ALAPPUZHA: Manasa, a project introduced by the Mararikulam South Gram Panchayat two years ago to help out academically backward children has become a model for other gram panchayats. The panchayat is now able to provide better education for all. The project identified 147 students from impoverished socio-economic backgrounds and conducted group counselling for them and their parents. Nearly 21 delegates who attended the recently concluded BRICS conference visited the panchayat earlier this month to study Manasa.
Dr R. Jayaprakash, the project coordinator said they launched the project after the panchayat identified at least 24.5 per cent of children from four Upper Primary Schools run under the jurisdiction of the panchayat to be academically backward in a study carried out in 2013. The project is at present implemented among Upper Primar school students. As many as six resource persons were appointed to handle such students,” he said. The project funded by the panchayat is based on “individualised educational intervention” method. According to Mr Jayaprakash, the students part of the project were categorised as mild, moderate and severe based on their calibre. They were then given one-on-one individual training every week with the resource person who is paid Rs 10,000 as salary by the panchacyat every month.
“When an academic year is over, we did set up an external evaluation committee. It had randomly selected students to test their ability to grasp things. The committee found 55.5 per cent improvement ranging from mild to moderate and severe to next higher level. The project has proved to be a great success in the panchayat,” he claimed. Indira Thilakan, president of the panchayat, pointed out that the academic backwardness was caused among children of the panchayat mainly due to three reasons: learning disability, mental retardation, psycho-socio problems.
“As part of the project, the team of resource persons periodically visit each student’s house and they educate parents on how to create an atmosphere that is friendly for academics at homes. With the success of the project, there was a huge demand from parents and teachers to scale it up to higher standards. However, we restricted it to Upper Primary school level due to fund crunch,” she added. The project was hailed by delegates who visited panchayat for the first time in the state. Swarup Das, a BRICS delegate said that that this model can be adopted nation-wide.
