Copyright : APA
The head of the Indian wing of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Rukmini Banerji has expressed optimism that the gap between expectations and the current situation of children’s education in her country and elsewhere would be eventually plugged with greater involvement by Pal Network and other partners.Addressing some 150 foreign delegates drawn to the beautiful Senegalese resort of Saly on Tuesday, Ms. Banerji pointed out that with the sustained involvement of the network, there will be more hope to address the challenges facing stakeholders involved in collecting useful data about both children going to school and those who don’t with a view to empowering communities to help deal with the issues.
She said in keeping with the United Nation’s driven Millennium Development Strategy 4 which covers education, ASER in conjunction with Pal Network and other like-minded organizations around the world can impact the quality of education for children millions of who are found to be either out of school or regrettably at the receiving end of poor standards of learning.
Ms. Banerji recounted how she and her group had faced enormous challenges with their work in India and Pakistan where their survey exercises on children’s learning conditions were usually met with outright hostility, insensitivity, skepticism and derision from village headmen before they grasped the enormity of the educational crisis and changed tack.
According to her such challenges are a universal story for a groundswell of education stakeholders elsewhere in the world particularly in Africa and other developing countries where such impediments and more stood in their way especially from among local communities whose members should otherwise be part of the enabling environment.
ASER which also has a branch in neighbouring Pakistan is dedicated to collecting data based on monitoring and assessing the progress or otherwise of children in schools with a particular focus on deepening the involvement of governments, communities and like-minded internationally driven social groupings to stimulate progressive change in the conditions young school learners.
She said this was an integral part of the overall process of ensuring that governments, local communities are convinced by evidence to become involved in helping children acquire the aptitude to read, write and solve arithmetical problems.
According to her, it is a universally accepted fact that children going to school do not necessarily qualify as learners, making it incumbent on all stakeholders to make sure that eventually the reverse
becomes the truth.
ASER is part of the so-called Pal Network Family which is spearheading such meetings every year, the latest of which is taking place at the behest of Lartes, a humanities branch of the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar tasked with piloting its well tailored Jangandoo learning programme to benefit children of school going age in Senegal.
Tuesday’s opening of the six-day meeting which attracted education minders from Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico and Kenya among others also featured short educational pilot project documentaries explaining the grassroots works of ASER (India and Pakistan), Lartes (Senegal) and Uwezo (Kenya) about children in different environments being tested to determine their progress in school.