The Foundation works in the area of elementary education to pilot and develop ‘proofs of concept’ that have a potential for systemic change in India’s 1.3 million government-run schools. The Foundation focuses on working in rural areas where the majority of these schools exist. The choice to work with elementary education (Class I to VIII) in rural government-run schools follows from evidence of educational attainment in India, a summary of which is presented below … (full text vision).
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Address: Advocacy and Communication, Azim Premji Foundation, 134 Doddakannelli, Next to Wipro Corporate Office, Sarjapur Road, Bangalore – 560035, India;
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About /Approach: … The Foundation aims to contribute to large scale systemic change at macro level through deeper understanding of the micro level.
We believe that Teacher and Education Administrator are at the core of this systemic change and we must help them develop a vision for education, build their capability to deliver that vision and create a motivating environment in which they can deliver it.
As per our current understanding, the critical factors which impact the vision, capability and motivation of the teacher and education administrator are:
i) Curriculum
- Curriculum, in this definition, includes what is worth learning; how it can be taught keeping in mind the psychology, the theory and practice of learning; and how does one know that learning is indeed taking place. If a typical teacher and education administrator believes that what is worth learning is memorizing whole lot of ‘facts’, then that is what gets taught and learnt. Therefore, we need to help teachers and education administrators to understand what is good education and impact their vision of good education.
ii) Public Examinations
- Public examinations at various grades and professional examinations can by themselves give strong signals to the teachers and education administrators on what is worth learning. Currently typical public examinations are more focused to test merely rote learning – and therefore give wrong signals.
iii) Teacher Preparation and Support
- Best of our young people do not opt for teaching, and those who join we do not prepare them well for their profession. Moreover, the quality of on-going academic support to teacher is also very poor. Therefore, capability of a typical teacher to deliver on the vision of good education is doubtful.
iv) Management of education system: … (full text).