools in those villages that request one and are able to provide space for classes, provide local school-leavers for teacher training, and ensure that they will send village children (girls and boys) to school.
By 1998, the programme included five primary schools with a total of 220 pupils, 65% of which attend from 19 neighbouring villages. This represents a coverage of 82% of children from these villages, who would otherwise be left out of the government system. The ratio of female to male has progressively increased and currently stands at 40:60 which is considerably higher than government schools in the area.
As the schools became established, the pupils started to achieve better exam results than pupils from the government schools do. The added credibility this gave to SIDH increased community confidence and provided the space for SIDH to experiment with more innovative learning methods (described in the next section) and to respond to other community needs 4.
Starting Young
A pre-primary (balwadi) programme grew out of the primary school programme and took working through village teachers a step further - local young women with around five years primary were selected by their community as teachers and given training and support by SIDH. The programme was initially started as a response to children's needs: a) to offer an appropriate learning environment for young children b) to free up older children, especially girls, from their childcare duties, thus enabling them to attend primary school. Spin off benefits soon became evident:
· improved access for girls
Originally intended for the pre-primary age group, the pre-primary schools started to accommodate primary age girls as well in response to local demand. The pre-primary system was found to be more appropriate for girls of early primary age as the shorter hours were better suited to the girl's domestic workload; the less formal teaching methods and environment were attractive to girls who had never attended school; they could bring their young charges, as young as 6 months, which was not possible in primary school. This process has achieved a ratio of 45:55 in favour of girls.
· improved primary school attendance and completion Children who have attended pre-school are more likely to go on to primary school and less likely to drop out:
'If they go to the balwadi, they learn faster and much more. My son went to the balwadi before joining the government school when he was four. He knows all the letters in the alphabet and tables up to 5. His friends who went to the government school don't know the first letters in the alphabet.' Naro Devi, mother, from Riyat village 5.
· a safe, stable environment for children
The balwadi provides a space in a child's life that is safe, secure and constant and can be formative in paving the way for a stable adult. This is important in the lives of hill children where the pressures of daily life on the women can lead to erratic child-rearing behaviour. By 1998, there were 13 balwadis with 207 children, representing a coverage of 99% of children in the 2-5 age group. These findings are borne out of nine years experience 6.
Girls' access to schools
The success of the pre-primary programme led to a pilot initiative to increase access to school in remote villages by up-grading the levels of the pre-school to include the first primary grades. Known locally as the Balshala Programme, it was aimed to increase enrolment of children in general and girls in particular and thus help bridge the move to primary education. The rationale was based on the findings of regular monitoring of the existing primary and pre-primary programmes:
· drop out after pre-primary: children from remote villages without a primary school in the reachable vicinity tended not to continue their education due to the distance and time involved in commuting to the nearest primary school;
· distance from school and length of school day: the principle reason for low girl attendance at primary school was inability to combine schooling with domestic workload and travelling time to the school;
· demographic change: a progressive increase in the 6-8 age group and decrease in 2-5 age group rendered the running of a school exclusively for the pre-primary years unviable;
· cost effective mechanism for improving access: balshalas allow for the in-take of both younger and older children until they are ready to go to primary school at an only marginally increased cost than running a pre-primary and considerable lower cost than running a primary school;
· increasing experience and skills of teachers: once the local young women had developed the skills of pre-school teachers, experience proved that they were able to progress to teaching lower primary grades with limited but well-targeted up-grade training combined with regular support and supervision provided by SIDH staff.
The piloting of three balshala schools catering for 43 children rapidly demonstrated a healthy impact in relation to the education of girls:
· a significant increase in enrolment of girls (average ratio 49:51 in favour of girls). This was linked to the introduction of shorter teaching hours (3 hours instead of 5-6 at primary level) which were better suited to girls' domestic workload. In addition, while boys were likely to be encouraged to attend school in a neighbouring village, girls would not be, on account of the additional commuting time and potential dangers. In villages were there was no school, older girls were more likely to attend the combination and pre-primary schools (balshala and balwadi) in higher numbers.· a significant increase in enrolment of children from poorer families
· empowerment of young women and girls: employing local young women as teachers in the combination and pre-schools (balshala and balwadi) has offered a positive role model and encouraged girls' education in the area. This is starting to have a noticeable impact - girls have started studying to a later age and as a consequence are marrying at a later age. They have also gained in confidence and are able to speak up about gender discrimination with the elders within the community.
· a flexible schooling option especially well-adapted to the context of small remote villages where there is considerable fluctuation in children of a given age group at any time. This issue is dealt with in more detail in the next section on Flexible Provision.
Flexible Provision
A flexible approach to school provision was found to be essential in the hill region to accommodate the low numbers of school age children in a catchment and the workload of children. Four mechanisms were developed to make primary education more accessible to children:
· A culturally adapted schedule: from the outset the holidays of the primary and pre- schools were organised according to the local calendar and festivals. This represented a marked difference with government schools which followed the holidays prescribed centrally.
· Flexi-time: this was introduced in primary schools based on improved attendance and enrolment of children, especially girls, in the 3 hour shift system of the pre-primary and - combined schools and on monitoring of irregular attendance of children in primary schools which revealed demands on older children to complete their household work prior to going to school. Initially a two shift system of three hours in the morning for grades I and II and three hours in the afternoon for grades III to VI was introduced. This model was adapted after a year in response to demands from the more affluent members of the community to offer a longer day to children. The adapted model, currently in place, offers a maximum of flexibility and learning time for village children. The concept of a two shift system remains but older children are encouraged to attend the morning shift and work independently on an assigned project while younger children are encouraged to do likewise in the afternoon. The advantage of this system is that children who cannot allocate a full day to school do not miss out on regular lessons while those who have more disposable time can channel this to pursuing further learning.
· Multi-grade teaching: this was introduced early on as an efficient mechanism to accommodate the small numbers of children per class within the two classroom space of each school. The normal practice in all SIDH schools is for one teacher to manage more than one class. Training covers methodologies for teaching different grades simultaneously, such as group work etc.
· Adaptability to fluctuation in numbers of school age children: a characteristic of small villages is considerable fluctuation in school age children. The beauty of the schooling system developed by SIDH is that it provides flexibility for schools to vary their focus from primary to pre-primary in response to child population dynamics. For example, the combination balshala schools described in the previous section were opened in villages with a declining pre-primary age group and increasing primary cohort. Similarly, a primary school in a small village with a dwindling number of school age children was down-graded to a combination school (balshala) while the primary school in a nearby village was strengthened.
An extension of the flexible approach was the creation of non-formal evening education centres. These were started for the older children (drop outs or those who had never had the opportunity to attend school) who continued to be left out of the education system out of embarrassment to attend formal school with younger children and because the daytime schedule did not fit around their daily tasks. The diverse make up of the group, aged between 10-20 with mixed abilities provided a challenge to develop a more relevant curriculum.
IMPROVING QUALITY AND RELEVANCE
The mechanisms for improving access involve responsiveness and therefore automatically have an impact on quality. This section will focus on the three distinct areas that collectively have helped improve overall quality of schooling. It will also summarise the spin off activities that have further improved the quality of education opportunities in hill villages and show how education activities can be a stimulus for wider community development.
Towards a more relevant curriculum: a holistic approach
The issue of a more relevant curriculum was slow to emerge. Since the initial focus was to improve access, communities were content to see their children in a regularly functioning school, seemingly doing well. Teaching was done through the prescribed government textbooks with the introduction of non-academic subjects such as art, general knowledge, spoken English and projects to offer a more comprehensive learning base to the children. More substantial changes to the curriculum were progressively made in response to the questions "why education and what is the purpose of education?''. But within these changes, a constant aim was to retain the prescribed curriculum as a basis to allow children from the village school the option to continue within the government system.
As the schools became more established, the need for more curriculum relevance and more child-centred learning methods to encourage problem-solving and critical awareness emerged as pressing priorities. The urban, middle class bias of the government textbooks created problems for pupils and teachers, all local, using concepts and examples that were alien to their experience. Ideologically, it raised concern about undervaluing rural life in favour of urban life and stirring feelings of inferiority in the rural child. This concern was poignantly expressed by village women:
'sitting on tables and chairs removes our children from the ground and makes them lose respect for our land'/'our children and especially our daughters no longer want to dirty their hands by touching the fields or cattle anymore now that they are literate' 7
A workshop was held for the teachers and SIDH staff specifically to tackle the complex questions of: 'what is relevant education?', ' what should be the broad contents of a relevant curriculum at primary level?'. This workshop turned into a milestone for SIDH:
'In retrospect we never realised the potential of this workshop during the planning stage or even when it was taking place... we did a workshop with an objective of making the existing curriculum a little more relevant but came up with a radically different holistic curriculum' Pawan, Gupta, Founder Member of SIDH.
