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How an initiative to change the fate of schoolkids in Haryana’s Nuh is panning out | India News

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On the verandah of the primary block of Government Senior Secondary School, Ghasera, in Haryana’s Nuh, 34-year-old Lakshmi Deswal is overseeing 60 class 4 students working on addition and multiplication problems. The class is large, but students in the school have previously been part of even larger classes amid the skewed student-teacher ratio there, much like in other government schools in the district.

Deswal, however, is not a full-time teacher employed by the school. She is a shiksha sahayak, who is among more than 600 similar people hired on a contract-basis by the Haryana government in July 2022 to fill the gap left by the large number of vacancies in teaching positions in Nuh.

According to the district administration, since the shiksha sahayaks’ introduction, not only has the student-teacher ratio got better, there has also been a marked improvement in learning outcomes.

Nuh is the only district in NCR and Haryana to be in the list of NITI Aayog’s aspirational districts – the 112 most backward districts across the country on various parameters such as health, education, nutrition, financial inclusion and skill development. Nuh started off as one of the most backward districts in this list, but secured the third rank overall in the September 2023 monthly report, and 11th rank for education.

ghasera haryana school “The schools complying with the pupil-teacher ratio according to RTE norms have also increased from 7.6% to 52%,” Mufeed Ahmed, the principal consultant to the Nuh DC, said.

As per a report from Nuh District Education Officer, in March 2022, at the primary level, as many as 2,451 (54.4%) teachers’ posts were vacant, against a requirement of 4,500; and at the middle level, 1,604 (51.4%) posts were vacant against a requirement of 3,117. Only 7.6% of schools were complying with the Right To Education (RTE) Act-mandated student-teacher ratio of 30:1.

Festive offer

It was after this that the state government and the district administration started hiring shiksha sahayaks. They were hired, with the help of NGOs, from the village in which each school was located, or from within a 4-km radius.

Around 56% of the shiksha sahayaks are below 30 years of age, and 51% are from the minority community. Of the total 603 shiksha sahayaks, 302 are women.

“Nuh was divided into five blocks with an NGO given responsibility to select shiksha sahayaks from each block. We have been conducting regular assessments. We are also assessing the classes to see if the shiksha sahayaks are adding value to classes compared to regular teachers,” said Mufeed Ahmed, the principal consultant to the Nuh DC.

They have already found a significant improvement in learning outcomes.

According to the administration, In Hindi and Maths, there has been a 10% increase in the average score above 80, a 30% increase in scores between 60 and 80, and 10% improvement in scores between 40 and 60.

“The schools complying with the pupil-teacher ratio according to RTE norms have also increased from 7.6% to 52%,” Ahmed said.

haryana shiksha sahayak Muhsina Ahmed, shiksha sahayak at Kherla Government Senior Secondary School.

Teachers also noted that classes have been getting higher attendance, especially from girl students, since the implementation of the scheme as they found it easier to interact with the shiksha sahayaks who come from their own neighbourhoods.

Deswal, who is originally from Uttar Pradesh but has been living in Ghasera for 13 years, said the fact that she spoke the students’ dialect and understood their culture helped bring them closer to her.

She is one of two primary teacher (PRT) shiksha sahayaks to have joined the primary block of the Ghasera school, which has 1,792 enrolled students from classes 1 to 5. It has 20 permanent teachers, and the students are divided into 21 sections.

“When our contracts ended in June this year, it took three months before we were reinstated, and the students were calling me from their parents’ phones asking me to visit them,” she said. A BSc graduate with a junior basic training diploma, she teaches English, Hindi, Maths and Environmental Studies at the school.

One of Deswal’s students, 13-year-old Shifa, says without hesitation: “Ma’am is our favourite teacher.”

Shifa started school only in 2021, when it opened after the pandemic. Now, she can read English and Hindi, and solve basic mathematical problems. Her 11-year-old sister, Sama, is also in the same class.

In the upper primary section, 29-year-old Jyoti works as a trained graduate teacher (TGT) shiksha sahayak. Those brought in as TGT shiksha sahayaks can teach higher classes than those brought in as PRTs.

nuh government schools Shiksha sahayaks Lakshmi and Jyoti with students

Taking her Maths class on a verandah as all the classrooms are occupied, she watches proudly as an 11-year-old solves a multiplication problem in just 10 seconds. “When I joined last year, I had to teach multiplication tables from scratch. But now they have become better at it,” Jyoti said.

Another TGT shiksha sahayak, 30-year-old Muhsina Ahmed, teaches at Kherla’s Government Senior Secondary School, three kilometres away. She said the number of girls in the school increased after three women shiksha sahaks were employed.

“There are seven shiksha sahayaks in the school, and they have helped give the children a sense of belonging as we speak the same dialect, and share the same culture. Girls come up to me and say they want to grow up and become teachers. Though the salary is low, this makes me want to stay here,” Muhsina said.

A PRT shiksha sahayak gets a salary of Rs 17,340 per month, while a TGT shiksha sahayak gets Rs 20,340. However, according to Deswal, the salaries have been pending for many months.

Nuh DC Dhirender Khadgata said that though five months’ salary is pending, Rs 3 crore had been released on November 22 to clear the dues.



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Mohd Aman

Editor in Chief Approved by Indian Government

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