Previous meetings (1)
From MIT INDIA READING GROUP
Twentieth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 11th January
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Rohit's apartment
Discussion Leader: Manusheel
Reading Material:
Paper by Gupta and Dutta at http://scripts.mit.edu/~varun_ag/readinggroup/index.php?title=Link
Participants: Manusheel, Rohit, Anup, Anna, Geetha, Varun
Presentation
1. Link: IIS: Perspectives and Challenges
2. Link: Notes to the presentation
Nineteenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 22nd December
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Anup's apartment
Discussion Leader: Varun
Attendees : Lavanya, Pavithra, Mythili, Geetha, Ajay, Sudipto, Manusheel, Rohit, Varun, Gaurav, Anup, Anna
Reading Material: The Evolution of a Developing Country Innovation System During Economic Liberalization: The Case of India. (http://202.41.106.14/~rishi/evolution.pdf)
Presentation : Link: IIS: Before and After Economic Liberalization
Follow-up (Notes):
Questions:
1. What is the meaning of the term research intensity?
Future Directions:
1. Study rest of the reading material. Could not cover it in completion in the meeting.
2. Comparison of IIS with other countries, both in terms of government and private investment and outcomes.
3. Understand how well the government schemes to promote innovation (Table 2 of paper) have fared.
4. Study and get more data on the research outcomes of IITs, RECs and the IISc, research bodies like TIFR, others.
Eighteenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 2nd December, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Anna
Agenda:
Quatifying the reasons of never enrolling as well as dropping out of schools. The statistics are mainly based on the findings of NFHS II (National Family Health Survey) and NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation). These statistics would bring out cost of education as one of the main reasons of dropping out of schools, quite a contradiction! given that primary education is free for all till 14 years!!. In the presentation I would also present some data on what and how much these hidden costs are. Lastly, I might talk about how health can impede education and can be a driver for drop-out.
Reading Material: Social context of elementary education in rural India
Read from “Direct costs of schooling” Page 21 to end of Page 25. ( page numbers are as assigned by pdf reader)
Attendees: Rohit, Anna, Varun, Anup
Presentation
1. Quantifying the reasons for non-enrollment and drop-out
2. How free is primary education in India?
Seventeenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 4th November, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Rohit
Agenda: Discussions on Annual status of education report by Pratham
Reading Material: ASER Discussion Series [1]
Attendees: Rohit, Ajay, Anna, Varun, Sayan, Pavithra
Presentation
Sixteenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 28th October, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Pavithra and Lavanya
Agenda: Annual status of education (rural;government schools) 2005 - facilitated by Pratham
Attendees: Rohit, Ajay, Anna, Varun, Lavanya, Pavithra
Pratham ASER Report with comments
Fifteenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 14th October, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Ajay Deshpande
Reading: Findings of the hole-in-the-wall project. [2]
Presentation
Fourteenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: 30th September, 2006
Time: 8 - 10pm
Venue: Bertucci, Cambridge (Discussion-cum-dinner Meeting)
Discussion Leader: --
Meeting notes Attendees: Ajay, Anna, Anup, Pavithra, Lavanya, Rohit, Manas, Varun, Mayank, Mayank's friend Venue: Bertucci, Cambridge
Agenda - Next Reading: When, on what, by whom. - Any new facts to share, question, reflections on past. - Pitch ideas for *Action* in context of education and otherwise. - Get an idea about individuals who have time for being involved in action
1. We had 10 people attending the meeting. 4 out of 10 members were first-timers. They were Manas, Rohit, Mayank and his friend.
2. As reiterated several times, the Reading Group shall continue following the same model as in summers irrespective of the fact that whether we involve ourselves in direct action. The frequency will be reduced to half, i.e. once in every 2 weeks. Anup said that his learning curve was very steep when we were regularily reading during the summers and now it has kind of flattened. Others agreed. People said that they will be able to take out time to study papers and prepare presentations during the semester.
3. It was voiced by some that in the current model, there isn't much time for discussion and brainstorming. We will therefore try to finish the presentation by 8 and try to invest half an hour in discussion and brainstorming.
4. Thanks to Ajay, he volunteered to present in the next meeting prospectively on the Columbus Day weekend. Ajay will decide what he wants to present on. Varun voiced that he wants to hear about internet penetration in India and how Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala's group is trying to increase the penetration.