Implementing the shift towards organising separate subjects thematically is proving ambitious. An initial plan to develop textbooks for each grade on each theme, integrating the relevant elements of the government textbook has been shelved due to lack of capacity, time and funding. What is now being tested is a more modest approach, taking groups of related subjects at a time and developing guidelines for teachers on how to creatively integrate these using existing textbooks. For example Hindi language can be taught with the help of the textbook prescribed for social studies. Early monitoring of this approach suggests positive impact, attracting a lot of interest at the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) who want to share it with the different state resource centres:
· the new guidelines are proving an effective tool for improving the quality of education using existing textbooks, with limited extra cost· integrating subjects offers students and pupils more time to do projects and discuss topics they themselves identify as relevant
|
Box 4: Workshop on education and curriculum The main outcomes of the workshop were: · Agreement on criteria for relevant education, including skills, information, knowledge and attitudes teachers The following themes were identified: Nature: air, water, earth, flora & fauna, time |
Working with local teachers and building local capacity
Getting good teachers in remote areas is a common problem. The trend in India as elsewhere is high teacher absenteeism in government schools
· teachers aspire to an urban post with little commitment to the task of their rural assignment. In community education programmes where there is usually not even the attraction of a normal teaching salary, using local people as teachers and building up local capacity is the only viable alternative (the use of local teachers is also covered in the Mali study, grouped under this section). With this in mind, SIDH has worked exclusively through local young women and men. with a minimum of education, to encourage both a more sustainable programme and local participation. The training of these teachers has been central to the quality of education in the schools and has taken different forms which together represent a holistic approach aimed at developing the teacher as a person as well as his/her teaching skills. How to inspire child-centred, responsive teaching in new teachers whose only experience was the traditional rote learning of government schools was the key challenge.
A series of steps in training were tested which aimed to operate at the teachers pace. The first were visits to other local education programmes to promote learning from other experiences but primarily to broaden exposure of teachers whose life experience had largely been limited to the hills. These demonstrated new approaches to education provision and more child-centred learning techniques in practice.
The next step was to offer intensive training in child-centred learning techniques and lesson design (covered in more detail in the next section) and give teachers the space to experiment. Since the young people were all new to teaching, training was organised as an on-going process designed around the principle of learn, trial, assess, refine and try again. While the trainings were different for the primary and pre-school systems, they followed the similar pattern of an intensive training session every few months followed up by shorter monthly sessions for discussion on problems and solutions and the next month plan. Regular support and supervision by the SIDH team were built into this process to create a favourable working environment for the new teachers. However, as the new teachers became more competent and confident, they assumed more self-monitoring and peer group learning techniques which in turn helped develop their autonomy and ability to naturally expand from teaching into the wider domain of community development.
Eventually as the programme started to grow and include training of trainers, the most effective teachers from the first round were able to train the new intake. The advantages of training local young people have been felt early on and have resulted in notable advances in the quality of education provision:
· continuity in teaching and reduced absenteeism: local teachers have a genuine commitment to the villages and children and to doing a good job;· local understanding and knowledge: local teachers appreciate the realities and difficulties facing pupils and bring a wealth of local knowledge that can feed into the design of a more relevant curriculum;
· openness to adopting more child-centred learning techniques: having by-passed the formal government teacher training system, local teachers tend to be more responsive to adapting the child-centred learning techniques offered by the SIDH training programme;
· higher education levels: statistically children from the village schools achieve higher Grade 5 exam results than their peers in the government schools and have been observed to have a more questioning and analytical approach to learning;
· building a strong and confident teaching team able to constantly work on improvements and innovations in their teaching programmes. In the longer term, the intention is that this approach of building up local capacity can:
· pave the way for a community school system that is potentially manageable and sustainable in terms of human resources;
· promote a model of community development, using schools as the connection, that is well-adapted to small, scattered hill villages.
Developing more appropriate Teaching Methodologies
· Child-centred learning
Once the decision to work in education became a reality, SIDH started to consider how to make learning child-centred. This belief in the importance of a child-centred approach stemmed from Anuradha's former experience of the Montessori method and the positive learning outcomes she had witnessed. The challenge was how to introduce this approach in communities whose only albeit limited experience of education had been through rote learning methods and who inherently believed in the value of this system.
Child-centred learning, being based on the need of the individual child, represents a major shift from the standard government approach which views children and classes as a collective. A gradual approach was developed as the most appropriate to accommodate the attitudinal change that would be required for child-centred learning to be accepted. This involved:
· visits by trainee teachers to programmes already using child-centred techniques;· training in child-centred techniques, showing the value of learning through play or practical activities, small group work where children learn through each other etc;
· experimentation of these techniques in a classroom setting;
· discussions with villagers to familiarise them with the aims of the new techniques.
It was only by experimenting with the new techniques and seeing the learning benefits for themselves that teachers became convinced of the effectiveness of the approach and started to use it more widely. Gradual introduction of these techniques in the primary schools met with little community resistance: the schools were there at the request of the community and enjoyed their full confidence. What was important was that the children attended and were seen to be learning. There was less concern about the methods.
The pre-primary schools presented more of problem: they evolved as a perceived need of the teachers rather than the community who had no former experience of them and was initially wary of what they could offer. Regular parent teacher meeting at which teachers demonstrated their methods - how children learned numbers and other skills through a song or a game - helped developed awareness and trust until village women began to feel the benefits directly, both for themselves and their children. Interestingly, the balwadi experience revealed the importance of balancing the use of teaching methods. Following exclusive use of learning through play methods, traditional rote learning methods were introduced as they were seen to be effective when integrated with play techniques:
'Initially it was just song and dance. Now we see them working on slates. We know if we don't have the time, they'll get cleaned up at the balwadi. It's helping women get together to work in the fields - earlier when we got back from the field it would take us time to find them. It also makes them cleverer'. Phainto Devi. mother, Talogi village 8
A children's magazine "Apni Baat" (Our Voice) has recently started to encourage children to express themselves and sensitise teachers and parents (it is used in teacher parent meetings) to what children are experiencing. This has proved a useful tool as revealed in the following quotes:
'... My mother says it is not important to go to school everyday. It is enough to go once or twice a week. I cannot explain it to her'. Pupil'After reading the children's complaints, I had a lump in my throat. For the first time I could see the world from their eyes. I used to beat the children sometimes but I have really changed. I rarely use the stick now and it had made me enjoy teaching more than before.' Teacher 9
· Developing Appropriate Testing Systems
Different testing techniques have been developed which complement the child-centred learning techniques and shift the emphasis to what the child understands over what the child has learnt by rote. Through these, evaluation has taken on a new meaning both for the children and the teachers, becoming a mechanism for monitoring individual progress.
· Open book testing, which allows pupils to consult books during exams: this has had a positive effect on the attitude of pupils and teachers. Involving teachers in setting test papers with questions to elicit the conceptual understanding of the child rather than the ability to reproduce, has lead to more creative teaching with more emphasis on promotion of understanding and learning skills. Similarly, pupils place greater value on comprehension and learning how to learn.
· Grading: this system of marking is favoured over the rigid numerical one as more effective way to monitor personal progress.
· Self-evaluation and standardisation: teachers are encouraged to monitor their own progress and take control of their professional development. So that this can be standardised across teachers and facilitate external assessment, a book was developed for teachers to define their daily lesson plans and assess achievement against what was planned. This serves as an effective monitoring tool for teachers as well as for supervision.
Taken together, these assessment systems offer the opportunity for evaluating the entire system, from teachers to pupils to supervisors to training. If a pupil performs badly this is a reflection of the ability of the teacher which is linked to support etc. This holistic approach is very different to the government system where poor results tend to be attributed directly to pupils and are not taken as symptoms of problems within a wider system.
· Using the Local Language
Language is not an issue in Jaunpur as it is for other tribal areas. The local sub-dialect of Garhwali, spoken in the hill villages, is mutually comprehensive with Hindi, the medium of instruction for all UP government schools, and shares a common script. Where SIDH schools have the advantage over government schools is that teachers, all local to the area, are able to explain complex concepts in the local dialect which facilitates understanding for the children.
· Developing Appropriate Materials
So far we have looked at how a more relevant teaching curriculum was developed. In addition SIDH has consolidated its experience by developing a range of training manuals and teaching materials all with an emphasis on making teaching more relevant to hill life and concerns. These provide an unprecedented resource for both teachers in the Jaunpur catchment and teachers in the hill area generally.
Simultaneously, SIDH has supported the production of a range of materials on the local history of the area, the environment, a cassette of children's songs etc. These are all pioneering, important per se in recording and giving value to the local culture, but also as resource materials for lessons and post-literacy.
More recently, SIDH has started to establish village libraries which represent a valuable resource to pupils, teachers and other literate groups in remote villages where there is a dearth of reading material and post literacy support. Over time, these libraries have turned into a kind of community centre where users have access to daily newspapers, magazines and games in addition to books and informal discussion groups have started facilitated by the local teachers.
Education and community development
The education programmes offered SIDH a progressively deeper understanding of community dynamics which in turn stimulated more responsive programming. They also provided a focus for wider community action, generating new ideas and responses. This is best reflected in the women's programme.
The women's programme evolved out of the close links developed with mothers through the pre-school programme. It started with women's involvement in the school (as they learnt more about the aims of the school, some of the mothers became directly involved in the programme, working alongside the teachers as assistants) and the formation of parent teachers groups. Gradually these grew into women's groups where wider problems and needs were discussed such as health, nutrition, and the need for credit. Within these, the teachers assumed more of a facilitator role, sharing information on other initiatives in the area such as schemes for solar cookers and water harvesting, connecting them with training in identified priorities such as market gardening and articulating their concerns within SIDH.
The formation of these groups has been mutually beneficial to the community and to SIDH. Through the groups, village women have been able to diversify their productive activities (in some villages women have expanded their agricultural activities to include new crops of peas, potatoes, peas) and have been empowered to ask for a more equal role for women in the traditional justice system. Listening and learning from the women has equipped SIDH to fine tune the relevance of the education programmes and to accurately articulate the concerns of women in larger forums.
The emphasis SIDH has placed on development of human resources in the local community offers a sound basis for villagers to take an active role in the development of their community and locality. The existence of vibrant women's groups can be considered a move in this direction.10
Costs, Benefits and Sustainability
Small NGO programmes are continuously asked if they make a difference and if they are cost-effective and sustainable. These are all valid questions but mask some of the complexities that underlie them: make a difference to who, cost-effective in relation to what, sustainable on whose terms?
