Chandigarh, February 26: With the government having launched pre-primary classes in its schools, the Education Department is facing a Herculean task to ensure its success. High on creativity and effort, the department’s exercise to train teachers for newly introduced classes is like a bid to scale seemingly unassailable mountain looking at the available resources.
The attempt faces a number of inbuilt contradictions, which first need to be straightened out before any noticeable results can be expected.Teaching for trainers of the pre-school staff is currently under way in Chandigarh for classes from the forthcoming session. The department has already enrolled 1.6 lakh children to pre-schools after the programme started in August 2017.
This data does not include more than 3.5 lakh (3-6 years) children supposedly enrolled in anganwadis, said Hargobind Kaur, president, All Punjab Anganwadi Employees’ Union.
Schools are saying they got fresh admissions, while anganwadi workers are on a protest for the past more than a month, alleging that the government schools had taken away their children, which will eventually lead to the closure of the centres.
Hargobind Kaur said: “The Centre has released Rs 100 crore for anganwadis in the state, but the Congress government has not released a single penny.”While the issue hangs fire, the department has no choice, but to take on the challenge of pre-school education. Parents in large numbers, even in villages, are sending their children to private institutions for pre-school education.
Parents still need to be convinced about the availability of right kind of infrastructure, including staff, at government schools. Dissatisfied with just Class XII-qualified staff in anganwadis, a large number of parents had shifted their wards to private schools.
The ongoing education programme to train teachers is impressively being carried out in Chandigarh. However, the challenge is to convince the parents for higher enrolments.
Sunder Singh, a mason from Sherpur village in Jalandhar, said: “We had enrolled our son in a private school because the anganwadis did not teach him anything. Now, he has learnt English poems and stories at his school.
”Sunil Verma, a teacher at Government Primary School, Raoke Hithar village in Ferozepur, said: “We may not have achieved the enrolment target since the announcement of the programme. But slowly more and more people are showing faith in us. The teachers are now trained to teach small children in an effective way, involving dancing, singing and skits.”
The training programme here is being carried out in six different workshops. Teachers are learning the nuances of make the classroom teaching interesting with music and colours to impress the young minds. As many as 20 resource personnel from the Pado Punjab Padao Punjab unit of the department and 12 from NGO Prarham are training 1,300 teachers in Chandigarh.
These teachers will teach the staff in approximately 13,000 primary schools.The challenge now is to impress upon the staff to accept the innovation in teaching positively. A senior teacher of a primary school in Barnala said: “Teaching pre-school children is not our job.
This is the job of specialised staff who have studied childcare for at least two years. Our department is carrying out a mockery of the exercise.”Krishan Kumar, Secretary, School Education, and programme designer, said: “We have completed the first phase of our training to make a beginning.
There is a great enthusiasm among learners who are seeing the immediate impact of the training. There are at least three more phases coming up. We don’t expect to reach our destination tomorrow. It is a long journey, which has begun with our first step.”
Under the current agreement, trained schoolteachers are required to visit anganwadis for an hour daily to teach children. It is, however, impossible to cover around 27,000 anganwadis by the existing staff strength.
For instance, in Bathinda, Thandewal village has 11 anganwadis, Mehraj 30 and in Muktsar, Lambi 12, Bhagsar 10 and Lakhewali 12. With limited staff in primary schools, it is impossible to go to all anganwadis separately.
The planners, however, see no shortage of teachers for the programme. Vajinder, state coordinator of NGO Pratham, said: “Schoolteachers are handling one of six the components of anganwadi care — teaching. Certain others included health, food and cleanliness. They are scared for doing such jobs”.
A large number of primary schools do not have adequate space for the newly launched pre-primary classes. A woman teacher based in Mansa said: “We do not have the required means.
We can imagine that the situation will be similar to that of a fish market when the new session begins.”A sizable number of existing government schools does not have helpers to take care of pre-school children, which is a very important aspect for this category of classes.
A Tarn Taran-based teacher said: “Isn’t the department expecting a little extra from us. Do they want us to change their diapers? Children in this category are very young and need special care. I have got calls from many teachers who said they will not handle the sanitation part.
”Daljit Singh, a teacher at a primary school in Multania village in Bathinda, said: “The involvement level of the staff undergoing training as cluster heads is very high. Improvement is being tabulated on a daily basis.
The results of our attempt will hold relevance in the earnestness with which the teachers we train deliver the results on ground”.
Source Tribune India
