Online School for Hard to Reach Areas in Bangladesh

Online School bridges gap in education by connecting skilled teachers and ICT resources with the children living in remote areas.

Presently, in Bangladesh one in every five of the 6-15 years old children is out of school and nearly 30% of the enrolled children leave school before completing the full course of primary education. The situation of primary education access differs between cities and in the hard to reach areas (HtRAs) of Bangladesh. There is a poor quality education at primary schools due to lack of qualified teachers and poor school facilities. There is a lack of teacher in the HtRAs and this is impeding quality education. Particularly, subject specific teachers like English Language, Math and Science are highly in demand.

To provide quality learning JAAGO came up with the idea of starting online classes with quality teachers based in the capital city Dhaka to instruct classroom students in rural and hard to reach parts of the country. JAAGO first introduced the solution of reaching hard to reach children using ICT technology in the education sector of Bangladesh in 2011.

Online schooling is a simple model where a class is connected with a teacher from teacher center in Dhaka via video conferencing technology. The online teachers deliver the lecture followed by interactive sessions with the student for every class. The facilitators in the class rooms assist the children during class work and help maintain a disciplined classroom environment. JAAGO uses multiparty interactive and professional video conferencing software aimed at making the process communicative and interactive teaching learning with virtual presence of teachers with remote learners. The software used contains an interactive whiteboard, slide-sharing and video-sharing features and combines a sketch-board to acquaint the students with alphabets through just a stroke from the virtual tutor.

Teaching process of online school is different from the conventional school. In order to familiarize teachers (both online and classroom teachers/facilitators) extensive foundation, in-service and refresher training is provided for effective teaching and learning.

At the moment JAAGO is operating 11 online schools across the country. JAAGO team worked extraordinarily in developing the online curriculum based on the national curriculum and with supplementary teaching and learning materials. To address the huge demand of quality education JAAGO has the potentiality to contribute across the country.

JAAGO’s online education is highly innovative and timely in this age of technology. With adequate resources and opportunities JAAGO will be able to facilitate organization’s dream of creating interactive and joyful learning opportunities for the underprivileged children of the country. This opportunity will be able to connect the JAAGO school children with children of other countries and enable them to learn about cross cultural issues. Additionally, teachers and students are getting exposure of new technology which in the long run will have impact in their careers and in connecting better with the world.

As the world is changing towards technology based education JAAGO is working in the right track and believes to bring about positive changes in the lives of children in Bangladesh and beyond by making quality education accessible for children from all race, religion and remote geographical locations.

The technology JAAGO uses is not new rather a new application of an existing technology WebEx. This process is solving the crucial challenge of Reaching out to remote areas by providing quality education. JAAGO uses multiparty interactive software that connects teachers located in the capital city Dhaka with learners from remote areas.

The online school is a formal schooling system that aligns with our mainstream education in Bangladesh.  Only JAAGO is providing this exclusive solution and conducting classes in government schools of Hard to Reach areas (Moheshkhali Island) in collaboration with International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Government of Bangladesh. 

Using Cisco WebEx software, Online School solution enables the online teachers to provide quality education to learners in remote areas and share audio visual teaching learning materials.

Children and teachers of online schools get the exposure of technology based teaching and learning, which are timely in the age of global digital advancement.

 Through online teachers using WebEx can do as below:

• Take daily attendance of students
• Track students’ progress against learning outcomes
• Make students assessment report
• Monitor and manage classroom.

Our solution’s goals over the next 12 months:

• Develop pedagogical skills, curriculum and online course materials for online teachers and educators.
• Develop the online teacher training modules.
• Test and rollout the modules.
• To invite international volunteers and teachers who are interested to teach English Language for conducting online classes. 
•  To strengthen cross cultural connections in collaboration with Level Up Village (LUV). LUV is one of the pioneering Global STEAM (STEM + arts) where JAAGO is partnering with them to globalize the classroom and enhance the learning experience between the students of JAAGO schools and students from around the world.

• JAAGO plans to expand the online education program across the country in the next five years. JAAGO is actively exploring funds from different sources.
• JAAGO is already providing non-formal education to Rohingya Children (Persecuted ethnic minority children from Myanmar who are residing in Bangladesh now). JAAGO intends to introduce online education to these children.
• An impact study will be undertaken to assess the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the online education program. The study will feed into the identification and implementation of the steps necessary for scaling up.