Table 1: responsibility for running village schools
|
Area of Responsibility |
Role of SHDH |
Role of Village Education Committee |
|
Fundraising |
Secures external funding for: - teacher salaries |
Generates income though: - collection of school fees - growing seedlings for sale - school vegetable gardens, produce sold locally - greeting cards made by pupils for sale by SIDH |
|
Financial management |
- increasingly channels fund to the |
- manages the school bank account |
|
School Infrastructure |
- Provides materials e.g. cement & steel. |
- Provides labour & land |
|
Teachers |
- provides training & support |
- Nominates new teachers & monitors attendance |
|
Teachers salaries |
- securrs funding |
- pays teachers from school bank account |
|
Teaching materials |
- help develope materials |
- purchases materials after consultation with teachers on
requirement |
SIDH's approach to the long-term sustainability of schools is both pragmatic and philosophical. It starts from the standpoint that total self-reliance of the school programme in the hills is in economic terms an unachievable goal given the small size of the villages. Philosophically it holds that any attempt at total self-sufficiency would further discriminate against the already low educational chances of this marginalised and economically poor community. 12 However, it recognises that in conditions of scarce resources, a form of cost-sharing, based around greater community input to and responsibility for schooling, is an efficient way of improving education provision in the longer term. Consequently, SIDH has developed an approach that builds in a) a level of external financial assistance and b) seeks to maximise the role of the community in managing and supporting village schools and keep costs at a minimum level. The community role is channelled through the Village Education Committee (VEC) which has progressively assumed substantial management responsibilities as set out in the table below:
The growing capacity of the VECs in the management of the schools and finances bodes well for the long-term sustainability of education provision in the hills. This is likely to be further enhanced by the formulation of VECs in villages outside the SIDH catchment, their formal recognition under the new system of local government which grants VECs powers to inspect school records, and the formation of an umbrella body which meets quarterly to discuss education issues collectively and feedback to the district education department. The effectiveness of the VECs is a mark of the success of SIDH's local capacity building approach and offers a positive example of how local NGOs are uniquely well-placed to promote community development.
Financially, a certain level of sustainability has been achieved through the cost-sharing approach. Cost-sharing is currently high on the national and local agenda as a mechanism for overcoming reduced public spending on education. It works at this localised level because the communities themselves are committed to the benefits the village schools offer their children and because the sharing extends critically to allowing them a say in how the schools function. The dependency of the programme on external funds to cover core costs such as teacher salaries is inbuilt for the reasons given above and is the weak point in the overall economic sustainability of education provision in the hills. SIDH is currently the sole source of funds. With the expansion of the programme and costs, SIDH's strategy is to diversify its funding base beyond Save the Children and to help link the villages, through the VEC's, directly to local funding sources such as the local Rotary Clubs.
So far, we have concentrated on the economic aspects of sustainability over the broader benefits of the programme. These benefits, described earlier in this case study, are largely qualitative reflecting what the villagers and children feel about the programme. A recent external evaluation of the programme summarises these as:
· schools more efficient than government schools in this environment, offering better-quality and accessible education reflected in higher educational achievement of SIDH pupils than their government school peers;· increased enrolment and lower drop-out rate of pupils;
· significantly increased enrolment of girls;
· development of human resources locally has enhanced potential for development in the area. 13
These represent important, but hard to quantify, social benefits in an area where education and life opportunities are limited. They show that money carefully spent within a wider context of local development can offer multiple advantages to people at the margins and reinforce the importance of giving people a voice in educational planning.
Replicability and Advocacy
As a small NGO, SIDH takes a hard line on what the role of a local NGO should be. Generally, NGOs are seen as filling a gap: assisting communities where government systems fail to function. There are inherent dangers in this trend: that NGOs become the tools for addressing the tough issues of poverty and development and the means for availing bi/multi-lateral aid while government accepts its failures in provision and abdicates from responsibility to disadvantaged groups.
Over the years, SIDH's work in developing an innovative and relevant primary and early childhood education programme in the hills has come to be respected in both government and non-government circles. This achievement has resulted in mounting external pressure to replicate the programme on a wider scale. SIDH actively resists this. From their perspective, the justification of the "small" SIDH programme lies not in scale but in demonstrating the importance of diversity in methodology and approach; sharing this with other education practitioners; finding ways to advocate for equitable and responsive education reform within the government system; raising the debate about what education is for and the limitations of what the dominant system delivers. This is a huge challenge for a small NGO and the different ways SIDH has tackled it offer useful lessons for other groups.
· Influencing through the media and seminars
SIDH has written a number of articles in the national and state press as well as newsletters to generate wider understanding and debate about their experience of education in the hills. SIDH have also organised seminars to bring together systems and people - government officials and academics, NGO and community practitioners - on education issues e.g. "Education and Sustainability". The aim is to create the opportunity for interaction and improved understanding between people working at the macro level and local field workers and plant the seed for taking this forward into more responsive policy-making and practice.
· Influencing at national government level
SIDH has been able to capitalise on the location of its office in the same town as the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, the training college for all government administrative officers. The SIDH programme is frequently visited by trainees as an example of complementary education provision while SIDH is invited to contribute its experience in training courses of both new recruits and senior officials on refresher programmes.
In addition, SIDH has been invited to participate on different national consultations on primary and pre-primary education. SIDH takes advantage of these forums to represent the specific problems of education in the hills and stress the importance of pre-primary education in retention and enrolment of children in schools to challenge the government move to withdraw financial support from early childhood education programmes. SIDH has also developed a relationship with the National Council for Education, Research and Training who wrote up a case study of SIDH's education experience with special emphasis on multi-grade teaching that was circulated to government schools and education officials in all states.
· Influencing at state and district level
SIDH is a resource member on the district gender and education committee for Education for All, the District Primary Education Programme and Total
Literacy Campaign. By advocating the advantages of the balshala programme (pre-primary schools up-graded to Primary grade II) as an appropriate model for mountain and arid zones where the small and scattered nature of villages results in more costly education provision, the concept has been adapted and adopted into the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), a large World Bank, European Union supported education programme. In the area of curriculum reform, SIDH has also achieved a level of influence. Its pre-primary teaching materials have been widely shared and used by UNICEF-funded Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) programmes and SIDH has provided training to middle level supervisory staff in the ICDS programme in Garhwal region. It has recently been invited on to the state resource group on the DPEP working on holistic curriculum design.
· Influencing at NGO level
Over the years, SIDH has had wide contact with a range of national and district-based NGOs working in education. The most successful relationships have been with other small NGOs working at grassroots level in the hills. These have been conducive to fruitful pooling and sharing of experience and expertise - SIDH has been a resource for education, able to provide input in training and capacity building, and drawn in expertise in credit and agriculture, for example, as their programme has evolved. The least successful from their experience has been the new trend towards formation of formal networking groups. Intended to bring together divergent groups for mutual learning, collaboration and lobbying for change, SIDH has found a tendency to accentuate difference and competition between groups. It is difficult to monitor the impact of influencing actions. The fact that SIDH have a range of links with the government reflects the value accorded their work as well as their tenacity. The sheer scale and hierarchy of government systems in India make for frustrating relations and genuine obstacles in accomplishing change. In SIDH's experience, the success of advocacy work hinges on personal relationships at all levels. In government this is fraught with difficulties as transfers are frequent and by the time a relation is established with an official, they move on. Although in the long-term this should still have beneficial implications in terms of increasing an official's openness to what an NGO can offer, it can backfire in the short-term: Just when the District Magistrate of Tehri, covering Jaunpur, requested SIDH to design a training programme for primary government teachers in the district, he was transferred and plans stalled.
SIDH feels it can have maximum impact in stimulating change by:
· small interventions at the local level that can make an immediate difference at the micro level -examples include motivating local government teachers to work more effectively through training or awarding a prize that gives public acknowledgement to their efforts· mobilisation of people to form pressure groups to influence government policy. There is a long history of this form of popular mobilisation in the hill area and SIDH has been able to build on this by stimulating debate and action with communities, intellectuals and government.
The role of the INGO: Save the Children's involvement
In India where there is a thriving civil society organised into local associations, Save the Children works primarily through local partners. Its strategy for education has been to support a range of local NGOs aiming to improve basic education opportunities to marginalised, out-of-school groups and to explore lessons for good practice from diverse innovative approaches.
The decision to support the work of SIDH highlights two fundamental elements in the way Save the Children approaches working in partnership. Firstly, the importance of cultural relevance of development actions. By supporting SIDH and its uniquely Ghandian/Indian philosophy of starting with the individual to achieve collective change, Save the Children was acting on a development ideology which recognizes the importance of taking local context and needs as a starting point, and the value of pluralist approaches. Secondly, the importance of flexibility and risk-taking to promote genuine innovation and creativity in development programming. Support to SIDH represented a risk as the organisation was literally starting out and had no track record. Without start-up support and the flexibility to experiment with approaches, SIDH would not have been able to initiate what evolved into a valuable education programme for hill children. The significance of flexibility and diversity cannot be under-estimated within a wider development context that seeks to identify general models and anticipate outcomes in advance of action.
These and other aspects of partnership tend to be accorded highest value by partners. SIDH have summed up the hallmarks of partnership with Save the Children as:
· trust and flexibility· willingness to look at education from a holistic perspective and support extension to community development
· length of commitment and funding
· exposure to wider education thinking and initiatives through connection with education networks and regional meetings
The risk-taking, flexible approach is one that does also backfire. While adverse affects can be contained by close monitoring and communication, failure and learning from mistakes also have their place within the development process.
