Questions/Answers

The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) are established for the enrolment of those girls who belong predominantly to the Schedule Caste (SC), Schedule Tribe (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), minorities and Below Poverty Line (BPL) families in inaccessible & difficult areas and which are either out-of-school (drop out or never enrolled) or irregular for more than six months. The aim of this initiative is to ensure access and quality education to girl students from disadvantaged groups by setting up residential schools at upper primary level. To evaluate and assess the effectiveness of the KGBV initiative, a periodic Assessment is done on half-yearly basis.

The objectives of undertaking the assessment were as follows: a) Overall Educational Status (Class-wise, Subject-wise) of Girls in KGBVs • Understand the overall education status of girls in the KGBVs • Focus on the class wise progress of girls • Check the subject wise progress of girls b) Individual Girls-wise Education Status (Class wise, Subject-wise) • Track class wise and subject wise education status of each girl c) Plan strategies for education progress of the girls

India has made significant progress in terms of enhancing access to and participation in all levels of education. However the overall picture of education development in the country is mixed and there are many persisting concerns and challenges relating to access to and participation in education, quality of the education imparted, equity in education, system efficiency, governance and management, research and development, and financial commitment to education development. The girls in KGBVs come from SC, ST, OBC, minorities and BPL families in difficult areas. The initiative is an innovative idea for providing quality education to the poorest and most vulnerable, and ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all so that they make progress towards the respective Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also enhances the access of the poorest and most vulnerable people to quality and affordable education.

This initiative has helped in great way to improve the gender friendly delivery of education through public services in the State. This has resulted in the improvement in enrollment numbers of girls, reduction of drop-out rate and increase in retention for girls in schools. The data has been used to improve the services at Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalay in the state. It helps in better services in the existing schools and find the need of new residential schools for Girls in any specific area or zone. The learning assessments helped to standardize the teaching learning processes. It helped in tracking the student’s learning progress along with class wise and subject wise individual learning achievements. This initiative has also provided information based on which platform for inclusive education where Child with special need (CWSN), dropouts, never enrolled, orphan single parent child and over age child are enrolled and get equal rights and opportunities in every field is developed and improved further.

The initiative has helped in big way to ensure delivery of quality education to girl child in the state of Gujarat. This scheme is launched in the blocks where the gender gap is above national average and female literacy is below the national average. With the help of baseline initiative now the educators have the idea of actual learning status of students and they can plan the intervention to improve the learning levels of individual student in the specific subject. This also helped in training need analysis for teachers so that required inputs can be provided to them to improve the learning achievements of students in these schools. Thus it has resulted in improvements of outcomes in the form of transition of girls to secondary education and academic performance of Girls in Std. 10th results of last 3 years.

Among the total number of girls targeted under this initiative, 75% belong to schedule caste, schedule tribes, minority communities and other backward class communities and other backward class communities and 25 % girls from the families which are living below the poverty line. The initiative has been able to ensure access and quality education to girl students from disadvantaged groups by setting up residential schools at upper primary level. This initiative has helped to increase enrollment and academic performance of those girls who are belonging to the SC, ST, OBC, minorities and BPL families in difficult areas and which are either out of school (drop out or never enrolled) or irregular for more than six months.

This is a unique initiative to conduct technology based assessment and incorporate periodic technology supported child wise, class wise and subject wise assessment in the education system and design the pedagogical and other interventions to help the girls student and schools in improving their performance. Class wise question papers were prepared. Separate class wise and each girl wise Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet was also developed to mark the correct option. The learning assessment data was analyzed by iNDEXTb (Industrial Extension Bureau, a government of Gujarat organisation) in coordination with the Department of Education, Government of Gujarat. Based on the performance results different workshops and orientation programs were designed and organised for teachers and head teachers to understands various aspects of the results and help them plan initiatives to help students perform better. As the first step of the initiative is to analyse the baseline results and plan the classroom intervention for students. Then it also does the post-test to understand the progress achieved. As observed in last few years that it has resulted in improved performance of Girls’ in their academic performance. Career guidance seminars were organised with the help of department of Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board for Std 10 pass KGBV girls at district level. Guidance were given by career experts to girls to help them get the knowledge of different courses and streams of education.