5. It was decided to have an **Ideas** Page on the Wiki which are constantly updated by all members to put down the ideas they get.
6. Anna told the group about two upcoming competitions, Ideas and 100K. We could have a smaller team participating in that with some idea of social development. Anna thought it was a great opportunity and pitched her ideas in that regard and otherwise. She wanted to find some people who are interested to team up with her. People said they could help small time; Anup, Ajay, Lavanya said they were too busy during the sem.
Please refer to ideas page to see all Ideas discussed.
Thirteenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: September 22nd, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-135
Guest Speaker: Melli Annamalai, ASHA, http://www.ashanet.org
Title of the Talk: > "The Devil is in the Details": Supplementing Learning at Government Schools - Experiences and Lessons Learnt.
Attendees: Varan, Anna, Anoop, Pavithra
Meeting Notes
1. Some Statistics:
a) 91% of the children have a government school within a mile b) 80% of children go to government schools in India c) Among the 80% of the students, only 12% finish 10 grade d) Only 2% of the teachers send their children to the same school they are working in
2. Asha aimed at improving primary education. Education does not imply literacy (read & write name, read 10 words per minute). Education is a method of learning and learning how to learn.
3. Asha's technique was to provide extra classes after school. This works well but children end up working all day. There is no building cost as it is the most expensive thing in a school. Moreover graduates or students in 11th or 12th grade can teach in these extra sessions. These ideas makes this approach scale easily.
4. There is an inbuilt sense in the community that low caste children cannot succeed. But this can be avoided in Asha's session by drawing teachers from the same local community as the children.
5. The extra sessions could also help in developing clubs like science club, photography club etc...
6. Melli pointed out the following which we discussed several times in our meeting - Is education necessary when there are several over-qualified people in India who are unemployed? Education is supposed to provide more options than what your parents have. But is this really true? In rural areas children are taught about convex and concave lenses. Do the rural children need this? The current educational system caters to the urban world.
7. Government of India has done considerable amounts to improve education in India. But why have we not improved? Crores of money is spent every year. EDUSAT is one such programme where the TV runs on solar power. Such TV's are distributed to rural areas so that children can watch educational programmes. The World Bank pumped in 200 crores of money.
8. The reason is our system is very hierarchical. It does not allow teachers to experiment and explore. There are several teacher related magazines distributed to school which several teachers do not have much access to as some higher official does not give teachers enough time to read them. There are no libraries where the teacher can get access to in rural areas. Hence pretty much the teacher are restrained by knowledge in the text book which the students also have. The teacher is unable to clarify some of the students doubts.
9. The same problem occurs one level up where the teachers are trained. Government has spent quite a lot of money on teacher training but again, the training just pumps into the teacher enormous amount information rather than allowing the teacher to explore a little bit.
10. According to Asha, teacher absentism is not that big a problem as compared to their knowledge. Similarly lack of money is not that big a problem as compared to the lack of good trainers to train the teachers.
11. Parents do want their children to study. If a parent does not send their child to school, it is because of a very good and valid reason usually.
12. Melli pointed out another theme for discussion - Why should English be the medium o instruction in rural schools when only @% of India speaks English? Language is something that develops the more one uses it. Even the English teachers in rural areas are not able to speak English fluently. The most borrowed book in a library is the English grammar book by teachers in an English medium school.
13. Last but not the least, Asha is helping villages develop a School Management Committee (SMC) that is independent of the school administration that inspects or checks the performance of the school on a regular basis.
Thanks Melli!
Twelfth Meeting
When and Where
Date: September 14th, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-132 [TBC]
Guest Speaker: Dr. Tom Greene, Outreach Officer, CSAIL, MIT
Speaker BIO: http://people.csail.mit.edu/tjg/
Attendees: Anup, Anna, Varun, Lavanya, Sudipta
Eleventh Meeting
When and Where
Date: August 31st, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Varun Aggarwal
Attendees: Ajay, Sayan, Anup, Anna, Pavithra, Varun, Lavanya, Sudhir
Readings
Link :ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN INDIA
Presentation
-- same as reading --
Tenth Meeting
When and Where
Date: August 21st, 2006
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
Venue: 1-132
Guest Speaker: Karthik Muralidharan, PhD Student, Dept of Economics, Harvard University
Attendees: Sayan, Ajay, Anup, Anna, Lavanya, Mayank, Varun, Pavithra, Aditya, Sudipta
Readings
-- see papers by Karthik Muralidharan under Potential Readings --
Ninth Meeting
When and Where
Date: August 17th, 2006
Time: 7 - 830pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Aditya Undurti
Readings
http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/10th/volume2/v2_ch2_3.pdf
Presentation
Meeting Synopsis
Aditya first presented a summary of the group's findings in the realm of Elementary education, and then a brief overview of the Goals of Secondary Education, as envisioned by government policy. The first obvious point was that no clear guidelines for Minimum Learning Levels (MLL) existed for secondary education, unlike for primary education.