What has been learnt?
The SIDH experience demonstrates that it is possible to run a quality pre/primary education programme with community participation that is viable and relevant to hill life. Although context specific, it offers key lessons for community-based education programmes generally.
· Working at community level
The SIDH experience shows that villagers can take a leading role in setting up and managing schools in their vicinity given appropriate training and support. The essential factor is a sense of local ownership: that communities themselves perceive the need for schooling for their children and are actively involved in both planning and management of schools. Moreover, an external force is often a key to stimulating local development initiatives and harnessing local capacity. In this case the local NGO, SIDH, acted as a catalyst for promoting community organisation around schooling which, given the central role of schools in village life, became an important agent for wider community development. The essential elements of this approach were a sensitive combination of inputs of new ideas and external resources (financial and expertise) and responsiveness to local knowledge and priorities.
· Working with local teachers
The India study confirms the findings of other studies in the collection, most notably Mali and Lebanon: that local people with limited formal education can become effective pre-school and primary teachers, given appropriate training and follow up.
It highlights two particular strengths of an approach to working with local teachers, firstly their local knowledge of and commitment to the area and secondly their potential to take on a wider role in facilitating community development.
· An open-minded, responsive approach to community development
SIDH started work in Jaunpur with a clean slate, with no objective other than to respond to the needs of the community. The organisation and its programme have grown organically and have continuously adapted through a process of continuous learning:
'We listened with respect to the community without any preconceived notion, as we were inexperienced at the time and also because we were not qualified as development workers. We constantly reviewed our programmes, were self-critical, tried not to get defensive and hence not resist change but try out uncharted paths if the idea seemed sound. In due course this became part of the culture of SIDH. To accept mistakes, correct it through change/experiment involves pain and courage. In fact the entire process of SIDH's evolution is a story of responding to the community and beginning to programme accordingly, learning new lessons during the course of implementation and again making changes in response to these new learnings.' Anuradha Joshi and Pawan Gupta, Founder Members of SIDH
· Adopting a flexible and holistic approach to education
The successes of this programme have been achieved through experimenting, learning and adapting. The facilitators of the village school initiative were careful not to impose a model but to encourage a locally appropriate system to evolve, based on space to innovate, learn from mistakes and adapt. The programme also demonstrates the importance of a holistic approach to education, one that takes account of the whole needs of the child, in terms of its practical impact on content, design and outcomes. This approach enabled the development of a type of education that is responsive and relevant in content, reflecting local knowledge and learning priorities, and flexible in its organisation, designed around the seasonal, domestic and livelihood activities of hill children. Tangible benefits have included an increase in access, especially of girls, alongside an increase in quality - children from the village schools perform systematically better than children in government schools and have developed real learning skills. They have also included the potential for community school children to transfer into the government system, revealing an important guiding principal for any extra-state primary school initiative: that it should complement rather than substitute the government system and enable students to integrate into the next levels of government education provision.
· The role of a local and international NGO
SIDH's flexibility of approach and willingness to experiment have been critical factors in producing an education programme that is strong on relevance and quality. This process has required an equally flexible and open approach on the part of SCF as a major partner. At one level, the case study demonstrates how partnership based on shared vision and approach between a local and international NGO can contribute a) to provision of schooling to rural children where state coverage does not reach, and b) lessons for good practice that are of wider relevance to improving education opportunities to such groups of children.
The achievements documented in this case study have been possible largely because of the long-standing commitment of both the local and international NGO, which, over a decade, have supported a long process of building up local participation and capacity and introducing innovative educational approaches. The study also raises a fundamental dilemma: the future of such a programme. In a context where there is limited scope to connect village schools with the state system, we are left with the question of whether it is possible to achieve financial sustainability for effective, small-scale initiatives such as these that bridge the schooling gap for remote rural children.
|
Editors' Conclusions · Isolated communities have the potential to take responsibility for their children's schooling. This potential can be realised by creative approaches which respond to local ideas and experimental initiatives. · The village schools have succeeded better than state schools in providing effective primary schooling. However, the community still prioritised modelling the schools on the state system so that children would have the opportunity to continue in government schools later. · Early successes - in enrolment, access for girls, and exam results relative to government schools - were important in giving the project initiators space to innovate further. · The children's own magazine was an effective way to challenge teachers' and even parents' perspectives, and to develop children's confidence in expressing their views. · The school and pre-school projects have naturally developed into broader community-led initiatives, such as the women's groups on health, nutrition and credit issues, which evolved out of mothers' meetings with teachers. These linkages have flourished because the programme was flexible, without the constraints of a rigid plan. · It was recognised from the start that outside skills and ongoing funding would continue to be needed to empower marginalised communities, and that there was no clear way to make the project sustainable. This is an unfashionable approach to development agency orthodoxy, but is perhaps inevitable in a context where the government fails to provide schools for hill communities. · The local NGO has sought to
share responsibility for management and fund-raising with the Village Education
Committees. This is paralleled by a changing role for Save the Children.
Initially it provided funds and space to experiment. Now it is withdrawing from
some of the funding, but is creating opportunities to link the project to
related initiatives and to share the experience internationally. |
1 Government of India, 1991. Census of India
2 Government of India, 1991
3 SIDH, undated. 'Evolution of SIDH's Education Programme.' Internal report, SIDH, Mussoorie, India
4 For greater detail on SIDH's work, see:-
SIDH 1996-7. Annual ReportCHETNA, 1998. Redefining Education for Holistic Development - Society for the Integrated Development of the Himalayas, Child Resource Centre, Gujarat, India
Khanna, A, 1999. 'Evaluation of SIDH's work: 8 year external review'. Independent report for Save the Children
5 Joshi, V., 1995. Little School on the Hill - Child Education in Community Development. Suraksha, Early Childhood Care and Education in India Vol. 3. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Madras
6 CHETNA 1998
7 SIDH 1998. 'Case study on SIDH: 10 year internal review'. Internal report, SIDH, Mussoorie, India
8 Joshi 1995
9 SIDH 1998
10 Joshi 1995
11 Joshi 1995
12 SIDH 1998. 'Report on a Workshop on Education and Sustainability'. Internal report. SIDH, Mussoorie, India
13 Khanna 1999
* Said by a villager. The end of the colonial period brought the hope of primary education for their children, but no school had yet come to the village
analysis: Zoumana Kone, Bakary Sogoba, Mamadou Diallo,
Yacouba Simbe, Bill Tod
writing/editor: Marion Molteno
contributors: Patrick Proctor, Amanda Harding
What are the problems for children?
Rural poverty and education
Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is part of the Sahel, an arid region south of the Sahara subject to severe droughts. Rural families depend on the labour of all members, including children, to survive.
Poverty acts as a determinant of educational chances at several levels. State poverty means that although education takes up 24% of Mali's budget, this provides schooling for less than half the children 1. Primary school enrolment rates for 1993-7 were 30% for boys and 19% for girls, compared to 61% and 55% for all sub-Saharan Africa2. Within Mali itself there are further inequalities: city children are much more likely to go to school than those in rural areas, and poorer districts have the lowest attendance. Finally, poverty limits educational chances at household level: in any district, children of poorer families are less likely to attend school.
The people of Mali experience a type of rural poverty that is common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, but exists in the Sahel in an extreme form. Villages are far apart, and transport between them hardly exists, meaning children growing up in the Sahel are effectively isolated from anything outside their village. Can anything can be done to help village children attend school?
Save the Children's experiment
Save the Children has worked in the northern district of Douentza, one of the poorest in Mali, since the severe droughts of the mid '80s. Within Douentza only 8% of children are in school. Douentza town is a centre of public facilities for surrounding villages, with government offices, a hospital, three primary schools and a secondary school. The cercle, or administrative district, has 255 villages, but only seventeen have schools3. For village children, 'going to school' means being sent to lodge with strangers in town. The lodging child is often treated as free labour, expected to work harder than other children of the household and given less to eat. Most village families, however, cannot even afford the cost of sending a child to lodge.
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Box 1: The opening The community has gathered to watch car-loads of city people coming to their village. Monsieur le President of the newly formed school committee leads the guests to the two-roomed building. Inside, the classrooms are cool, a shaded space in this fierce climate. The villagers press in close. It was the men themselves who cut the stones, the women and children who carried sand and water for the mortar. The furnishing is sparse but functional; a blackboard, a table, desks. The Save the Children animateur who has worked with the villagers has struggled to keep to a minimum the items brought in from outside, while the villagers have bargained hard for what they need. The speeches begin. In the capital city of Bamako people who have never heard of
Koubwel Koundia watch on the weekend news. What makes it news is not the event
but the potential. For the first time in history this village has a school. If
they can do it, why not others? |
· to understand what stops village children getting to school
· to experiment with ways round the problems.
Staff see the schools project as part of a wider set of activities intended to strengthen children's resilience in the face of poverty. Their starting point was thus to consider questions of schooling as they are experienced by villagers, both children and adults, rather than from the perspective of education officials or professionals.
They were also experimenting with a methodology. Would this bottom-up way of working give insights into how schooling could be made more accessible? And could an international agency facilitate changes in local structures (both governmental and communities) to improve children's educational chances?
