Covid-19: NGO finds a way to improve learning retention among children in rural Karnataka

Initiative of Pratham Mysore covered four villages in Mysuru district

An out-of-the-box thinking, which led to educated senior students mentoring their juniors during the Covid-19 pandemic, has resulted in better learning retention in a few villages in Mysuru district.

Conceived by Pratham Mysore, an NGO working in the field of education, the Student Mentoring Programme (SMP) has caught the imagination of a few educationists who intend to introduce mentoring as a compulsory subject in the B.Ed course.

Explaining the genesis of Student Mentoring Programme, Ashvini Ranjan, who is pioneering Pratham Mysore’s activities in the region, said that  the NGO had launched a Model Village Programme in 2017. Under this programme, it adopted Hyaknur, Mavinahalli, Sujjlur and Muthathi in T. Narsipura taluk to shore up the learning abilities of children in government schools.

The concept of model village programme was based on the premise that education of a child is not the responsibility of schools alone, but is a collaborative effort of the entire community.

The initiative was delivering positive results, but came to a halt due to COVID-19. The closure of schools from March 2020 caused discontinuity in learning.

Given the absence of a conducive environment at homes in villages for education as compared to their counterparts in towns and cities, the threat of students falling behind their urban counterparts was genuine and was bound to have negative repercussions in the long run, said Mr. Ashvini Ranjan.

The challenges faced by rural children during such disruptions could become unsurmountable in future as various studies, including Pratham’s Annual Status Education Report (ASER), indicate that more than 50% of primary school children in rural areas are three levels behind grade-appropriate learning, he added.