During the talk, Aditya brought up a few issues that could be the subject of future discussions:
1)Underspending of budget allocation for secondary education 2)Investigate specific teaching methods in schools, for instance memorization vs. interactive teaching, OR test-result oriented teaching vs. broader "character building" teaching. 3)Understanding the government's approach to teaching - is the purpose of education to train people for jobs, or is it "education for the sake of education"? This is an important issue, because as we had seen in previous discussions, inability to see any link between future job prospects and school attendance is a major reason for not sending children to school.
In the following discussion, some ideas were proposed:
1)Lavanya suggested that the difference between the states (such as Bihar vs. Kerala) might not be as great as the statistics seem to show. For more information, we decided to have speakers who have spent time at the grassroots level. 2)Get external speakers - next week, Karthik (from Harvard); potential future speakers include: someone from Asha (Aditya); Pratham (Lavanya) ; Abhijeet Banerjee (currently in India, Varun has been attempting contact); Ekal Vidyala (Aditya); AID (Anup)
For future work in the direction of Projects/Action: Karthik has project ideas; OLPC (don't know what its future in India is); 50k - try and come up with ideas.
Eighth Meeting
When and Where
Date: August 10th, 2006
Time: 7 - 830pm
Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Anna Agarwal
Readings
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w11904.pdf
Presentation
Meeting Synopsis
Attendees: Ajay, Manusheel, Anna, Pavithra, Aditya
Discussions on the presentation
1.One big reason for poor quality of education is the inability of parents to play role in child’s education.
2.Curriculum should be made more interesting; to motivate the child to study and to make sure that he does not get scared by it. He should be able to enjoy the learning experience.
3.Balsakhi program is a very good solution to improve quality of education.
4.Balsakhi gives the benefit of a personal tuition; and does not overload the child as it is held during school hours.
5.Balsakhi can be successful only in urban slums and not in rural areas, as:
a) Rural areas would have scarcity of Balsakhis
b) Stratification of the class, based on levels of learning would not be possible in rural areas, due to the poor standards of the entire class.
Other Discussions
A) On future meetings
1. Common consensus was that a lot of details on primary education have already been looked at; and now it was time to change the topic.
2. Suggestions were made to move on to a fresh new topic, all the other topics listed on the wiki looked pretty interesting to the group.
3. Again the consensus was, now that we have a strong base in primary education we should now look into and study policies/problems concerning higher education.
4. Everyone was interested in inviting guest speakers.
B) The Next Meeting
Aditya has volunteered to present a summary of what we have looked at so far, and present an overview on the state of secondary/higher education. This summary could also be presented to the guest speaker, to brief him about our reading group.