A village view of children's work To consider the relationship between children's work, parental attitudes and schooling. Save the Children commissioned a study into patterns and perceptions of children's work in two rural districts (one being Douentza) and one peri-urban. The study confirmed what is obvious to most observers: 85% of 7 year olds in Douentza district carry serious work responsibilities, occupying on average 6 hours+ a day (with girls working significantly longer hours than boys.) A quarter of households said that they could not manage without the children's contribution. But it also made clear that the primary consideration in the minds of parents, even very poor ones, was the educational value of work: 'Children's work is perceived as a process of socialisation, progressively initiating children into work and transmitting skills that will enable them to support themselves and their parents and contribute to the community.' Parents expressed this in many ways:
The most important thing one can do for a child is to teach him or her to work.' 'Death can overcome the parents at any time; that's why it is essential to train children young to do the work of the parents'.
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Box 2: Growing up in Mopti and Duentza The regional town of Mopti is seven hours drive north of the capital city, on the banks of the Niger river. As the seasons change, herds of cattle are moved large distances in search of fresh grazing. Everywhere children can be seen taking serious responsibilities from an early age, herding animals, fishing, helping to move home, manoeuvring narrow boats through the flooded areas. Douentza, a traditional town of mud bricks, lies several hours
further to the north east. The many children who attend no kind of school are
busy with the work they do for their families, fetching water, minding younger
children, working in the market. At the other end of town the better-off
families live in compounds where goats are tethered, chickens scratch, and young
girls help their mothers pound grain and prepare food. |
'Our daughters are married at 13 or 14 years. If they haven't learnt all the work of the household when they are young, how will they manage?'
When asked the reasons for a child not working, a common answer was 'the negligence of parents.' In other words, only parents who did not have their children's best interests at heart would let them grow up without work responsibilities.
Children too accept the necessity and value of work. Among those surveyed there were few instances of oppressive work conditions or abusive punishments. Two thirds said they liked their work 'a lot,' and only a negligible percentage said 'not at all'. Perhaps this is because children learn by doing tasks with obvious utility, for which they win approval: 'We work to have the blessing of our parents.' They can move around and be active, they are taught by familiar people, using a language they understand, and are given considerable responsibility - 74% of the children work most of the time without adult supervision.
But the occupations for which children are trained through work are those of their parents, and over 70% of both children and adults would prefer some other future, to which only school-going could give access.
What would make it possible for village children to go to school?
School attendance and family work are not seen as mutually exclusive. Villagers want for their children what only school can offer, but schooling will not be an option for most village children unless it is set up in a way that accommodates village life.
Of children who had never been to school, 30% said this was because there was no school in the village, 19% that they had too much work at home, 18% that their parents lacked the means to send them, 27% that their parents did not want to send them, and 32% gave other reasons. In a context where sending children to school means sending them away, almost all of these answers may amount to the same thing - schools are too distant. If the school is within walking distance, children who attend can still spend several hours a day working as part of the family and the family does not have to incur the cost of sending them to lodge.
Villagers defined a feasible distance from school as one that a young child can walk twice a day (coming home for food at midday.) That means a school in each village or each cluster of villages. Is it realistic to think this could happen? It is an issue for children throughout rural Africa, and the Sahel's sparse population and poverty present probably the most difficult contexts in which to attempt to tackle it.
Beyond the question of resources there are difficulties with the education system itself. Interviews with teachers and officials during Save the Children's initial study of the Mopti region gave a consistently inflexible message: the school system exists in a particular form. Children must fit into the system, or they don't go to school. The idea of modifying the system to take account of rural conditions does not arise6. Teachers must be urban trained (from an Ecole Normale, teacher training college). Only schools with a certain quality of building are recognised7. All children must attend for the same number of hours, regardless of distance and their work responsibilities.
For more village children to attend school requires not only tackling resources issues, but negotiating flexibility within the system.
Will children benefit from going to school?
For village parents, sending children to school is a gamble: 'Even if all the children could go to school, it's not certain they would all succeed.' Success means eventually being able to earn a living in some other way. If this happens the family as a whole may be economically more secure. Children who go to school and drop out after a few years, however, may be in a worse position than those who never went. Both in terms of skills and motivation, they may be less prepared to earn a living in the only way now left to them.
'Our education system is ill' said a teacher from a Douentza town school, and his colleagues agreed the education being given today is sub-standard, inferior to the schooling they themselves received. Schools often have dilapidated buildings and few teaching materials, and it is years since most teachers had refresher training. They complained of lack of consistency in government policies and a lack of understanding of the stresses they are under. The first year teacher, for example, teaches nine hours a day, in two sessions of seventy children.
Within existing resource constraints, however, there are still choices. Save the Children staffs own observations went beyond those of the teachers to focus on the children's experience. Teaching is in French, which the children do not understand. They are taught by rote, with no liveliness or active participation. The teachers' style is typically harsh; children are visibly nervous.
The parent quoted above was being over-polite: the majority of school children fail. In Douentza schools, only a quarter of the children who started in year one are still coming to school after four years. The others have dropped out without having reached functional literacy. The biggest drop out is in year one. It does not take children or parents long to decide that staying in school will serve no useful purpose 8.
There is little point trying to get village children into school unless something radical is done to improve what happens in schools. Accepting that almost any improvement would require extra resources, the challenge was to work out the minimum level: that is. the critical changes needed to make school learning sufficiently effective for it to be worth village children attending. The two selected were:
· Language: the teaching for the first few years should be in a language the children understand, preferably the mother tongue, with a gradual introduction to French.· Child-sensitive learning methods: children should be actively engaged, rather than passively repeating. They should be encouraged, and not fear their teachers.
These are recognised internationally as key factors in effective learning. In the context of Malian rural schools they represent radical changes.
Language, the critical factor
In Mali, as elsewhere, a few innovative educationalists within the state system have been convinced of the benefits of using children's mother tongue for the first introduction to literacy9. But they remain a minority voice.
Several objections are raised. First, that there are hundreds of languages in Mali, and the education system would never have the resources to support teaching in all of them. But a national body called DNAFLA (which supports literacy for adults using mother tongues), together with IPN, the Institut Pedagogic National (which deals with curricula and methodology in schools) have identified a modest number of languages which would make literacy learning in a known language accessible to the majority of Malians. These include the two dominant language groups of Douentza district, the Dogon and the Peulh10.
A second objection is that it is impossible to implement mother tongue teaching in town schools where children of many languages study in the same class. But in villages this problem does not arise as most villages are composed of people who share a language.
The most deeply felt resistance comes from those who feel that French is the only suitable language for schooling. The point of going to school is to get a job, and for this French will be needed. Experimental primary schools outside the state system have been successful in getting children to read in their own languages, but unsuccessful in getting them places in secondary school because they do not know French11.
A pioneering alternative curriculum, the Pedagogíe Convergente, seeks to avoid the problems of both the French-only and the mother-tongue-only systems. For the first years teaching is in the local language. French is introduced slowly as a foreign language. Once children are confidently literate in their own language, the balance changes, bringing pupils to nationally expected levels, in French, by the end of year 6, and thus enabling them to continue to secondary school. The claim is that children can achieve this level because they learn much faster (by understanding what they are learning) and that the wastage of the French-only system is avoided.
The Pedagogíe Convergente has been used in a few schools only. Headteachers in Douentza district had never heard of it, and were resistant. While the state theoretically allows it, it has allocated few resources for implementation. Save the Children concluded for a village school to be set up using the Pedagogíe Convergente, in the current Malian context, there would need to be outside agency involvement.
The Response
Testing a new approach
Save the Children's study of village life and the school system led it conclude:
Village communities want their children to go to school, but this would be realistic only if schools:
· are within a child's walking distance
· are responsive to village conditions, including children's work
· can offer effective teaching, starting in local languages.
The state education system
· lacks resources to provide new village schools
· is inflexible and unresponsive to changes needed to make schooling appropriate for village children
· permits the use of local languages, but this is rarely implemented.
Save the Children decided to act as 'broker' between the two parties. They took as a starting point lessons from Save the Children's international experience of education collaboration both with villages and the state system [see notes at the beginning of the chapter] and also from other NGOs/International NGOs in Mali. Two International NGOs, World Education and Save the Children (USA), have been active in community schools for some years and have significant programmes. Certain features of the approach that Save the Children has taken are markedly different from both of these:
· The Save the Children approach is unique in responding to the specific conditions of remote Sahel communities, where the difficulties of survival and economic vulnerability are most extreme.· Save the Children's project was planned to combine a close relationship with the community with a potential for scaling up within the state system. It is the first attempt to seek appropriate innovation within the state system for the needs of villagers.
Because Save the Children's approach grew out of an involvement with the people of Douentza that included concerns for health, food security and credit, there is a wider view of how village schools could fit into patterns of village life, and a wider range of strategies for the project's community workers to draw on when helping villagers establish and sustain schools12.
It is worth noting that the experiment is taking place in a context of highly centralised decision making. Whilst there is talk of 'deconcentration', key decisions on policy, budgets, school standards and teacher employment still lie with the central Ministry. In other African countries the move to decentralisation has created a positive 'space' for experimentation that might involve village communities more in questions of schooling. In Mali this is not the case13.
Though the project itself is small, its potential relevance is huge. If it succeeds in bringing effective education to villages that have had no school, and if Save the Children as an international NGO can successfully carry the initiating role while leaving ownership in local hands (villagers and the state), this could open up possibilities for extending village schooling in other parts of rural Africa. This would require extra resourcing, but if the method works, donors may be willing to provide it.
Getting going
With an understanding of the issues and a decision on methodology made, the Douentza village schools project moved fast:
Between January and September 1997 the schools were set up and opened:
· In January Save the Children set up a consultation process with government, donors, NGOs. and village communities around Douentza, and allocated staff roles. To keep the project cost effective, there was only one full-timer, an experienced community 'animateur from the credit programme. No education specialist would be employed; state education professionals would provide inputs on curricula and methodology.
