Help 300,000 kids realize that Math can be fun

The goal of Ganitha Kalika Andolana is to make Mathematics learning full of Joy. At the same time to increase the learning outcomes in grades 4 and 5 by 15 percentage points compared to ASER – 2014.

 The following activities were conducted as part of the academic year 2016-17:

1. Providing Math kit to 7515 Government Primary schools of 6 districts of Hyderabad-Karnataka Region:

The Math kit consisting of comprehensive Teaching Learning Materials was distributed with the aim facilitates the Math learning experience in grades 4 and 5 to all the supported schools. The Teaching Learning Materials were designed keeping in mind the Karnataka State Curriculum framework. One math kit per school, totaling to 7515 kits were distributed.

2. Teacher training of all the Government Primary schools of 6 districts of Hyderabad-Karnataka Region:

7,827 teachers were trained on how to ease the process of learning Math learning by using the Teaching Learning Materials distributed through the Math kit. The training was conducted in cascade mode by Resource Persons from the Government to the school teachers.  Training was provided in a classroom style with more emphasis on group activities which spanned across 2-4 days of training depending on the type of the participants. For teachers it was for 2 days and for the resource persons it was for four days. The training Teachers were given manuals for easy understanding and maximum utilization of the kit. In addition to this, 17 audiovisuals (a summary on how to use the Ganitha Kalika Andolana kit in the classroom) were shared with the teachers, covering all the learning concepts for future reference.

3. Provide on-site support to teachers through Field Coordinators of Akshara Foundation:

The Field Coordinators of Akshara Foundation are trained to support the Government schools teachers. Akshara recruited around 30 field coordinators in all for Phase 1. That is one Field Coordinator per block. These Field Coordinators visit schools on a regular basis (i.e., a minimum of 2 unique schools per day per cluster) to provide on-site support (i.e., demoing the usage of Ganitha Kalika Andolana kit) as well as to conduct assessments for teachers and students. The impact of the project is measured via regular monitoring through a SMS based system. The SMS system is used by both the FCs and the CRPs.

4. SMS system used by the Akshara Foundation field coordinators and CRPs:

An SMA-based monitoring solution was designed to be used by Akshara’s field team and Government officers to track the implementation of the programme. A set of 5 questions is answered during each school visit. The data is collected in a SMS server, which is then processed by the KLP (Karnataka Learning Partership) MIS system and various reports can be generated at the cluster, district, CRP, Field Coordinator levels and shared with the respective stakeholders.

5. Assessment:

To measure the impact of the program, a tech-based assessment is done for children on a daily basis. Akshara Foundation’s Field Coordinators carry Tablets on field which contains a pre-loaded application to conduct the assessment. The analysis of the assessment data is available in the Learning Outcomes section. The tablet has all the school related information pre-loaded along with the student's name and other details, details of the field coordinators who facilitate the assessment. Once these information is fed into the tablet, the students are given the respective tabs with their basic info loaded to complete the 20 mins long assessment. The data of the assessment is captured offline and synced with the KLP MIS system whenever the Field Coordinator is able to get online (3G/4G data or the internet café). Once the data is in KLP system, it is easy to come up with various analyses (subject-wise, district-wise, gender-wise, teacher-wise etc)

6. Community mobilization:

Community is an integral part of school education and plays a vital role in child’s education. Hence, activities at Gram Panchayat (GPs) level such as Math contests have been conducted along with the local community to create awareness among community members on the status of math education. As part of Phase 1, in the 6 districts of Hyderabad-Karnataka region, we had more than 650 GPs participate in the math contest in a voluntary fashion raising their own funds to conduct this as a village function. In each GP on an average 150-300 students took this math contest and won cash prizes.

 The analysis of the technology based assessments present the following outcomes:

• Children were tested for 2-digit subtraction problems with carry over. A child must solve two problems correctly to consider as 'Child can do subtraction’.  At the end of academic year 2016-17, 62% of student from Ganitha Kalika Andolana intervention schools in grade 5 were able to solve subtraction questions. While the result for ASER 2014-2015 was 34% students from grade 5^th students.

• Children were tested for division problem with three digit dividend with single digit divisor with reminder. Child has to solve two division problems correctly to consider as 'Child can do division’. According to ASER 2014 survey, 16.7% of the students of grade 5^th were able to solve the division question. Currently there is an increase of 13.3% points in division learning outcome compared to ASER-2014 in Ganitha Kalika Andolana intervention schools.

Akshara would like to thank you for your continuous support to our Math programme. We are excited to take it forward to additional six districts Karnataka, impacting over 200,000 children from around 4500 schools in 2017-18.

Links:

• Community-led math contests
• Love for numbers