Sandhi - The Connect

The government school system in India breeds inequalities, failures, and dropouts. The levels of literacy achieved at each level of education are highly subpar. School closures due to the COVID19 pandemic are widening inequalities, enhancing the disadvantage of finding employment, and becoming an obstacle to female participation in an increasingly technological future. When girls at schools are denied access to education, they become more vulnerable to horrific forms of exploitation and sexual abuse. 

Our initiative is a platform that interlinks the students of governmental and private schools and acts as a mutual support system for both student categories, similar to CSR. We further intend to create a cloud based virtual classroom that will use AI to offer tailored content for each child, based on their proficiency, age, and education level - providing a conducive environment to deliver content that transforms the learning process into a dynamic experience to develop literacy.

While government schools have been promised a multitudinous array of excellent features, they have been unable to deliver quality, holistic education. Based on reports and surveys conducted by team Sandhi in the Government Girls School in two villages, Jharsa and Kanhai - the root cause of the poor performance get concentrated to:

> Inefficient Incentives: Measures to incentivise school going children have failed to generate the required wave of permutation, primarily due to the poor implementation of schemes.

> Unqualified and Lack of Teachers: Education officers have themselves admitted that the qualification of teachers (PUC + D.Ed) is insufficient. The low number of teachers is supplemented with a lack in the comprehension and improper teaching methodologies.

> Poor Infrastructure: Basic facilities like washrooms, physical education grounds are lacking, completely destroying the idea of a conducive environment for education.

> Unsupportive Families: Parents are indifferent to their child's learning due to the lack of awareness regarding the benefits of education. 

There is also longstanding neglect, insufficient financing and accountability, and a lack of motivation among teachers to pay special attention to children from lower castes. 

Sandhi - The Connect proposes a two-fold solution that, if implemented properly, has the potential to revolutionize the entire spectrum of education in government schools.

> In-person Education (currently implemented): In this segment, private schools build teams of interested and capable students that create a provision for buddy mentoring - based on a peer education system. This team could organize seminars or discussions on personality development, communication, education on a regular basis. They have micro exchange programs, co-curricular activities, day camps, subject clubs and house systems to facilitate healthy competition. Government schools collaborate with local administration and derive resources to hone the skills of their students.

> Cloud-based Learning (future prospects): Based on surveys conducted by Team Sandhi, almost every student has at least one mobile device that is capable of connecting to the internet. In this segment, we intend to build a web-based virtual school which allows instructors and learners to connect remotely to shared immersive thematic classrooms. This platform will comprise quality open-source educational content like MITOCW and Khan Academy. This ensures that such students have proper access to podcasts and videos of their curriculum that they can follow at home, at their own pace.

Sandhi - The Connect primarily impacts students (especially females) to gain access to quality education and prevent them from being left behind due to the currently subpar education provided in government schools. 

The low transition rate from primary to secondary school is occasioned by high incidences of poverty, ignorance and limited number of secondary schools - but since Sandhi reduces costs, improves quality of education and infrastructure (derived by local administration and the adopting school), it acts as a genuinely solid incentive for students to attend school.

Upon spreading awareness about the importance of quality education, we make parents realise how this could be crucial in the future employment scenario of their children.

Lastly, teachers gain access to a wide range of resources to improve their teaching methodologies, thereby creating a favourable situation for quality education.