· By March the plan was formulated, the project officer had gone on a month's training on education issues from a Malian NGO14, the participation of state education professionals had been negotiated, permission taken from provincial and local officials. A feasibility study was undertaken and two villages were identified that were keen to take part in the pilot phase, one in each of the main language groups in the Douentza area, Dogon and Fulfulde15.
· In April work began in the villages. School committees were formed and trained, teachers selected. The community agreed financial arrangements they thought they could sustain and principles for allocating school places. The community undertook to build two classrooms the first year, and a new one each year until the school had all six years of a primary school.
· In Douentza and Mopti education officials were sceptical that untrained village teachers could achieve an adequate level or that things would be ready to start in that school year. But the villagers were determined, and Save the Children staff were inspired by their enthusiasm to push the pace.
· By June two classrooms had been built in both villages.
· By September the teachers had received their first six weeks intensive training, and the first curriculum workshop had been held. Led by professionals from the state system, and attended by provincial and local officials, it made history by bringing in ordinary villagers (the teachers-to-be, school committee members and parents) to adapt the curriculum and materials to reflect village children's experience. Against the disbelief of the officials, and to the immense satisfaction of the villagers, the schools opened in October 1997.
By October 1998, both schools were still going strong:
· Extra classes had been built, there had been a second intake of children, more teachers trained, the curriculum further developed, now with the input of children. The schools had received a regular stream of interested visitors, who were impressed with the eagerness and confidence of the children and the pride of the school committees.
· In Douentza district, official attitudes had changed. The schools inspector had visited the schools and agreed to register them.
· A momentum had begun outside the project schools. Thirty new applications for village community schools had been received by district education authorities16.
Save the Children staff themselves have balanced on a tightrope between excitement at what has been unleashed, and nervousness that it might not be sustained: 'It is very exciting and moving to witness the enthusiasm and commitment of the communities to their schools', says a discussion paper - which then goes on to list problem issues17. The following sections consider some of these issues, and whether the results have benefited children.
What kind of village?
It was assumed that the project could work only in a village with a strong desire for a school, and where there was sufficient cohesion to support a project requiring people to work together over a long period. There would need to be an uncontested site for the school, and people willing to build it. They would need people willing and capable of being trained as teachers. Most villages have a handful of adults with primary or even secondary education. To cover the full six years of primary school there would need to be at least six potential teachers, plus other adults willing to take on the responsibilities of a management committee. Finally, the parents would need to be willing to, and economically capable of, making contributions to support the teacher. In both the pilot villages, the community had already made an attempt to establish schools, unsupported by outsiders, and welcomed the chance to be part of the project: 'We have been waiting to get our own school since the first hours of independence.'
Why work in two languages?
In the village of Koubwel Koundia the language is Dogon, in Debéré it is Fulfulde18. Working with two language groups doubles the complications of preparing curriculum materials and teacher training. But it has strong advantages:
· It avoids the danger of the project being seen to benefit one group, and offers good economies of scale: materials prepared for two project schools make possible an expansion of the methodology across villages in both groups.· The project schools offer the first local examples of mother tongue teaching, and depending on the results officials will form opinions of whether this approach works. It is therefore important to be able to compare effectiveness across at least two languages, to show where certain outcomes may be specific to one language.
What does 'community participation' mean?
For the state, 'community participation' in schooling is usually seen as a cost-saving device: villagers provide free labour to build schools, and parents' contributions pay the teachers' salaries. The Douentza project envisages the role of the community in a more fundamental way:
'Schools should belong to the community, then they will last''Community involvement is fundamental and the spinal cord upon which the community school experience rests'
'Community management of a school improves access and quality of teaching whilst encouraging a demand for education'
Save the Children staff recognised that while the initiators of the project could set things up in a way that might encourage this, internal village dynamics would determine the future of the school. The outside facilitators would not wish to control those processes, but they would need to understand them.
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Box 3: Language, culture and schooling The Peulh, whose language is Fulfulde, span the Sahel, sharing a language and culture across the artificial borders that European colonisers drew. In the Douentza area they are agro-pastoralists, living in settled villages where they grow crops but also depending on animals. At certain seasons some of the villagers move the animals to new grazing areas 19. The village of Debéré does not have a population large enough to support a school of the kind envisaged in the project. Soon the school will need to draw in children from nearby villages, but will they want to participate in a project they were not involved in from the start, especially since there are caste differences between the villages? The Dogon are said to be among the oldest people in Mali. They live along a line of rocky hills and access to water is a constant problem, women and girls climb down what looks like a sheer rock face to get water in the stream below, and climb back up again with the weight of a large bucket of water balanced on their heads. The village of Koubwel Koundia has exceptional cohesion, with
a popular chief who is himself school-educated. Villagers have worked
enthusiastically on each stage of the project, undeterred by their difficult
terrain - the building materials for the school were stones that had to be
broken with hand tools. But language is a complex issue. There are at least 70
Dogon languages, many mutually unintelligible. Among them, the Torosso language
has been selected by DNAFLA as the one best suited to be a common language among
the Dogon, and therefore their first language of literacy. |
Ownership rests with those who commit the major effort and resources, and make the decisions. The villagers talk of 'our school', and feel the pride of ownership and control. They have built it, but more significantly, they take responsibility for running it.
The school management committee is elected by the whole village, selects the teacher, decides pupil intake, negotiates with the whole community what payment is to be made and how, and keeps accounts. A woman committee member ensures that girls get equal representation in the school, which may include negotiating with the girls' parents, and also that children with disabilities are included20. There is a member responsible for 'education', monitoring what is taught and how; another for the school environment, another to sort out problems and areas of conflict.
'The management committees are the driving force behind the community approach' said an external review of the project. The Save the Children project officer has provided training in understanding the new roles, and has worked to sort out initial problems. The committees cannot work effectively without a consensus by the whole village:
'Social negotiation with all local actors consists in arriving at an agreement about commitments made, consensus being reached through awareness raising and animation activities: through village general assemblies, small groups, village personalities and opinion leaders'
Which children get school places?
The committee makes practical decisions, but within a framework of collaboration negotiated with Save the Children. Save the Children considers certain things non-negotiable: parents should contribute to paying teachers; girls should receive equal numbers of places as boys; children with disabilities should be included in school. Where these challenge traditional assumptions, an element of persuasion comes into the picture. Save the Children commissioned a group of musicians from Douentza to perform songs to try to encourage consensus on these issues. In villages where little happens to vary the pattern of every day, the arrival of the musical group draws the village together to listen.
People do not of course change their attitudes from hearing a song. A degree of bargaining probably comes into the villagers' acceptance of these 'messages'. But the external review felt that villagers now genuinely supported most of the new ideas:
'A change of behaviour concerning the education of their children is already discernible amongst the villagers. In meetings they say, 'We regret the past."
Haw far should NGO support go?
An external review praised the way the project had set up and supported the committees:
'The approach gives communities much more freedom in the management of their schools, leads communities to have confidence in themselves, encouraging them to commit themselves more strongly.'
But it echoed the requests of the committees for more training, particularly in those aspects which will become more relevant as the schools press to be more centrally included in the state system. They will need to conform to bureaucratic standards in relation to registering the ages of children, school registers, formally agreed school rules, minutes of meetings, etc. All of these require literacy skills, and raise the question of whether committee members (or at least some of them) need to be literate.
Every 'solution' creates its own dilemmas. If committee members must be literate, this limits the villagers' choice, cutting out people who might have better ability at managing the schools as social institutions. While the arguments for adult literacy provision are sound, the costs of the project increase with each extra input. This makes it less easy to see the project as a model for other villages.
The villagers are clear that the schools are 'theirs' but they know they could not have got this far alone, and are anxious to bind Save the Children in an ongoing relationship. Save the Children staff understand that, but try not to take on responsibilities which will undermine village ownership. Their refusal to get drawn in reflects no lack of desire to support villagers; on the contrary, it comes from a strong conviction that they would undermine the long term survival of the schools if they did21.
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Box 4: Teachers' salaries when the rains fail Each village community worked out what it considered feasible for parents to contribute to teachers' pay. The amounts agreed are far less than that paid by government for teachers, but they are rates the villages felt they could sustain and village teachers were willing to accept. The calculation did not allow for the effects of a particularly bad drought, which struck the villages in the first year of the schools operation. Parents were having to leave the villages in search of wild fruit; how could they possibly pay for teachers? Perhaps just this year Save the Children should contribute to teachers' salaries? This would help in the short term, it would undermine the long term chances of the schools being viable. At a meeting with Save the Children staff in November 1998, the committee said that tolerance and patience was needed by the teachers until things could be put on a better basis financially. The teachers reaffirmed their dedication: We teach in order to teach our children, not for the remuneration. Our work is a patriotic commitment, and we cannot turn back. But they have to support themselves. The way forward? A number of ideas emerged from the meeting: · The committees persuaded all households, not just parents, to contribute to teachers' costs. This is a step forward for equity, for individual children will not be excluded because their parents cannot pay. |
Over the longer term one important issue is who should pay the teachers? Save the Children in Mali is clear that it should not be the International NGO, but should villagers have to bear this cost directly when townspeople do not? 22 And what if particular parents cannot afford their contribution - do the children drop out? Does this kind of 'cost sharing' not undermine the central premise of the project, which is to give an equitable chance of education to the poorest? 23 The logical future for the village schools is to become part of the state system, with the state paying the teachers. But is the state willing and able to take this on?
What role has the state system played in the pilot phase?
This is best seen in two parts. Specialists from the national level have:
· provided the curriculum framework
· developed the materials, incorporating inputs from curriculum workshops
· trained the teachers.
