CHENNAI: For over a year now, we have heard governments, policy-makers, economists, journalists and your family WhatsApp group discuss — on varying degrees of merit and accuracy if the pandemic could be a great leveller. While, for the most part, it has only helped to lay bare the stark inequality rampant in even the most advanced nations, we are still divided on the leveller debate.
But, in this corner of the world, the pandemic has allowed WOW (Wings of Wonder) Schools to wield the undisputed leveller of education and offer the medium of opportunity to curious children. For over a month now, students of three government and aided schools have had the chance to try their hand at various co-curricular and extra-curricular courses, from phonics to tribal art and robotics to aero modelling. And there’s more to come.
This project is yet another manifestation of one ultimate aim — to bridge the gap between the opportunities that come easily for a privileged child in an elite private school and his/her counterpart in a government or aided school, says Sam Nicholas, the founder. WOW Schools had been able to offer courses in Language Development, Art Expression and STEM Modules to students who can afford it; this summer, they are taking this to underprivileged children in two ways.
“We are negotiating with these brands (partners like Helen O’Grady, Prag Robotics and Helios Science Learning) and brought down the cost of these courses from `2,000 per year to `400. But, we understand that even `400 for extra courses can be unaffordable for some students when paying the school fees itself is difficult. So, we are getting associated with organisations like the Madras Management Association (MMA) to cover the project under their CSR funding,” he explains.
Learning the course
For MMA, this project perfectly aligned with their interest in reaching out to young students and working towards their growth. “The idea is to focus on class 6 to 8 group, the age where they are amenable to change. Once they reach class 10 or 11, they have very set ideas. And we also wanted to work with poor students. Hence, we picked schools where the parents’ annual income is less than Rs 60,000 per annum,” elaborates Group Captain Vijayakumar, MMA’s executive director. That is how students of Lady Shivaswamy School for Girls, Mylapore; PS School for Boys, Mylapore; and Vedavalli Vidhyalaya, Ranipet, became the beneficiaries of this academic project. What was supposed to be a 15-day course for one batch of students has already been extended to accommodate a second batch, thanks to the number of students taking interest in the courses.
Pradyumna RN of Prag Robotics reports that students have been very interactive and quite excited to learn through courses of problem-solving (with programming) and machine learning. “We are able to help them understand how human beings are able to think and act based on what’s happening around us. Then, we’re showing them how it is quite similar to how robots are also going to react when they give them intelligence and the capacity to do their bidding. We’re also teaching them about critical thinking,” he shares, giving an insight into what his sessions are like. Besides the usual issues of connectivity that have become inevitable with online learning, they have managed to make the best of these sessions, he says.
In the arena of language, the students and their ability only served to break the preconceived notions one has with government schools, says Gauri Chakravarthy, a trainer with Helen O’Grady International. The hour-long sessions that this reporter got to witness — be it robotics or language communications — had the students learning advanced concepts or stepping up to display their newly acquired knowledge of drama elements. On their part, they have been heaping praises about how brilliant the classes have been, how accessible and effective the trainers are and how exciting these subjects are.
Achieving goals
That way, the programmes have achieved everything that it set out to do, shares Sam. “These programmes are not designed like traditional summer camps. There’s this concept called learning ability loss. A dosa master can be an expert after having done the job for five years. But, if she were to take a break for two years and return, he would have to work more to catch up. Now, students have been promoted without having attended regular classes. There are likely to struggle in their higher classes. We wanted to bring these in as bridge courses. Instead of keeping it entirely academic, we wanted to add some fun to it,” he explains. Mission accomplished, it looks like.
On MMA’s part, Vijayakumar says that they want to take a similar initiative to college students, providing them access to resources and opportunities that have been out of reach. For these school projects, MMA is also looking at addressing the entire ecosystem instead of just focussing on the kids. “We started taking care of teachers, empowering them through different programmes — like how to make the best of smart classrooms. We are also trying to improve the infrastructure in the classroom. And, at the end of the day, successful CSR work can only be done with the effective cooperation of the school management. So, we’re working with all of them,” he explains.
WOW Schools too has a similar approach, says Sam, clarifying that their offer is not just for one school but the school ecosystem. Under what’s titled School Transformation and Empowerment Programme (STEP), they are trying to address students, teachers, school management and parents. “We have programmes for all four stakeholders. Only by involving everybody in a collaborative way can the school be transformed and the students will benefit,” notes Sam, inviting like-mided people and organisations to partner with them and deliver these programmes to more and more beneficiaries.