SEVENTH MEETING
When and Where
Date: July 31, 2006
Time: 7 - 830pm
Venue: 1-150
Discussion Leader: Anup Bandivadekar
Readings
http://ssa.nic.in/ssaframework/ssafram.asp#1.0
OBJECTIVES OF SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN
* All children in school, Education Guarantee Centre, Alternate School,
' Back-to-School' camp by 2003;
* All children complete five years of primary schooling by 2007
* All children complete eight years of elementary schooling by 2010
* Focus on elementary education of satisfactory quality with emphasis on education for life
* Bridge all gender and social category gaps at primary stage by 2007
and at elementary education level by 2010
* Universal retention by 2010
State Report Cards 2005: http://www.dpepmis.org/Downloads/drc2005/src2005/Pagei88.pdf
Himachal Pradesh: A State on the move by PURNIMA S. TRIPATHI http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=20060210006411800.htm&date=fl2302/&prd=fline&
Bihar: A system in decay by PURNIMA S. TRIPATHI http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=20051104004402900.htm&date=fl2222/&prd=fline&
The next frontier in education by Deepa A http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/feb/edu-ssakerala.htm
Policy Reforms and Financing of Elementary Education in India: A Study of the Quality of Service and Outcome http://scripts.mit.edu/%7Evarun_ag/readinggroup/images/2/25/Pradhan_singh_2003.pdf
Reforming elementary education in India: A menu of options http://scripts.mit.edu/%7Evarun_ag/readinggroup/images/4/45/Mehrotra_ijed_2006.pdf
Presentation
Discussion Presentation http://scripts.mit.edu/%7Evarun_ag/readinggroup/images/e/e8/Comparison_bihar_kerala.pdf
SIXTH MEETING
When and Where
Date: July 20, 2006
Time: 7 - 830pm
Venue: 1-150
Discussion Leader: Ajay Deshpande
Meeting Synopsis
Attendees:Ajay, Sayan, Anup, Manu and Lavanya
Presentation
Discussions
1. Brainstorming on future of the Education Reading group
2. Consensus to integrate what we have learnt to make it useful in some way.
3. Lavanya suggested that we shoot for an entry in the $100K (development track), which gives us a firm deadline and ambition to get a productive plan in the next couple of months.
4. Next is to get a vote of other members on participating in $100K.
5. Also, even if we do not participate in the competition, it would be useful if everyone could think of ways in which our work of the past few weeks can be put to good use.
FIFTH MEETING
Group members met with Prof. Walter Bender and SJ Klein in Prof. Bender's office on July 11, 2006.
The details are internal to MIT India Reading Group and would not be posted here. They were posted on the group's mailing list, if anyone is interested, you can write to about-india-owner[at]mit.edu
FOURTH MEETING
When and Where
Date: July 6, 2006, Time: 7pm, Venue: 1-150
Discussion Leader: Aditya Undurti
Reading Assignments
Paper: Poor children in Rich schools
The reading for the July 6th meeting are Pages 1 and Pages 31-41. These are the pages as numbered on the manuscript and not the ones assigned by adobe.
Meeting Synopsis
Attendees:Aditya, Ajay, Varun, Anup, Lavanya, Manusheel, Vijay
Presentation
Impact of Social Environment on Education
Discussions
1. Fairness of policy on Delhi school reservations- Aditya stated in the presentation that the increase in fees for children in the non-reserved category would hurt those families that were above the poverty line and struggling hard to send their children to school. Varun disagreed and said that those who could not afford the increased fees will send their children to a different school where fees are lower. He also argued that the fees are currently artificially low, since the schools got land at highly subsidized rates. Aditya argued that realistically, the rich/middle class can absorb the increased fees but the vulnerable lower-middle would be hurt the most. Finally both agreed that the increased fees were less of a concern than other issues, such as impoverished families choosing not to send their children to school.
2. Relevance of Education to job prospects- It was pointed out during Aditya's presentation that parents are reluctant to send their children to school because they do not see the connection between education and jobs. Varun pointed out that the true value of education becomes clear only if the person has college education. Since the poor cannot afford college education, everyone agreed that it is important to make the link between education and jobs in school itself.
3. Curriculum Content- Since there needs to be a link between education and jobs, Varun suggested that having two kinds of curriculum would help: 1) Regular schooling with focus on theoretical knowledge 2) Vocational schooling with focus on practical knowledge. Others disagreed, and Lavanya pointed out that children sent to vocational schools will never be able to realize their potential in fields such as physics and mathematics. Varun and Aditya argued that parents would be more willing to send their children to vocational school because the benefits are obvious. Others felt that having two systems would only widen the segregation between middle-class/rich on the one hand and the poor on the other. No final agreement was reached.
Conclusions
1. Parents' impression of education not having much impact on job prospects might not be entirely wrong, because someone that has passed 12th will not find a good job, if at all (number of jobs available to people with that education level is very limited - most new jobs are for highly-educated engineers and professionals)
2. Vocational curriculum might be more helpful to children from poor families because it would enable them to become self-employed (as carpenters, painters, etc) but it also cuts them off from being able to pursue a professional career.
3. The issue reveals the deep links between education and other important issues, such as condition of economy and jobs available.