Provincial and local officials have:
· participated in events such as curriculum/training workshops
· registered the schools
· agreed to provide regular inspection and monitor standards.
An early task was to find individuals at a senior level in the education system who would be prepared to work with the project. Save the Children has had strong collaboration from the Institut Pedagogic Nationale and the literacy agency, DNAFLA, particularly through the participation of a senior IPN official, Bokary Sory Traoré, to whom much of the credit for the success of the use of the Pedagogíe Convergente goes. But the decision to work with the Pedagogíe Convergente also launched the project into controversy:
'We were confronted by the reticence that stems from the refusal of certain education officials to acknowledge the Pedagogíe Convergente.'
The project hinged on a small number of educationalists who 'have a kind of monopoly' of how to implement the new approach, and who expected higher rates for running workshops than Save the Children felt appropriate, since it was attempting to limit dependence on outsiders for a process which it was hoped would eventually be seen as the state's. But each side depended on the other, and compromises were reached. A senior official said: I am committed to supporting the processes which the project has initiated, even if there aren't many resources.'
Does the state take 'ownership'?
Because Save the Children has put in the resources and is the catalyst/facilitator of all developments, the project is perceived by the state system as 'Save the Children's'. Save the Children aims, however, for a gradual transference of ownership. Even though state officials have not initiated what is happening, the way is open to them at any point to take a larger role. Invitations are always given to events like workshops, and Save the Children engages officials in ongoing dialogue about the project.
Responses are mixed. While the pilot schools have attracted attention, this may be threatening to education officials rather than encouraging. Though the new curriculum has approval from the national level, provincial education officials and local teachers do not necessarily approve of innovations. At the start of the project there was no real official support in the region for using local languages, and strong resistance to the idea that untrained villagers could become teachers, or that illiterate villagers might have anything to contribute to designing a curriculum. Yet only a year after the start of the project the schools inspector, who had been drawn somewhat reluctantly into visiting the schools and was definitely opposed to the use of local languages, ended up saying: 'Save the Children is on the right track and we are therefore willing to collaborate in a process like this.'
Finally, while officials' own status rises if their district or region can show improvements from new developments in their area, they are understandably nervous that they might be expected to pick up the bill. An education adviser in Douentza praised the progress of the Save the Children schools then added: 'My only anxiety is the question of funding for the training of teachers in a context of poverty. I am not sure that the state would be able to play its role.' This is a fundamental issue affecting the future of the village schooling which is returned to in the concluding section.
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Box 5: Changing attitudes of state officials Committee members and teachers took part in the workshop to prepare the first year's curriculum, on the assumption that this would encourage schooling that takes account of the realities of children's experience. Officials from IPN and DNAFLA were willing to go along with the experiment, but on the first day of the workshop the Regional Director of Education expressed grave doubts about the basic principles on which the project was based. This took Save the children staff by surprise, for there had been months of earlier negotiations during which they had been assured of the regional administration's support. Now Save the Children staff argued for going ahead - the schools had been built, the villagers were waiting, they had been assured by the educational experts at the national level that the plan was possible. They appealed to the DNAFLA facilitator to confirm this. In some discomfort at being thus challenged, he nevertheless repeated publicly the assurance he had given Save the Children: 'It is definitely possible for us to prepare in a week's workshop what is needed for the first term; after that we can take more time over the rest. For myself, I am confident in the future of these experimental community schools'. The workshop went ahead; the schools began in September with
the first term's curriculum and materials ready. The schools were visited by
many people, who found the teachers managing their role competently. Save the
Children staff took courage and went one step further on the road to innovation.
In the second curriculum workshop in December four children from Douentza's
secondary school took part. |
While there are advantages in state ownership of the project there are also dangers. If the state takes more responsibility, would it be flexible enough to allow community management of schools and villager participation in adapting the curriculum? Will it insist that only qualified teachers can teach -thus cancelling the principle of relying on teachers from the village, and in effect closing the schools?
Do children learn things they need to know?
The point of setting up village schools was to equip children to face difficult life challenges. Are the schools likely to achieve this?
There is general agreement among both adults and children that what the children are learning is useful: numeracy, literacy, the confidence to express themselves. These skills are practised through a series of topics chosen to draw on the children's existing life experience and future needs. Villager participation in the curriculum workshops and village management of the schools have been the mechanisms for adapting what was already in the new curriculum more precisely to the context of these particular children, (for example, by including in the language lessons dialogues in which villagers prepare to move with the change in seasons to find grazing for the animals.) In these ways what the children are offered appears to be an improvement on what they would have got in a state school.
The principles of children's learning which are so clearly demonstrated in village attitudes to children's work are put on one side when children go to school. Once attitudes towards learning and school change there are opportunities for better learning. Parents could be brought into the classroom as resources for certain kinds of local knowledge. Children could be taken out more, to learn from the local environment. There are opportunities to make better links with other learning for life' activities that Save the Children is involved with, such as health and HIV education, credit management of accounts, etc24.
Are the teachers effective?
At the start of the project the Regional Director of Education expressed a concern shared by many others (including senior Save the Children staff):
'I assure you that the teachers of these two villages are not capable of taking on the required knowledge and skills'
The teachers themselves appear to be undaunted: 'Since we started teaching we have encountered no major difficulty. The children are very enthusiastic with what they are busy learning in the school'.
Visitors to the schools (Malian and foreign, from Save the Children, other NGOs and state officials) consistently confirm that the children are eager, confident, and appear to be learning at a rate considered remarkable by Malian standards. It is too soon for rigorous testing, but ad hoc tests showed that after a year children were able to do things - read with understanding and apply calculations beyond simple memorisation25 - which many third year pupils in state schools cannot.
How has it been possible for less well trained teachers to achieve what qualified teachers in state schools do not? The first factor is motivation; the second, the methods they have been trained to use.
What motivates village teachers?
Though village teachers are paid far less that state school teachers, their role is in many ways more satisfying. They gain status among villagers, praise and encouragement from outsiders who visit. They have cash income where before they may have had none, and they exchange work in agriculture for work which recognises their level of education. The training provides them with the stimulus of learning something new. Village teachers are chosen by the community and live side by side with the children and their parents, who will not be reticent in commenting if they think the teachers are neglecting their duties. Together with other villagers the teachers feel a responsibility not only to the children, but to themselves: 'We cannot let ourselves fail as we have been chosen amongst many villages to host this project.'
The state education adviser for Douentza acknowledged the experience of the village schools had reminded him that 'University training is not the only criterion for performance of a teacher. It's also necessary to have high motivation and a love of ones profession.': Effective teaching relies on attitudes every bit as much as it does on skills.
There is a natural tendency for these positive factors to apply most strongly in the early years of the project, when the challenge and novelty are greatest. Teaching has its repetitive sides; going through the curriculum with a group of first year pupils may be less exciting the fourth or fifth time. And there is the issue of pay. The initial aim in a project of this kind must be to pay teachers sufficient to enable them to teach. Once that level is reached, other questions will emerge. The more village teachers are brought into contact with the state teachers, the more it is likely to weigh on them that they are not paid adequately for what they do.
The experience of NGO-supported community school programmes elsewhere suggests that in the overall conditions of poverty and inequality it is virtually impossible to resolve these issues. Probably the most critical factor is the continuing availability of committed and sensitive community workers26. The role of the community worker is commonly understood as redundant once things are set up. While the aim should be to reduce dependence, complete withdrawal of outside facilitators may result in the collapse of what has been built up. When new or difficult issues arise, if a community worker who has an established relationship with the villagers is available to facilitate, a great deal can be done to maintain morale, encourage realism about options, and thereby to ensure the effective functioning of schools.
Language is the critical factor. Children understand what they are learning, therefore they can learn27. This link is obvious to a visiting educationalist, but is still a subject of controversy, and the advocates of local language teaching have a way to go to convince the sceptics. The testing point will come with the transition to French. And for this to be achieved effectively, teachers will need to be trained in new skills.
The Pedagogíe Convergente lays stress not only on the fact that the language is familiar, but also on emotional factors - the need for encouragement, and an absence of fear - and cognitive processes28. The village teachers have taken on board principles about teacher-child relationships and learning methods that contrast strongly with the kind of teaching they experienced as children. Teachers give lessons around a series of dialogues, and they know that if they take the children through all the dialogues, following all the steps, the children will learn to read.
As inexperienced teachers, they tend to carry out the dialogues to the letter, which carries the danger that this will become a system as rigid as the old one. It is, however, effective, and it has the advantage that it renders inexperience less of an issue.
The methods work - but why?
A reason for the teachers' high morale is that they have the reward of seeing children learn. In other words, their training has equipped them with methods that work. What elements of the Pedagogíe Convergente have contributed to this?
The curriculum and teacher training processes have been led by state education professionals. In other words, the state itself has pioneered a methodology capable of turning unqualified villagers into effective teachers. Can the system make the other adaptations needed to back its own innovators, and let them use their competence to extend schools to other villages, and beyond that, to improving teaching for all Malian children?
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Box 6: Learning to read through understanding The steps the teachers are trained to follow for each dialogue, using the Pedagogíe Convergente method: · show the story through pictures In contrast to traditional methods, here the children: · understand the spoken language, and the context is familiar Imagining, as a tool for learning with understanding: There is one step that helps children and teachers remember that the important thing is what is going on in the child's mind, not what the teacher can see or hear: the first time children get the chance to take roles, they do so silently, miming the actions. They think the words but don't say them aloud. While they seem to be doing less, their minds are actually more engaged, as they actively imagine the whole scene. When they have done this they get a turn to act with words1. |
What has been learnt?
