CHENNAI: The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Karadi Path, an educational organisation, for a project to improve English proficiency among 31,000 first generation learners across 90 government primary schools in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts over the next three years.
Titled ‘Joyful Reading’, the project will incorporate innovative techniques including audio-visual equipment, said CP Vishwanath, director of Karadi Path Education Company, which is based in Adyar.
“The programme will be a derivative learning experience rather than teaching the language through words. It would involve four modes: action path through a command follow structure, music enabled learning, a story based learning and later through pictorial representations,” he said. The project has been implemented in a number of private as well as government schools in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Goa, and is designed to teach English based on Indian children’s innate ability to pick up vernacular languages without much effort, another official of KPEC said.
There will be 144 sessions of 40 minutes each spread across two academic years for children from classes 2-5. The ultimate aim of this exercise would be to enable the child think and speak in English, a difficulty faced by a first-generation learner, the project managers said.
On Tuesday, the project was kick started with an orientation programme for the head-teachers of the 90 schools.
Later, the teachers in the schools will also be trained. Base-line, mid-term and end-line assessments of the programme’s reach would be independently done by State agencies, Vishwanath said. Delivering her address, the State Project Director (SPD) of SSA Pooja Kulkarni said that it was a known fact that English proficiency among teachers was low. “Only if teachers get better at speaking English will the children learn. It is your responsibility to ensure that the learning of this exercise is passed on to your juniors as well as successors to enable the children learn the language better,” she said.