The online education program has high demand in the communities, to Reach and Retain JAAGO’s beneficiaries strategies are:

• Hard to Reach areas will be identified using government’s Hard to Reach area map.Aware communities on the importance of online education and informing how to access online education program

• Parents-teachers meeting and counseling students/parents to continue education
• JAAGO staff will conduct home visit for building strong relationship with community
• Provide stationaries, hygiene products, nutritious food, regular health check-ups , free medicines, Clean Water and sanitation.Give special emphasis on English Language to enable students to explore the global job market.

Our Target Population:

Children and communities in the Hard to Reach areas in Bangladesh

• Population in Numbers
  • Students:  5300
  • Teachers: 185
  • Parents : 9000
  • Communities: 19
• Providing free of cost education to the students.

• Empowering parents to become financially stable and enlightened individuals by giving them support and training through livelihood program on income generation activities.
• Creating employment opportunities for online teachers and classroom facilitators who are otherwise deprived of access to decent employment Making the community aware about the importance of education through technology. JAAGO serve communities in hill tracks and slum areas, ethnic and diverse religious sectors. 

The number of beneficiaries JAAGO is expecting to serve,

• In 12 months: 16000 (approximately)
• In 3 years: Another 4000 (approximately)

JAAGO is already working with Government of Bangladesh (GoB) schools in Moheshkhali Island. JAAGO plans to scale up online schooling model in 64 districts of Bangladesh and contribute to the improvement of the quality of education in collaboration with GoB. Since GoB has 500 multimedia classrooms already in its primary schools and 4500 teachers have already been trained to operate in these multimedia classrooms, there is a huge opportunity for JAAGO to work with this initiative.

Mr. Korvi Rakshand started JAAGO Foundation to provide quality education to the underprivileged children. Due to his visionary leadership, JAAGO is providing education to 3000 children and have largest volunteer network in Bangladesh. Zakia Hague, has been working as the Manager of Research and Development, Education Program at JAAGO for 5years. Currently, she is supervising ‘Distance Learning Program’ under Digital Island Moheshkhali Project. With academic background in Education, Ayon Kibria has proven expertise in project planning and implementation. Working as the Senior Manager of Finance Department at JAAGO, Mr. Sazzadul Islam has significant expertise of financial management of non-profit organizations.

JAAGO is mainly funded by long term sponsorship program for underprivileged children. The online education program is also supported by the largest telecom organization in Bangladesh GrameenPhone and another agency Agni Systems Ltd.

JAAGO will be continuing the current online education program with funds from the existing sources and is exploring funds for expansion from other sources.

Developing the online teacher training module will facilitate existing teachers to learn further and strengthen their teaching techniques and understand subject wise topics better. Teachers from both central (Dhaka) and classroom settings will benefit from this training. New teachers will have the similar opportunity to access the facility. The online teacher training program will continue to be important part of the education program. The module will be improved on the basis of needs. Finally, the impact study will provide the overview of the impression of the education program. This will help the education team to find the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in the program to further develop it based on the findings. JAAGO’s next strategic plan will include income generation activities for supporting future programs. Online schooling program will become an established and replicable model in Bangladesh to solve challenges of quality education.

Scaling up our solution to provide quality education (goal 4 of 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN member states) will require support from global partners. JAAGO believes Solve will help us to,

• Complete a needs assessment to receive a customized partnerships action plan tailored to our financial and nonfinancial needs.
• Be paired with mentors to support JAAGO to reach partnership goals.
• Join a class of peers to share best practices and find areas of collaboration.
• Grow JAAGO’s network at different international social impact conferences.
• Increase the global and social media exposure. 

Despite high scalability online school faces difficulties with regards to:

• Uninterrupted power supply: Since online school model is dependent on electricity, power outages hinder the teaching-learning process.
• Uninterrupted internet connection:  Despite the partnership with Agni Systems Limited, internet connection can drop during class time.
• Finding  and applying  modern day technology (software, application) for students  performance  assessment
• Advancing our solution through strategic advice.
• Linking with networks of investors and cross-sector leaders.

We expect Solve will support us by,

These connections will build the partnerships needed to accelerate JAAGO’s work, validate impact and scale up solution.