As a retired Engineer and Finance professional, residing in Santacruz West,Mumbai I volunteered for the last three years, to improve the quality of education in Municipal {inner city} Schools of the H-West Ward. Since then I have been a part of Citizens Association for Child Rights (CACR) ,a citizen's initiative, trying my best, to help improve conditions in these Municipal schools. Our group has covered nearly 40 schools, largely the Primary and Upper Primary sections in Marathi, English, Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada (8 Indian languages) medium schools.
Unfortunately, there are very few Municipal Secondary schools in this ward (and Mumbai as a whole), owing to which students who want to pursue education beyond Elementary level (under RTE post-Std VII) are either forced to look for expensive options or are compelled to forgo their formal education.
My role is to coordinate CACR volunteers and help improve, to the extent possible, education related activities in the schools of our Ward.
As per the latest data available, there are less than 3.5 lac students in Municipal Schools in Mumbai. Over the last few years, despite increasing budgets, there has been a marked decline in student enrollment. To mitigate this, our focus today has been largely to improve their Spoken English skills and impart Basic Computer skills. These two facets are considered critical and expected to greatly improve employment opportunities. With this in mind, the effort has been to procure relevant material through tie-ups and impart the information to as many students as possible.
Collaborations have been made with the Bombay Community Public Trust (BCPT) and Tata Interactive Systems for Spoken English, and IIT Bombay (IIT B) for Basic Computer skills - multi lingual ‘Spoken Tutorial’ videos developed by IIT B 'with support from the Human Resource Development -HRD Ministry of the Govt. of India'
CACR’s effort towards fuller / more complete the implementation of the Virtual Class Rooms (VCR), in quite a few schools has encouraged favourable developments in these schools.The number of schools covered by the VCR project will progressively increase from the present coverage of 480, including 360 Primary schools. This is expected to give a great boost / thrust to the reach of CACR’s efforts.
The introduction of Semi-English by the MCGM in conjunction with British Council , right from Std. I, is likely to help improve enrollment in the near future. CACR is, in its own way, making a conscious effort to make the parents of enrolled students aware of the facilities available in these schools and trying to publicise the rights and entitlements of the students. Over the next few years, the objective is to teach Mathematics and Science, to students of all mediums of instruction, in English.
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| Mr.Mirchandani and other other CACR members interacting with students & parents at a community centre |
As a CACR volunteer, I have been on the School Management Committee of the Laxmi Nagar school, near Khar Gymkhana, Khar W, closely monitoring its progress. Despite our efforts at improving enrollments, the declining trend is yet to be arrested. Partly it is the growing aspirations of the parents to enroll their children in English medium schools. Most importantly, the quality of education imparted in these schools needs substantial improvement.
If in the Metros, conditions of these schools are substantially below expectations, then the position in the interiors of Maharashtra State would be unimaginable. The available facilities are not being optimally utilised for the benefit of the children attending these schools.
The running of these schools needs to be closely monitored. The approach is to ‘hand hold’ and in the process strengthen the hands of MCGM in this gigantic task. The focus is to make the system work and link Authority with Accountability.
Efforts are always on strengthen the pool of CACR volunteers to increase the reach.So come and join us in our endeavour
-Mr. M. Mirchandani, CACR.
This is the second article in the series of volunteer journey's with CACR on our first anniversary
The first article can be read HERE
-Mr. M. Mirchandani, CACR.
This is the second article in the series of volunteer journey's with CACR on our first anniversary
The first article can be read HERE
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