What have we learnt from this experience about an appropriate role for an International NGO in facilitating collaborative state-community provision in rural African contexts?
Testing a methodology
It has been shown that:
· Villagers will make considerable efforts to set up schools in their own villages, are flexible in taking on new ideas, and capable of managing their schools, given adequate support and training.· Unqualified village teachers can do an effective job, provided they are given appropriate training, a basic salary, and a sense of being valued.
· Children in such schools do learn.
In terms of links with the state system:
· Professionals from the state system have made the main contribution towards the success of the schools in terms of curriculum and methodology.· Education officials at provincial and local level were reticent about the innovations, but through being involved at all stages have been persuaded that the approach is viable.
· The NGO (in a project managed by local Malian staff) played a critical role in facilitating both the village processes and recognition by the state system. Its commitment to the concept of local ownership (by both villagers and the state) has been a defining factor.
What are the unresolved issues?
· The village: The general level of poverty may make it impossible for villagers to continue paying teachers enough, and it seems unlikely that the state will take on this responsibility without donor funding.· Linking into the state system: The project will need to run six years before it will be possible to test the long term effectiveness of the Pedagogíe Convergente in bringing village children to the level of French required to go to secondary school.
· The ongoing NGO contribution: Each stage of the developing project will continue to require support (e.g. for teaching training and curriculum development for each new set of teachers and as children move to the next class). This is a necessary commitment to bring one cycle to completion. But there are dilemmas about the degree of continuing involvement. It would be possible to make a significant difference to the quality and relevance of the schooling through input on issues of children's participation, links between school and life, etc, but too much involvement may reinforce dependence on outsiders.
Costs and sustainability
What costs would the state incur if it took more responsibility for supporting community schools?29 There are generic developmental activities, for instance developing local language curricula and materials, which in the pilot phase have been funded by Save the Children these are costly but once done will serve a wide range of schools for years to come, so it is possible to imagine them being absorbed by the state system with short term donor support.
There is the cost of school buildings. The reliance on local materials and labour makes it possible to envisage low-cost expansion. Project staff have tried to negotiate a relaxation of official standards for buildings. This is a critical issue for the expansion of the village school model, since village communities cannot meet official criteria without considerable external funding.30
By keeping the project small enough in the pilot phase to observe the effects of different inputs, it is now possible to be specific about what is critical. Experience shows that facilitating costs should not be skimped (e.g. the salaries of the project staff, essential during the initiating period and in a less intense form for ongoing support to village management committees as they come to terms with their role).
All the costs so far relate to setting up, equipping and managing schools. The key question still is what happens inside them, and maintaining standards in the long run will depend on schools being brought into the framework of state provision.
The key roles for the state system revolve around the actual teaching: teacher qualifications, teacher training, and paying the teachers. The project has shown that while lack of resources is indeed a major issue, inflexibility is at least an equal problem. With tactful handling it is possible to make progress towards more flexible arrangements. The main lesson of the project is that the really essential costs are paying those adults who make the education process happen for children. The state needs to reconsider:
· which adults?
· what roles?
· being paid how much?
If the state insists the only teachers it employs are fully qualified, the costs of increasing access in rural areas will remain prohibitive. Accepting a second tier of village teachers will spread whatever additional funding can be obtained much further. For village teachers even a modest state salary would be an improvement on their present state. offering a security that villagers caught in the trap of poverty cannot guarantee. The salaries of village facilitators (who in turn activate many villagers who work voluntarily) is considerably more cost-effective than paying bureaucratic officials.
The NGO role - where next?
What role does Save the Children envisage it can play in encouraging a wider application of the lessons of the pilot project? The next stages are already being planned:
· In Douentza cercle, Save the Children will seek to put the collaborative arrangement between the state and communities on a more formalised footing, and seek donor funding to expand the project to more villages.· In Mopti region, Save the Children will build on the reputation which its practical experience has given it to facilitate discussions between the state system, donors, and other NGOs on how to link community schools more closely with the state system.
· Nationally education policy is set to change in Mali. With the support of major donors, the Ministry of Education has developed a new framework for basic education. PRODEC, in which the Pedagogíe Convergente is likely to receive stronger backing. Save the Children is now well-placed to contribute to these developments, particularly on how the new approaches can be made accessible in the Sahel. Plans are being discussed for a workshop bringing together national, regional and district levels of government with NGOs and agencies with experience of community schools, to discuss how lessons from these experiments can be built into the government's national education plan.
· Aross Africa, there is a need to draw together related experiences of NGOs, both local and international, who have attempted to cut through the barriers to schooling for children in remote rural areas.
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Editors' Conclusions · The education system in this rural district combined many of the worst aspects of poor quality education in poor communities: schools that are too distant, irrelevant to rural life, organised in a rigid system unable to adapt to local needs, and teaching in a language the children do not understand. · Despite teachers' lack of formal qualifications, the community schools have been successful through the exceptional motivation of the whole community, the use of local languages, short training courses equipping teachers with techniques for child-centred teaching, and providing a structure for real community participation. · There is a tension between the need to involve the state in community schools (to build sustainability and achieve wider impact), and the possibility that further involvement by the centralised state will threaten community management of the schools and villager participation in adapting the curriculum. · As in other contexts, the issue of teachers' pay is a fundamental threat to the sustainability of the programme. Rigid implementation of cost-sharing by parents would threaten the principle of schools accessible to all, and teachers may not be willing in the long term to accept considerably lower pay than their counterparts in the state system. · From the outset, the aim was
to achieve a wider impact through developing a model programme that could
challenge the rigidity and unresponsiveness of the state education system.
Through the demonstrable success of the community schools, and through seeking
to link with government at different levels throughout the early stages, Save
the Children is now well placed to contribute to the development of the
government's new national education plan. |
1 For school attendance figures see Zoumana Koné, 1998. 'SCF/UK's experience in education', external consultant case study commissioned by Save the Children.
2 Tod, B, July 1998. 'Out of the frying pan into...: The experience of SCF(UK) Mali with community primary schools', Internal report, Save the Children
3 Koné 1998
4 Interviews with villagers, Molteno, M, 1996. 'SCF Mali: A possible education programme?' Internal report, Save the Children
5 Issa Sidibé, 1998. 'Des bras valides pour demain? Le travail des enfants au Mali'. Study jointly commissioned by Save the Children UK, US, Sweden and Canada. It included interviews with 600 children and their parents. All citations in this section are from this study.
6 Molteno 1996
7 Koné 1998, p.19, quoting a report from the Bandiagara Primary Education Inspector, and p.8.
8 These problems are widespread in rural Africa. See other case studies from Africa, and Obura, A, 1994, assessment for a possible education programme in Zanzibar. Internal report, Save the Children
9 For equivalent developments in the neighbouring Sahel state of Burkina Faso, see Boulaye Lallou, 'Burkina Faso: language reform is no simple matter', in 'UNESCO Sources', Sept. 1998
10 Save the Children staff had themselves experienced the effectiveness of mother tongue literacy teaching in adult literacy classes as part of a credit programme.
11 This has been the experience of a major community schools project run by SCF (US) in southern Mali.
12 Source: Bakary Sogoba, who now works for SCF (UK) but previously worked for an NGO closely associated with World Education, and has an overview of NGO activity in general through involvement in the Groupe Pivot Education de Base.
13 See the Ethiopia case study for more on issues of decentralisation.
l4 Boubacar Bocoum, 1997. Report of training of facilitator by Partenaires du Developpement Integre, Mali. Internal report, Save the Children
15 Mamadou Diallo, Bakary Sogoba, 1997. 'Resultat d'etude de milieu et de faisibilite concernant la création d’écoles communautaires dans le cercle de Douentza'. Internal report, Save the Children
l6 Tod, B, Oct 1998. 'Education case study: further thoughts on sustainability and wider impact'. Internal report, Save the Children
17 Tod, July 1998
18 Both villages have been designated 'county towns' in the new moves to decentralise the Malian administrative system. They will be well placed to act as centres for surrounding villages.
19 Quotations in this section are all from Koné 1998
20 A Malian NGO that works on disability issues, ADD, was commissioned to do a survey of the children with disabilities in the villages, as a basis for ensuring that they are included.
21 There is still controversy on how to handle this. The external review recommended a food for work programme for teachers.
22 At a francophone regional meeting in Bamako on community basic education in 1997, this was the main issue raised by participants. See Tod, July 1998
23 See Penrose, P, 1998. Cost sharing in education, Education Research Paper no. 27, Department for International Development; also Felicty Hill, Cost Sharing, paper commissioned for this research project
24 Save the Chilrden's experience of school support activities in the Caribbean offer good examples. See McIvor, C (ed)1999. The earth in ourhands: children and environmental change in the Caribbean, Save the Children
25 Ad hoc tests by Marion Molteno and Bakary Sogoba in November 1998
26 See the India case study. The Indian NGO, SIDH, offers an example with an impressive record of tackling such issues over a ten year period.
27 The situation in the Peulh school is simpler to draw conclusions from than in the Dogon school, because of the many Dogon languages
28 Koné, 1998
29 See Tod Oct 1998 for a summary analysis of project costs, and implications for expansion.
30 Compare the experience of the international NGO, World Education, which has not challenged official building standards. Donor funding is recruited for the first year to build 3 classrooms in each community (at a cost of approximately £26,000). Thereafter it is up to communities to find their own external funding to continue construction of subsequent classrooms. World Education offers skills and training support to those who succeed in doing so. Predicatably, many do not. (Source, Bakary Sogoba.)
