Including the parents in the activities

We have always believed that the parents of the children need to be ‘educated’ about the values of education also. This is often a missing link in the whole system, as many times we hear that the parents are least concerned about the education of the child. They believe that their duty ends at ensuring that the child goes to the schools.One of the initiatives of the Happy Horizons Trust, is to conduct open meetings and discussion sessions once a month at least, with the parents and guardians of the children. This is to happen in the villages itself. These are organised by the manager and the champions under guidance from the chief coordinator. The champions conduct this session and in return get trained themselves on social leadership and really connecting with the masses.

We recently did one such session at the Navsrijit Vidyalaya, Simri Bakhtiarpur on the 10th of July.  This is a community of the Mahadalits, and the children from this area, go to the oldest school that we have been working with (since 2008). The school has around 60-70 students. This being the rainy season, we ‘educated’ the parents about the benefits of cleanliness and the need to ensure that the students also maintain cleanliness when they come to school.

In the discussions we also got to know about the different problems being faced by the families. Many have also requested for bleaching powder to keep track of the water logging and safety from the mosquitoes. We will be providing them these in the next visit to the area.

It is our endeavor that we get more parents to be involved in the education of their children. They are very important stakeholder in our whole system and due to a lack of education themselves, they have been unaware about how they can help for their children. We hope to be there to guide them on that.

2nd Career Awareness Seminar

In the new union budget announced yesterday, the government has announced the setting up of more IITs and IIMs. It just drives the point further that all the way from the top we have the emphasis on management and engineering education. No wonder the parents do not want their children to do anything else.

This trend needs to change, as there are so many other professions that children could opt for. This particular notion has been the driving force behind our Career Awareness Seminar.

This time we are changing the format slightly to include a panel discussion and also more questions being asked by the students. It is our sincere endeavor that the students benefit from this and are able to make better informed decisions about their careers.

We are also having the certificate distribution ceremony for the 1st batch of students of the Internet Awareness Course. It is a proud moment for us, since we truly believe in the potential of technology and the Internet. We hope that we are able to build onto this, to encourage more students to use the tools for education and the development of the society.

What drives us at HHT

We have been asked this question many times. What is it that drives us. Why are we doing what we are doing? What’s in it for us? Year after year, we read up the ASER reports that looks to find the state of education across India. Some of the National findings of the last year’s report (2013) have been emphasising on the sad state of education, mainly in the primary schools, and also the fact that inspite of all the efforts, the quality of education has actually gone down instead of improving!

 

• Since last year no significant improvement is visible in children’s ability to read.

• Children are still struggling with basic arithmetic.

• Teacher attendance holds steady, but student attendance drops.

• Nationally, the proportion of all children in Std. V who can read a Std. II level text remains virtually the same since 2012, at 47%. This proportion decreased each year from 2009 to 2012, dropping from 52.8% in 2009 to 46.9% in 2012.

• Among Std. V children enrolled in government schools, the percentage of children able to read Std. II level text decreased from 50.3% (2009) to 43.8% (2011) to 41.1% (2013).

 

While, on one end while that saddens us, on the other end it inspires us as we know that we have lots of work to do. In a recent article on TIME, the writer starts with this shocking (but widely known now) revelation. More children are going to school in India, but they’re learning less. This they validate by data from the World bank. We do not find it surprising, because we face it every day. Some excerpts from the article, worth mentioning here really drives across the point of why we are doing our work.

This decline in standards, experts say, is paradoxically because of the rush to build schools and bring back children to the education fold. India managed to bring down the number of out-of-school children from 32 million in 2001 to 1.4 million in 2011 as part of a program to make elementary education universal. The landmark Right to Education Act of 2009 guarantees every child in India between the ages of 6 and 14 free education at a neighborhood school.

At the Happy Horizons Trust, our focus has primarily to look at improving the quality of education through improving the reading levels, writing levels, arithmetic skills and speaking levels. We have focused on the primary schools, as we believe that just like a building, the foundation has to be strong. If a child is able to develop good reading, writing, and speaking skills by the time they are in grade 3, we are pretty confident that the child will go on to do well in the higher classes.