Yes the innovation is original in thought and implementation. It has focused specially the girls’ students from the poorest communities to mainstream them in the school education. It has taken help of technology to understand the performance of each student and also used different filters to analyze it class wise and subject wise. The program helps to better plan and implementation of teacher training and conduct refresher courses for head teachers to help them need of the hour to improve the performance of their schools. This resulted in finding and focusing of real time initiatives on areas of academic improvements. This was a unique initiative which provided roadmap for the academic empowerment of teachers as well. Overall it resulted in improving the education status of students from poorest communities and providing lifelong learning opportunities for them

It was a joint effort with the participation of different units of government of Gujarat to implement the initiative effectively. Initial discussion were held with Pedagogy Coordinator, GCERT (Gujarat Council of Education Research and Training) for developing class wise question papers. Industrial Extension Bureau, popularly known as iNDEXTb is a Government of Gujarat organization established with the objective of accelerating the industrial development in the State. iNDEXTb has provided all the technical support in implementation of assessments as part of the initiative. Class wise question papers were prepared. Separate class wise and each girl wise Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet was also developed to mark the correct option. The learning assessment data was analyzed by iNDEXTb in coordination with the Department of Education. The officials at district, block and cluster level were given orientation to help them understand the learning assessment and the specific guidelines. BRCC (Block Resource Centre Coordinator), CRCC (Cluster Resource Centre Coordinator) and other personal at each KGBV participated in onsite support and monitoring during the assessment.

Yes

Yes the initiative has been transferred to other contexts of performance improvement with real time tracking and providing solutions. Though the main focus of the initiative was on learning improvements it also affected various other initiatives and areas such as Nutrition of adolescent girls, special training, cleanliness, use of TLM in the class room. It also helped in better resolving administrative and managerial matters. The initiative helped different departments working with students and adolescent girls to better plan and implement their various schemes and programs.

This initiative is very much sustainable especially keeping in view that the system is in place and working efficiently. There is a need to keep improving the social and environmental aspects of education. The data helps the government to initiate and improve different schemes to achieve the sustainable development goals and promote the Girls’ education for the poorest of communities at elementary and secondary level. It promotes whole-of-government approaches by introducing unique idea. This initiative ensures Access to Elementary Education and assists in decision making in the context of policy making through participation of the stakeholders and citizens for demands and needs of citizens. Satisfaction towards service delivery could be achieved by incorporating feedback from stakeholders and community by administrative reform having least scope of grievances. The cumbersome tasks are transformed in institutional mechanism by introducing new concept through use of Technology to increase efficiency in policy making under holistic approaches.

Yes, the initiative is sustainable. The system is self-sustainable with the only requirement to keep the technology and pedagogical aspects updated with time. This initiative was started in 2014 and has been successfully going on since then year after year. The initiative which started in 2014-15 has shown good results and increasingly helping on different aspects of data and pedagogical requirement to improve academic performance.. It has been proved to be a great help to teachers and administrators working to improve the academic performance of girls from poorest of communities. At present the initiative focusses on the learning assessment and support programs for academic improvement at KGBV and with time there is a scope of expanding it to other schools as well.

Yes

Yes, the outcomes were observed very closely to understand the progress. The data generated on enrollment, transition and academic performance in terms of learning outcomes and other parameters for Girl child was considered to understand the results of the initiative. The impact of the initiative was evaluated by observing the changes in the academic performance of participating schools over the years. The class wise and subject wise findings of assessment by iNDEXTb is obtained for different assessment cycles. The results are shared with various stakeholders at State and District level. Strategies are planned for education progress of participating students and schools.

Transition of Girls studying at KGBV to secondary education has increased from 69% in 2012-13 to 95 % in 2016-17. Academic performance of these girls has improved from 56% to 76% in class 10th results of 2014-15 to 2016-17. In the Grade wise KGBV results of April 2017 out of 132 KGBVs 86 KGBVs were in the Grade B or A. Out of total 8491 girl’s participated 334 achieved more than 86% marks that is excellent performance, whereas 2543 obtained 74% to 85%.

Some of the important indicators used to understand the progress made in delivering best quality education of children were as follows: • Transition of Girl’s to secondary education • Academic Performance of Girl’s at Std 10 • Learning outcomes of the girl’s studying in KGBV

It was a joint effort with the participation of different units of government of Gujarat to implement the initiative effectively. Initial discussion were held with Pedagogy Coordinator, GCERT (Gujarat council of Education research and training) for developing class wise question papers. Industrial Extension Bureau, popularly known as iNDEXTb is a Government of Gujarat Organization established with the objective of accelerating the industrial development in the State. The learning assessment data was analyzed by iNDEXTb in coordination with the Department of Education. The officials at district, block and cluster level were given orientation to help them understand the learning assessment and the specific guidelines. BRCC (Block resource centre coordinator), CRCC (Cluster resource centre coordinator) and other personal at each KGBV participated in onsite support and monitoring during the assessment.

Teaching by objectives help teachers in focusing on the end result by realizing the objectives that have to be imparted through a medium (text books, ICT or Teacher Learning Material-TLM). Enhancing organizational performance by integrating different schemes across different agencies using open standards and open data for transparency. The timely learning assessment and response can help in learning outcomes in a great way. If we can have our goals defined and data against clear indicators the plan for result oriented intervention can be design and implemented and get the good results for poorest of poor.