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Home School By Thinksharp Foundation
Home schooling for rural children - Need of the hour
Why do we need home-schooling?
COVID-19, has affected the globe in every way possible. We humans are taking every possible measure to survive during this pandemic. Unfortunately, some of us have lost our loved ones along the way. But as we know life never stops. Carrying those sacred memories, we humans move on and work harder to live a better life after passing all the troubles we face.
However, is that possible for everyone? Each of us have our own method of surviving through this phase but the rural children in our nation are stuck in this vicious spiral. Apart from battling the pandemic the long break from education that they have been on may restrict them from rejoining their school due to various reasons. These obstacles don’t just lead to poor quality of education, but also contribute to high dropout rates in rural schools - nearly 50 percent by the age of fourteen. The real struggle for them starts after the pandemic when they have their whole life ahead of them.
As a viable solution we turn towards digital education, but the inadequate circumstances make it impossible in rural areas of India. Most of the rural children do not have a computer, laptop, or a tablet in order to connect to their teachers or any other webinars, seminars, online classes etc. Even if they start school, it is going to be very difficult for teachers and students to be on top of finishing the academic syllabus in an effective manner.
What will be provided in home school project to rural school ?
Thinksharp Foundation (TSF) has planned to implement a home-schooling model, starting with Z.P. School, Gorhe Budruk village, Haveli, Pune. Under this project TSF will provide educational tablets to all 70 children from grades 4 to 7 of this school. These tablets will help them connect with their teachers to attend online classes and will also have a library of 1200 books to read along with other educational apps. This will allow them to study online and offline.
First Pilot of home school by Z.P School Ghore Budruk
One of the teachers of this school, Mr. Rajnikant Mendhe (Know more about him - https://www.rajnisir.in/ ) is trying best to connect children through Zoom, but the pilot project of online classes could not be continued as most of the children did not have a suitable device in order to move forward. He stresses on the element of urgency in this situation as students in the village are on the verge of abandoning their education.
Home schooling for rural children - Need of the hour
Why do we need home-schooling?
COVID-19, has affected the globe in every way possible. We humans are taking every possible measure to survive during this pandemic. Unfortunately, some of us have lost our loved ones along the way. But as we know life never stops. Carrying those sacred memories, we humans move on and work harder to live a better life after passing all the troubles we face.
However, is that possible for everyone? Each of us have our own method of surviving through this phase but the rural children in our nation are stuck in this vicious spiral. Apart from battling the pandemic the long break from education that they have been on may restrict them from rejoining their school due to various reasons. These obstacles don’t just lead to poor quality of education, but also contribute to high dropout rates in rural schools - nearly 50 percent by the age of fourteen. The real struggle for them starts after the pandemic when they have their whole life ahead of them.
As a viable solution we turn towards digital education, but the inadequate circumstances make it impossible in rural areas of India. Most of the rural children do not have a computer, laptop, or a tablet in order to connect to their teachers or any other webinars, seminars, online classes etc. Even if they start school, it is going to be very difficult for teachers and students to be on top of finishing the academic syllabus in an effective manner.
What will be provided in home school project to rural school ?
Thinksharp Foundation (TSF) has planned to implement a home-schooling model, starting with Z.P. School, Gorhe Budruk village, Haveli, Pune. Under this project TSF will provide educational tablets to all 70 children from grades 4 to 7 of this school. These tablets will help them connect with their teachers to attend online classes and will also have a library of 1200 books to read along with other educational apps. This will allow them to study online and offline.
First Pilot of home school by Z.P School Ghore Budruk
One of the teachers of this school, Mr. Rajnikant Mendhe (Know more about him - https://www.rajnisir.in/ ) is trying best to connect children through Zoom, but the pilot project of online classes could not be continued as most of the children did not have a suitable device in order to move forward. He stresses on the element of urgency in this situation as students in the village are on the verge of abandoning their education.
(Tablets distributed to students)
#SM4E #awards The Jury Panel has selected and recognised our initiative ‘Home School, by ThinkSharp Foundation as the SPECIAL MENTION in the Social Commerce, Crowdsourcing and Crowd Funding category for the year 2020-2021.
(Recent media coverage in Hindustan Times of Home Schooling program in Ghore Budruk school)Some more coverage -
Edex by The New Indian Express - https://www.edexlive.com/people/2020/aug/16/how-thinksharps-idea-of-providing-tablets-to-rural-kids-can-stop-them-from-becoming-dropouts-13844.htmlSakal News - https://www.esakal.com/pune/one-tab-use-two-students-start-online-learning-333553
In rural areas, disinterest in studies accounts for 20.24% of school children, hence some students, especially younger ones, may totally lose their interest for schooling, making it difficult to incentivise them back into school. More importantly, he says that a crisis like this forces the parents to take their kids to work to earn money and as soon as money starts flowing in parents become reluctant to send their kids back to school. Mr. Mendhe is working through all obstacles such as lack of resources, connectivity issues, and rural stereotypes to make his mission succeed. Despite these hurdles, the children that could attend these online classes, even for a short period of time, showed a high amount of interest and motivation towards learning more about the world around them. This showed us the need for development of digital infrastructure for these students so that their learning never stops!
Home school project - The future of education
TSF will start with Z.P. School, Gorhe Budruk village, as a pilot project. Albeit, If the pandemic continues, TSF would like to implement this home-schooling project in all the other schools TSF caters to. TSF currently runs a project called “StudyMall” in 51 rural schools in Maharashtra.
StudyMall is a project which strengthens rural schools with better educational infrastructure such as digital learning tools, libraries, computer education, electricity through solar energy etc. For more details visit https://thinksharpfoundation.org/#home
Benefits for the kids:
- The journey of educations continues for these kids
- User friendly tablets expedite the phase of introduction. Students will have access to complete academic content in multimedia format as per state board syllabus
- Student will not drop out of school
- Students will be engaged and connected with teachers
- Home-schooling through StudyMall will make rural education capable of providing interactive and hands-on learning experiences. In the long run this makes the kids confident and digitally literate when they go for higher education.
Tablet Costing - INR 10,000/- per tablet
Total Project Costing for 200 students INR 20,00,000/- (Including admin expenses)
Branded Education Tablet ( 4G + WiFi ) installed with academic syllabus, digital library of 1200 books, warranty.