4. Providing good schools and teachers is important, but is not enough. People need to see the benefits of school education, therefore creation of jobs for people with school education (such as factory jobs) is essential to acheive large-scale results.
THIRD MEETING
When and Where
Date: June 26, 2006, Time: 7pm, Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leaders: Lavanya Marla and Pavithra Harsha
Reading Assignments
None
Meeting Synopsis
Attendees (9): Aditya, Ajay, Anna, Lavanya, Manusheel, Pavithra, Sayan, Sudipta, Varun
Presentation
Education (Mainly Primary Education)
Minutes of the Meeting
The discussion brought up some new topics that the group members were interested to pursue in future meetings. Link: TOPICS
SECOND MEETING
When and Where
Date: June 19, 2006, Time: 7pm, Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leaders: Ajay Deshpande and Sayan Mitra
Reading Assignments
1. Drop-out Rate at Primary Level: A Note Based on DISE 2003-04 & 2004-05 Data. Arun C. Mehta. National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration.
[Link: pdf ] OR http://educationforallinindia.com/Dropoutrates2003-04&2004-05.pdf
2. Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot. Nazmul Chaudhury, Jeffrey S. Hammer, Michael Kremer, Karthik Muralidharan, and Halsey Rogers. June 1, 2004.
[Link: pdf] OR http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/36660_Teacher_absence_in_India_EEA_9_15_04_-_South_Asia_session_version.pdf
(The two papers listed above, investigate a) Absence of teachers and b) Dropping out of students.
These two failures are indeed crippling our apparatus for disseminating primary education. The papers are tightly scoped, factual, authored by experts, and yet easy to read.)
3. Education for all in India OPTIONAL READING.
http://www.educationforallinindia.com/
(Has a wealth of information.)
Meeting Synopsis
I Meeting Statistics
Attendees (12): Sayan, Lavanya, Aditya, Anna, Ajay, Pavithra, Anup, Varun, Ashtamurthy, Vijay, Manusheel, Vikram
Attendance in previous session: 10
Overlap: 8
II Presentation:
Primary Education in India : Key Problems
III Summary of Presentation
Ajay and Sayan divided the key issues in primary education, somewhat artificially, into two groups:
a)those concerning teachers (e.g., absence) and
b)those concerning students (e.g., drop-outs).
Note: The presentation is based on papers that analyze available data and observe some trends. They do not attempt to make any causal connections. There are many other issues that they do not cover, e.g., enrollment, educational facilities, etc.
1) The target expenditure on education is about 6%, the actual amount spent is roughly 4.3%.
Although, not quite on target, a lot of money is being spent.
They explored why the outcome of the system is not proportional.
2) Sayan focused on students dropout rate and quality of students' learning
a. data from DISE for 2003-2004 was used to analyze "retention rate, promotion rate and dropout rate" - Dropout rate in primary school is 42%
b. Disparities across states are very high with highest dropout rate in Bihar least in Karnataka, Kerala.
c. Dropout rates are much higher after 1st and 5th standards compared to others.
d. Average no. of years taken by students to complete std. V is around 6.3-6.8.
3) Difficult to come up with metrics for quality of education.
There has been some recent attempts based on NCERT language and math tests. Some of these results were presented.
a. Class I scores better than Class III scores, suggest that quality of teaching and performance declines as one goes higher in the education ladder.
b. No pre-primary education makes a big diff in performance 8-10%
c. SC students perform worse than general category students by 8-10 %
d. Disparity between Hindi and English medium schools. Even in English medium schools 38% failed to score above 40 in math (equivalent to failing).
e. Rural students are better in languages but performed poorer in math than urban students.
f. Disparity between girls and boys is present but is not glaring.
4) Ajay's focus was on teacher absence and some general teacher related statistics
- The study reported is based on unannounced visits to govt. schools, private and private-aided schools in rural areas. 3700 schools covered which represents 98% of population.
a. Results are shocking. 25% teacher absent. Those who were present, among them, only 45% were actively engaged in teaching.
b. state-wise disparities pretty high - Maharashtra-15%, Jharkhand - 36%. Poorer states have higher absence rate even though relative salaries in poorer states are higher.
c. teachers who should be on official duty - 1%, other reasons for absence - 8-10%. Even after that absence rate is pretty high
d. Salaries do not have any association with higher absence rate. Salaries depend on experience, rank, degrees. But teachers with higher salaries had higher absence rate.
e. Infrastructure definitely provides stronger incentive to attend.
f. regular monitoring through ties with local communities, PTA definitely improves attendance
g. teachers feel little risk of being fired.
