Campaign underway to boost kids development

​Hyderabad: “Beginning April this year, a sustained initiative as part of ‘Every Last Child’ campaign is underway in both the Telugu-speaking States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to include tribal children, internally displaced persons, urban street children and refugee kids,” said Vidisha Pillai, Director, Advocacy, Campaigns and Communication, Save the Children (STC), an international NGO at a `Telangana media meet’ in the city on Tuesday.

This interaction was held to discuss vulnerable situation of children and their families on right to safety, survival and development opportunities. According to STC, the scenario at the ground level is anything but comforting. “In Hyderabad, a recent pilot survey of street children revealed that more than 80 per cent have no form of identity.

When this was brought to the notice of the authorities, action was initiated to include these dispossessed kids in schemes like Aadhar, a savings bank account and a health insurance coverage,” Vidisha added while informing that a Standard Operating Procedure for welfare of street children too was on the anvil by the government.

As part of the interaction, Alka Singh, State in-charge of the STC, in her presentation mentioned about the work done by her organisation in both the States in which nearly 2.2 lakh children were covered between 2012-15. Her findings were that though the human development indicators were encouraging in both AP and TS in comparison to eastern India, it lagged behind that of Odisha in literacy, a surprising fact. The statistical picture that emerges justifies this as STC’s findings revealed that more than 25 per cent of government schools in both the States were being run with just a single teacher.

Another major problem was inadequate pre-schooling exposure to the children which has made the STC take up the initiative in organising it in over 100 Anganwadis in Telangana. “Presently, the governments are working on a pre-school curriculum in both the States,” she pointed out.

The challenges that confront the governments are to bring about effective learning outcomes, maintaining school standards, inculcating good school leadership practices and how to make schools more inclusive, said Prof Upender Reddy, Advisor, SCERT. With private schools labelling themselves as “digi-schools”, the government too is hand holding its own to enhance digital learning solutions, he informed.

Appropriate curricula and regulating private schools too, are the need of the hour, he felt. Interestingly, Sajit Menon, Dy Programme Director, STC, revealed that their findings came up with the observation that teachers close to the end of their careers, have shown more willingness to go digital and improve teaching methods in comparison to the younger lot who still struggle to balance traditional and the technological modes. Not stopping with just exposing children to IT-enabled teaching tools, STC in collaboration with the SCERT is developing workbooks for them to practice at home, without which the learning enthusiasm levels could drop.

With the New Education Policy being announced, stakeholders like STC are discussing the next step to be initiated in bringing about workable outcomes, the gathering was told. As Vidisha Pillai concluded: “We are creating pilot models, innovative ones in collaboration with government structure/systems to enable them to scale it up subsequently at a later stage”. Work is also underway to involve social media platforms in propagating and including more support for the cause.