The 3 R’s and beyond (empowering through education)
Education
Around 22% of Kolkata’s children, mostly from low-income families without steady livelihoods, still do not go to school. These families’ access to education is handicapped, and CSP has long worked to redress this and to create a pre-school – primary – secondary infrastructure that responds to the learning and schooling needs of children in this category, by fitting into their circumstances and environment.
Socialisation, self-expression and personality development are guiding principles of CSP work as it reaches beyond the catchments of the city’s formal school system to serve the young who are excluded.
CSP educational programmes cover primary schooling, non-formal schooling and remedial & education support thereof up to middle and secondary schooling. Access to education is the most tenuous among
Kolkata’s more than a million strong street dwelling populations.
CSP Street Education Centres are learning ambience and family helpline rolled in one – providing the children and their families with the underpinning of a cared for childhood.
Primary Schooling
Formal pre primary and primary schooling is provided through the Balwadi (kindergarten) and the Garden for Children Primary School.
Garden for children primary school
From one shack with a broken tiled roof and rammed earth floor, to the present building, the Primary School was the first institution created by CSP from scratch – a resource for the community, located in the community. Today it is a Government-aided school with teachers appointed by the Government and CSP.
Along with learning, the school very actively encourages sports and creative expression – art and crafts, music, dance and theatre.
Year after year, the school’s children take away top prizes at the District and State athletics competitions.
It is acknowledged by the Government as one of the city’s top primary schools, in recognition of which, when David Milliband (now Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, UK and then Junior Minister in charge of Education, UK) came on a visit to Kolkata, the D.I. office selected CSP’s Garden for Children as the showcase primary school for him to visit and spend over an hour in.
Balwadi
CSP runs two Balwadi units – both now located in the Home premises at Motilal Nehru Road.
In the CSP Balwadi programme, basti children between 2 and 5 years experience their first introduction to any kind of learning processes and receive pre-primary education. The stress is on building up the attendance habit, and participation in class, aimed to build a child’s attention span, and instil in them a habit of attending school. Group activities are stressed for moulding the child to function as a member of a group and ready him for the process of learning, inculcating basic hygiene and discipline, manners and behaviour. An informal learning process ( “ joyful learning method“ ) is followed through nursery rhymes, familiarisation with shapes and colours through songs, pictures and toys. They are also taught to participate in recreational activities, recitation, song, dance, art and craft.
Each unit is in the charge of a trained attendant along with a helper.
Basic nutrition is also provided to the children through cooked meals as per the Government of India’s “Integrated Child Development Scheme” (ICDS) norms.
The Balwadis are linked to CSP’s Primary School in Manoharpukur – admission into which begins their formal schooling, and serves as a springboard to secondary education.
Non -formal schooling
Along with formal schooling system, CSP also provides non-formal schooling to underprivileged children who are unable to attend formal schools due to mismatch of age with class admission norms or inability to meet formal school hours due to family constraints
Street children education centres
CSP has been working with street children since 1991 even before the Union Govt entered the arena with its structured “Integrated Programme for Street Children”.
The Street Children’s Programme is run with 90% funding from Ministry of Women & Child Development, Government of India and under its auspices. The programme seeks impart the three R’s and prepare Street Children for admission into formal schools with a view to mainstreaming the children living in slums and streets into the educational system and following up and supporting their progress thereafter.
The guiding criterion is to bring education to the doorstep of the street child.
Over the years, CSP has deepened and broadened its work in the Integrated Street Children Programme that now covers 4 street and park-based education centres – in Madan Street and Bowbazar in central Kolkata and Chetla, Kalighat and Harish Mukherjee Road in the south of the city. The timings of the each of the centres are given below:
• Madan Street 07.30 to 10.00 hrs
• Bowbazar 07.30 to 10.30 hrs
• Chetla, Kalighat 08.00 to 11.00 hrs
• Harish Mukherjee Road 07.30 to 10.30 hrs
Apart from academics, the curriculum in this programme includes vocational training in craft and needlework. Drama, singing, painting and sports activities are some of the co-curricular activities in which children are trained in and participate enthusiastically when programmes are put up as in CSP Annual Function and the advocacy programmes. About 350 children are provided education through this programme.
Paschim chowbaga mukta vidyalaya
CSP’s largest learning centre, established in 1987 is located at the eastern fringes of the city.
This school pioneered the educational process in the backward region of Paschim Chowbaga especially where girls were concerned. It has had a transformational effect on the locality over the years.