1 in 3000 public schools reported firing.
35 in 600 private schools reported firing.
5) Average no. of teachers in Bihar and Jharkhand per school is pretty low 2.5 compared with nations average of 4.6.
Pupil-to-teacher ratio is these states is pretty high. 72 pupils per teacher in Bihar.
IV Feedback Session
Feedback on the last two sessions and suggestions for future meetings ( model and topics) were made.
They are posted on the Community Portal
FIRST MEETING
When and Where
Date: June 10, 2006, Time: 6pm, Venue: 1-135
Discussion Leader: Varun Aggarwal
Reading Assignments
1. The Challenges for Indian Education System (2005)
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/pdf/research/asia/BPindiaeducation.pdf
A little over 3 pages. Read till just before "Currilcula content".
(A third party view of the system and introduces us to history of government policy on education.)
2. Indian Strategies to Achieve Universalisation of Elementary Education (K. Gopalan)
http://www.ignca.nic.in/cd_06020.htm
About 4 pages. Read till just before "Promotion of Access to Girls and Disadvantaged Groups".
(This paper is like 10 years old, but it gives a good description of govt. policies/strategies. Almost all these policies are still active.)
3. Anual Report of Department of Education India, 2004-05
(pdf)
OPTIONAL READING. Read from page 4 to page 8.
(Tells us the latest statistics, however the details of the strategies is missing.)
Meeting Synopsis
Attendees (Arbit order): Sayan, Sudipto, Madhu, Lavanya, Aditya, Anna, Ajay, Pavithra, Anup, Varun
Presentations on reading material:
Indian Education System: An Overview
Indian Education System: Government Policies
Things accomplished:
Introduction of group, Presentation and Discussion of reading material, Discussion on Group Agenda, Finalizing logistics
The first meeting started at 6.10 with an introduction by all members. The group showed nice diversity with people who studied in convents, big city public schools, small city schools and village schools. The medium of education for the attendees was different.
Varun presented a summary on the prescribed reading material, whose slides are present here. The presentation was interleaved with discussions. We didnt have a methodical discussion, but some interesting points of discussion I can recollect are:
- The group thought that the Minimum Levels of Learning were much higher for languages as compared to math. The group felt that they had themselves not achieved the MLL for language in the respective classes as mentioned.
- It was pointed out that the lack of girl's toilet in village schools is still a major reason for high girl dropout rate at the age of 13.
- It was pointed out that teachers dont teach students beyond a particular level so that they are incapable to realize their rights and send out complaints against them.
- The following statement in the Govt of India report was not understandable: "Elimination of Gender Disparities by 2005, and
Achievement of Gender Equality in Education by 2015"
- More?
New links of the CD posted by Dept of Education on 50 years of Education system in India is now posted.
The group felt that the challenges of Indian Education and the big picture is still not clear. Sayan and Ajay volunteered to present on this in the next meeting. Members also wished to learn about different instances where an individual or organisation had done great work for education.
The group discussed the aim and motive of the Reading Group. It can be summarized as follows:
- To be *aware* about the Indian Education system and the big-picture. The awareness is the stepping-stone to bring about a change. Group members shared perspective on action in the short-term (immediate action) and the long-term.
- *Short-term action* would comprise of working with NGOs, help them network with philanthropists, investors; provide our expertise, etc.
- *Long term Action*: The group agreed that the members at some point in their life will be in a position to make or influence policies and this awareness will help them then. Also people wish to work on education together with their day to day work and this awareness will help them.
- The group shall also become a converging point for *networking*: to meet like-minded people,mobilise resources and form long-lasting teams.
- The group concurred that the meetings should have a *tangible output*. This was defined in multiple ways, tangible output was *being informed*, create a report at the end, become an organisation in ourselves.
The statement of the day: 'All great revolutions started one day in a room like this with 5-10 like-minded individuals' Amen! [Aditya]
The meeting concluded at 740. The meeting will have more methodical discussions next time onwards and proper notes posted on the Wiki.