Sometimes in the month of August, even during heavy rains, there are days when the sky is bright blue and the sun shines brightly on the treetops. On such days, it almost feels that you can see till far, far away. Today is a day like that. Let us gaze into the distance and in our mind’s eye, imagine what a school can be like in the future.
Building foundations: The school for small children has four rooms built around a big internal courtyard. Each of these rooms has doors that connect into their neighbouring rooms. Wide verandas wrap around the school building on the outside. The rooms are brightly painted; children’s work decorates the walls. Shelves with colourful books and interesting toys and materials invite one to touch, smell, see and use. Although this is a school exclusively for children between the ages of four and eight, families are welcome. Young parents, siblings and grandparents love coming to school and spending time with their children and others. For building strong foundations for learning, young children must be exposed to varieties of activities across domains. The aim in the foundation stage is to encourage children to explore and to acquire a breadth of skills that enable them to investigate the world around them. This phase of a child’s life should be seen as a continuum and stage rather than a series of age-grade classes.
Let us walk through our foundation school. Right now, it is the time for cognitive activities. In every room, children are absorbed and busy. Activities range from easy tasks like arranging sticks in order of size or separating potatoes from the onions—to harder activities like puzzles. Teachers gently encourage each child to try different activities, nudging some towards more challenging ones. The rooms are available to all. Children seem to settle in the room where the set of activities are best suited to them. The experience is one of active progression through a continuum. For parents, their enthusiastic engagement with their children’s learning is fuelled by the fact that when they were in grade 1 or 2, schools were much more academic and structured. They are fascinated to see how children are developing confidence and skills in this happy space.
Connecting to the world around: Not far from this is another building for children who are anywhere between 10 and 15 years old. Here, children spend as much time outside in the community as they do in the classroom. Their activities are done in small groups of four or five. Today, they are busy with “water”. Rainfall has to be measured and charted on a daily basis. Groundwater sources have to be mapped; canals, streams, ponds, rivers, streams have to be tracked. The children are building a water history for their neighbourhood. The older people in their families and communities are amused by the detailed questions that the teenagers ask about rainfall, irrigation, floods and droughts. Teachers are relishing taking ownership of linking children to their immediate context. In earlier times, textbook content was all that mattered. It used to be more about ensuring teaching than supporting learning. But now there are so many more opportunities to move beyond theories and meaningfully connect to live phenomena. No longer is it necessary to compartmentalise topics within subject boundaries. It is perfectly fine to think about evaporation and condensation and also sing songs about rain, enjoy poems about monsoons. Each group of children carefully documents what they are finding and are uploading it to their district water portal—each school playing a major part in contributing to understanding ecological and social changes happening near them.
Choosing the path forward: As soon as the student is 16, she or he has to be connected to an enterprise and establishment nearby. For two years, young people participate for some hours a day in the world of work. Some employers actively seek apprentices. Some young people take initiative to find work that is of their interest. For others, it is still an uphill challenge. But it is now widely accepted that local economies must contribute to and gain from their young people’s effort and learning.
Of course, they still are schools. But, these are not organised by grades; instead, they are set up as subject areas. A student can either take basic “courses” in many subjects or go deeper into a few. No longer do students have to wait for a whole year to move into a new class. No more are they tense about year-end examinations that will decide the course of their lives. Best of all, today any student can go to an ‘ATM’—anytime testing machine—and test themselves in any subject at the level that they choose. Thanks to adaptive technologies, you can take tests as many times as you want and your best score will be recorded. Along with the testimonials from their work, their ATM test scores accumulate over time. Armed with these experiences from their high school years, young people can go forth into the world.
How far away are we from these schools of the future? The National Education Policy 2020 has outlined many of these transformative pathways. How quickly can we change our school systems and revise our family aspirations to support new and more meaningful ways for our children to learn for school, learn for life and learn for work?
The author is CEO, Pratham Education Foundation
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