According to 93% of government school teachers, under Tamil Nadu government’s flagship scheme, Illam Thedi Kalvi (Education at your Doorstep), students who suffered a set back during the pandemic, have improved in languages and mathematics, states a report prepared by the state planning commission.
The overall attendance of students and their classroom participation has increased — a key indication of the success of the programme — states the study recommending that “the programme should continue”. The report was submitted to chief minister M K Stalin on Saturday.
After forming the government in May 2021, the DMK launched the Illam Thedi Kalvi in October 2021 to bridge the learning losses, since schools had been closed for over 16 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Under the scheme, students from Class 1 to 8 are taught by volunteers in their respective areas close to home in small groups every day for up to 1.5 hours.
“ITK centres have therefore emerged as after-school care centres for young children apart from being a place for overcoming learning losses,” the report has found.
The assessment sought responses from four major stakeholders — volunteers (who receive an honorarium), parents, teachers and the headmasters. Almost all the parents — 717 out of 721 parents — responded that after attending ITK, the children started “showing interest in learning and that their confidence had improved”.
“Over these months, parents have noticed that children started to do homework without being asked at home, share what happens in ITK centres, and read books that are not part of their textbooks,” the report said. “Parents acknowledge that their fear of loss of interest during the lockdown was nullified with the interest shown by the children…The children are able to undertake elementary operations and remember multiplication tables much better than before.”
At least 37% said that the children read newspapers which they did not do earlier and use of cell phones has also reduced. ITK was found to be effective in complementing ongoing regular classes, once the schools started after the lock down, said the report, adding, “88% of the teachers claim better interactions in the class as an outcome of the play way method implemented in the ITK centres.”
The children were found to have improved in English and Tamil. The volunteers and teachers also added that the phonetics training has added value to the language learning in ITK centres. “The teachers cited the ability of children to string together letters into words, and words into sentences to read them aloud and write them,” the report stated.
The report also stated that their findings confirm those of an international academic study on ITK by three economists (Abhijeet Singh, Stockholm School of Economics; Mauricio Romero, ITAM and Karthi Muralidharan, University of San Diego California) for a paper for Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Programme.
They had sampled test results of 19,000 primary students in Tamil Nadu’s government schools to show that their learning which had regressed due to the Covid-19 pandemic had not become better after reopening of schools and “they only progressed after the state introduced Illam Thedi Kalvi”. In December 2021, after 18 months of school closures, students aged 5-8 scored much lower compared to the students from the same villages and who were of same age in 2019.
By May 2022, two-thirds of the absolute “learning loss” seems to have recovered and the government volunteer driven programme was “one possible contributor”, the findings say. These positive results from a state-wide programme delivered at scale by the government may provide a useful template for both recovery from Covid-19 learning losses, and bridging learning gaps more generally in low-and-middle-income countries, the authors had recommended.
The complaints that the study found were from teachers from upper primary sections, who felt that the ITK “was an intrusion since volunteers did not consult them”. Some also felt that the “importance for the regular classes was getting sidelined”. “In some places either the daughter or relatives of elected local body members were recruited as volunteers,” they said.
The end of the ITK project is nearing but stakeholders want the government programme to continue. “In case the government decides to drop the scheme, it will be a huge setback for our children and their educational future,” the report quotes a parent saying during a focussed group discussion. Another parent from Cuddalore said that they cannot “afford to send their children to tuition centres which have been covered by ITK”.
Besides learning, the state’s study also cited instances of child friendliness and child protection in these centres where children were more willing to open up about issues with the volunteers. “Their worries that the children will get into bad company and will venture too close to the lakes and water bodies are now taken care of.”
