The Programme – Facilitating R to L within the Library System in West Bengal

All children are born with immense potential, but only a very few are privileged enough to be born in an environment where this potential is tapped. At present, half of the world’s illiterate people live in India . And even the privileged often go through a mechanical process of ‘school going’ with a limited impact on their reading –learning capabilities.

EDUCATION is treated as an ‘investment’. Studies of economic returns to education suggest that - education is one of the best investments for development. Economic returns to education are highest from primary schooling and it has also been found that investment in female education has higher economic returns than male education. However in India public expenditure on education is very low (3.5 per cent of GNP) and school education, most of the time get neglected and receive less attention. India’s democracy will not be functional as long as so many Indian children stay out of school and while those fortunate are taught so little and so imperfectly.  

It has been observed in many reports that our education system and schools require priority attention for overall development of the country as a whole. Yet our school facilities are minimal – classrooms are overcrowded, school buildings are falling apart. Inadequate teaching staff and teaching aids makes the problem more acute. Dispiriting work environment, lack of respect from the local community; parents, themselves illiterate in many cases, are powerless and at the same time insensitive. Lacking faith in the system, parents are half-hearted in their efforts to send their children to school.  The children become the victim.

Last year PRATHAM conducted a dipstick survey in 19 states and stumbled upon a startling fact, that almost 50% of the school going children, in class V don’t know how to read, the figure for basic maths was far worse, not to talk about the writing ability..

To sustain and keep pace with the present acceleration of development in India we need to put little bit of extra speed and energy to achieve our objectives within a shorter time. 

Meeting the challenge of providing quality education to the masses, without any gender discrimination through formal as well as informal means shall have to be seen in new light. The strive for quality education for all requires greater acceleration and all stakeholders have to reorient resources keeping in mind that elementary education is a pre-requisite for sustainable development besides addressing the social objective of Education for All. Efforts should be maintained to translate community mobilization into quality schooling for all. 

PRATHAM is a large-scale citizens’ initiative based in Mumbai and Delhi . Pratham’s goal is “Every Child in School…. and Learning Well” which means… to bring every child in India to school, and ensure they remain within the formal school system, by enhancing their basic reading ability and simple mathematical computational ability.  This is achieved by employing one or all of the following Pratham programmes: Learning to Read (L2R), Reading to Learn (R2L), and Community Library.  The focus is on improving the reading ability of in-school children, so that they remain within the school system and teach the out-of-school children reading, employing an accelerated reading technique, and bridge them to formal school system. Currently, Pratham works in 14 states of the country, in both urban and rural areas. This is their first project in West Bengal .

INSPIRATION (Institute for Planning, Innovative Research Appropriate Training and Extension) is a West Bengal based not-for-profit organisation, which was started 10 years ago by a group of IIT Kharagpur Alumni. Over the last 10 years, INSPIRATION has undertaken major consultancy projects as well as grassroot implementation programmes with National and International sponsors.

This tripartite partnership will work with Calcutta Foundation being the coordinating and fund raising partner, Pratham rendering resource support and INSPIRATION implementing the grass root programmes in the various districts of West Bengal .

A library is expected to have catchments of 250 households and will serve around 500 children in the age group 4-14. The library will not only be a literary endeavour for activities such as lending books, story telling and writing sessions, but will also be an activity place where children will be encouraged to perform various art and craft exercises, making them more creative.

The pilot phase of this partnership has already started in the month of June 2006 in 7 blocks of 6 districts (North 24 Parganas, Bankura, Dakshin Dinajpur, Darjeeling , Cooch Behar and Hooghly ) which have been chosen. In the 7 selected blocks, 5 community libraries have started functioning in 5 villages.

Into the fourth month of commencement of the community libraries, a total village survey will be performed to assess the reading and basic mathematical computational ability of all children between ages of 4-14. Depending on the outcome of the survey, intervention-reading classes (L2R – R2L) will be started in each village.

The libraries and the reading classes will be manned and conducted by community volunteers. They would be trained in pedagogic methods by the Pratham technical team. A problem with this approach is often the inadequacy of child friendly reading material in most Indian languages. This calls for a continuous process of development, translation and publication of children’s books in different languages. In addition, e-books and interactive courseware stored in computers could solve this problem to some extent where typically a huge repository can be stored in a laptop and then several computers can actually be connected to it. The laptop could also move from one library to another, which would serve as a strategy for community mobilisation.   

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