Teachers imparting 21st Century Skills

When children, regardless of their socio-economic differences, are educated together, everyone benefits.

Inclusive education differs from the mainstream model of education. Inclusion is about the child's right to participate and the school's duty to accept the child. Feeling included is not limited to physical and cognitive disabilities, but also includes the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and of other forms of human differences. Equitable and inclusive education system providing quality education to all irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds is  indispensable to establish a progressive, democratic society in substantive terms. With over 25 million kids enrolled in the state and mostly not receiving quality education, the situation calls for action because the one that do get quality education will quality education because of being privileged, will continue to perform better. Only a few would benefit but most will be left out.

Various researches and studies have shown that apart from distributive justice, equity
in education system is also important for the performance of an education system as a whole. : a 2012 report by the OECD states unambiguously: “The highest performing education systems are those that combine equity with quality”. This report shows that how equitable and socially inclusive education systems can also achieve higher learning outcomes on average. Thus, socially inclusive classrooms in elementary schools enhance overall learning outcome and all round development of students as responsible citizens.

There are several studies which demonstrate that a child of poor parents will remain
poor. It creates a vicious circle and the intervention point where this cycle must be broken is at schools. Given the fact that education is a tool to even out opportunities, if equal access to quality education is provided to all the children irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds, they will have greater access to opportunities available.

An impactful classroom is highly dependent on the inclusive practices and the pedagogical techniques for seamless integration of children from the varied socio-economic sections in their schools. However, many schools are not well equipped for the same. To help achieve the objective of the Social Inclusion into classroom and to enhance the capacities of the schools thereby ensuring harmony and inclusion within the classroom, which would lead to better student engagement and social capital building of the students further leading to improved learning, both cognitive and non-cognitive abilities, we want to digitise and build a webportal of training, where any teachers can take help of the technology to be prepared to improve build a socially inclusive classroom thereby increasing learning of children.

The objective of the web platform is to build and enhance the capacities of schools
on inclusive pedagogical technique for ensuring seamless integration of children from different backgrounds in their schools.

There are five key focus areas:

1) How do schools deal with parents and children during admission time.

2) Inclusive pedagogical techniques for school teachers

3) Inclusive practices and strategies for school principals and management

4) Post classroom monitoring and support for children and parents

5) Parents on-boarding for school teachers

We want to leverage the existing technology, which is not utilize at all to help teachers be connected and learn and build their capacity for creating impactful socially inclusive classrooms. There is no availability of on demand resources and training on Social inclusion and our solution would help the teaching community be equipped to handle the situation and leverage it to improve the learning of students. With increased penetration of mobile phone and cheaper data the solution is easily scalable with limited costs.

The ease of access and the on demand nature of the platform can only be fulfilled by technology. Getting the necessary resources and materials i.e. videos, researches, literature etc. can only be made available through technology. Without the use of technology the cost of such a program would be very high and thus it's reach would be very limited. all of the program would be made available through a web portal and mobile phone application, where any educator can access and be trained on building socially inclusive classroom and provide necessary support to parents and children.

Manually we have trained over 2000 teachers through 9 workshops but with the use of technology we expect to train 5000 teachers on social inclusion in the next 12 months.

In next 3 to 5 years our plan is to impact 10000 schools in India where teachers are trained to build socially inclusive classrooms and are reaping benefits for all. Once we have trained teachers in every school then eventually they will become master trainers in the schools and are the flag bearers of the social inclusion and will also train other that come in. This way the sustainability keeps rolling over.

Our plan for expansion will be primarily based on building partnerships with schools and its administration. We will use 2 avenues:

Government partnership: Public schools and Private Schools

Civil Society and Schools: Private Schools

The solution will be deployed through a web portal and would reach out to the beneficiaries by building partnerships. The beneficiaries will then be able to access it through the web portal.

We have trained 1700 teachers with this training already in the last year and with the incorporation of technology in the program we will reach out to a larger audience. The primary users are the teachers. The trained teachers now understand the value of a socially inclusive classroom and are able to utilize the diversity of the class population to the benefit of everyone.

We expect to train 5000 teachers with our solution in the next year. The training would be made available to them after a day of orientation (through a webinar), the complete training will be made available on demands by teachers who are doing it. Time frame would be fixed but the pace of learning could be decided by the user. IN 3 years’ time we would see socially inclusive classrooms with teacher’s training other into the same.

We are very strong in networking and have made significant partnership on the ground to bring the desired impact inside the schools. As mentioned above we have already trained 1700 teachers through those partnerships.

We are a non-profit hence n/a

Solve would be a great opportunity in 4 ways:

1.       Give us constructive feedback

2.       Provide exposure to our work and idea on a larger platform for possible collaborations

3.       Enhance our skills through mentorship and coaching

4.       Give access to the required funding necessary to make the dream of every classroom having a teacher who is pro social inclusion a reality

We need a technology platform with the necessary capabilities the get the program running smoothly.

If solve can provide funding and professionals with technology background it would make the program possible.