Knowledge Sharing Partnership

Quality Schooling for the Poor and Marginalised Social Groups

Governments and non-governmental organisations in India are committed to quality schooling for all. Through their efforts, there is a substantial improvement in the enrolment of children in the primary grades. However, enrolment and retention in secondary grades continue to be a challenge. Furthermore, the learning achievements in primary as well as secondary grades fall significantly short of curricular standards. In some instances, the schooling practices may not adequately respond to the specific contexts of their communities. The situation is particularly challenging for children from marginalised social groups and those from poor families. A commitment to quality schooling demands overcoming these challenges.

There are numerous attempts by NGOs to address concerns of quality schooling for these marginalised social groups. Governments have also attempted to address these challenges on the larger scale. For example, in 2007 the government of Orissa started a mother-tongue-based multilingual program in primary grades for tribal children. The assessments show that the teaching of the tribal language and its use as a medium of instruction in grades I-III seems to have reduced the fear of schooling among these children and have enhanced their attendance, participation and learning achievements. Similar initiatives are being attempted for the schooling of girls, children from Dalit and Muslim families, and children with special needs. In many cases, children from marginalised social groups also come from poor families.

Academics and researchers too have engaged with the idea of quality schooling and the specific concerns of marginalised social groups. Funding agencies are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the social impact of these initiatives. Learning from similar initiatives in other countries can also provide insights that may be relevant in the Indian context.
This Knowledge-Sharing Partnership aims to bring together government and NGO based practitioners, advocacy groups, funding agencies, representatives of the marginalised groups, and academicians and researchers to discuss possible approaches to provide quality schooling to children from these groups. Ongoing sharing, discussions and learning may facilitate effective, scalable and sustainable approaches to addressing these challenges. The potential areas of such partnerships are:

• Bridging the knowledge and process gaps by creating a knowledge repository of the best practices for addressing these challenges by the government and the NGOs.
• Facilitating collective reflection on the strategies adopted by the government and the NGOs through partnerships between practitioners, community representatives, and academics/ researchers.
• Creating opportunities to learn from relevant international practices.
• Sharing experiences on common challenges with respect to alliances, staffing and funding, faced by grassroots NGOs in this area.

The multiple groups interested in discussing specific issues are likely to organically emerge within the overall framework of this partnership. The program office for the partnership will provide support to these groups as needed and also ensure that the knowledge generated is shared with a wider audience outside of the group. Over time, knowledge-generation will take place in multiple formats (blogs, newspaper articles, academic papers/ conferences, books); using multiple media (write-ups, YouTube videos, WhatsApp groups) and in multiple languages. As an initial step, critical and reflective documentation of the practices of select NGOs is planned to initiate a dialogue. A knowledge-sharing workshop is also proposed for later in 2018.