The programme curriculum is formulated and closely supervised by SHISKHALAYA PRAKALPA programme (implemented through Loreto Day School, Sealdah) through the Government of India’s City Level Plan of Action (CLPOA). The education process and method follows the system set by Shikshalaya Prokalpa. Examinations conducted by Loreto Day School are held half yearly & annually. Teachers are assessed regularly.
The mobile library provided mainly by Loreto Day School is of great interest and help to those who have few other means to access textbooks.
Full Mid-day meals, cooked with participation of the local community, are provided daily.
Currently around 220 children are on the rolls of this school.
Educational support and remedial education
Education for children with this deprived background needs to be inclusive of working children who cannot go to school and dropouts who are not able to continue. CSP’s remedial and educational support programmes not only provide these children flexible resources to obtain education but also enable them to continue education beyond the primary level.
Remedial education is, on the other hand, geared to cover the gaps within the education system which leaves the underprivileged child uncompetitive as against his more fortunate peers.
Scholarship & drop-out prevention programme
The Scholarship & Drop-out Prevention Programme seeks to support promising and motivated children who have passed the primary stage in CSP schools to continue their education in Government-aided or private middle and high schools. Comprehensive educational, clothing and nutritional support is provided for beneficiaries.
The current number of beneficiaries for this programme is 90.
Tutorial institute
After the primary level, continuing education is an uphill task for underprivileged children. Apart from ever present financial constraints, the children are unable to face the competition in the middle and secondary schooling level with their more privileged compatriots. This is especially true in a system where the quality of formal education is very poor and there is enormous dependence on private tutors or teaching support from parents at home which is ruled out for such children.
Incapacity to employ private tutors or enrol in tutorial institutes causes such children to start dropping out of the mainstream educational system due to despondency brought about by inability to cope.
This problem prompted CSP to examine the feasibility of a tutorial centre for underprivileged children attending middle and senior schools (Class V to X) as well as for those who were attempting the school leaving certificate under open schooling.
The resultant Tutorial Institute was formally inaugurated on May 2, 2008 with support from Stichting Actie Calcutta of Netherlands. Located in the premises of the Garden for Children Primary School at 1/4 Monoharpukur 2nd Lane, CSP’s Tutorial Institute operates between 4 p.m. and 6.00 p.m.
Students are given remedial tutoring in all the 7 subjects of the West Bengal Madhyamik Board syllabus and that of the Rabindra Vidyalaya Council which is the open school for preparing students for Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examinations. Classes in each subject are held six days a week.
There are currently over 60 students and the numbers are increasing.
Non-formal study centre and remedial coaching
A CSP Non-formal Centre is operated out of the premises of Garden for Children at Monoharpukur Road and functions between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
The programme, was originally intended as a school for working children and those who were unable to go to formal schools or disqualified by virtue of age restrictions in enrolment.
This has been re-structured to also run also as a coaching and study facility to counter the problem of children from Class 1 to 5 living in teeming one room slum tenements having no space or environment to pursue school studies and homework.
Thus the Non Formal Education Centre at Monohorpukur serves two categories of slum students
a) children in the age group 6-14 who are excluded from formal schooling by virtue of age disqualification or other restraints from coping with formal school timings
b) children who attend formal primary schools but are bereft of any support of coaching or help to keep pace with their schoolwork and who lack the minimal environment of facilities to study at home; to ‘do their homework and prepare for examinations’.
With the amendment in the objectives of the Non Formal centre, a large number of students, not only from CSP schools but also from other schools have enrolled themselves. Tiffin is provided to all the students.
Currently about 60 children are enrolled in this centre now.
English communication skills programme
The mission of CSP is to break the generational transfer of poverty in underprivileged and marginalised children living in Calcutta’s streets and slums by providing a support system for them to enter mainstream economic life.
In today’s day and age, mainstream economic life requires a basic ability to communicate in English. However imperfectly, this is a must and complete inability to deal with the language will destroy the competitive ability of the aspiring underprivileged child. The medium of instruction in CSP schools is either Bengali or Hindi. The present teachers come from the generation when English was downgraded as a policy by the state government. Though English is a second language, verbal communication in English is almost non-existent at all levels in CSP education centres.
In November 2008 CSP decided to initiate a separate English Communications Skills Programme to upgrade both the standards of teaching, learning and communicating in English in all its educational programmes.
In February 2009, the programme was launched with teachers of
CSP’s Street and Balwadi programmes undergoing training to communicate in English.
In March 2010, the programme received a fillip with Lights of Hope partnering CSP to implement its Digital Pencils Plan in the street centres. The Plan incorporates teaching of English through laptops which also helps increase computer literacy.