No funds for a unique school !

Rashmi Oberoi

The trailblazing couple Bringing in plastic waste to school Adear friend shared an article with me recently that piqued my interest – she knew that it would and so naturally I delved in further and got in touch with Parmita Sarma, the co-founder of Akshar. Their motto: teaching the young ones on how to save our world.
Parmita Sarma and her better-half Mazin Mukhtar, put their heads together and came up with a creative way that would have a paradigm shift in education. Their school gives underprivileged students all the skills they need to build productive lives for themselves.

The couple started the initiative for this trailblazing school in June 2016 in Guwahati, Assam. Building a coalition of concerned citizens has been a priority. Their aim is to reform low-cost education and in turn help the younger generation to move forward in a positive manner. Right now, they have a 100 plus students in the model school in Guwahati which has been a testing ground for innovative teaching methods. They even have a make-shift hostel for a few children that have parents that cannot afford to take care of them.

The founders with their students There is a great deal of pressure on teens to drop out of school so they can start earning. Akshar pays teens to work part-time in school, learning and earning, and families are happy to send them to school.Student’s wages are based on their academic level and their teaching skill. Students are given incentives to learn more so they can earn more.To measure teaching skill, students self-evaluate their levels of critical thinking, effective communication, empathy, meta-cognition, patience and their ability to motivate.

The school follows a model for scalable environmental remediation.Every student pays ‘school fees’ with plastic from their homes. Teens are employed to collect plastic from homes in the area surrounding the school, a model that can be replicated in every school to effect large scale change. Teens are also employed part-time in the campus Recycling Centre, sponsored by ERDF, processing non-recyclable, dry, plastic packaging into Eco-bricks. 20-40 packets that would have been dumped or burned are sequestered into a single plastic bottle, forming a sturdy brick for simple construction projects.

The foundation has developed an award-winning, disruptive education model, designed specifically for children in poverty. To prevent dropouts, they employ older students as tutors for younger children and pay them to perform development work in the community after school.

My personal favourite is that the school has an animal shelter. Akshar's campus, students and staff have sheltered and found homes for 20 dogs, including injured and abandoned dogs, in the first year of the campus Animal Shelter.They were vaccinated, dewormed, and cleaned up, then homes were found for them, with regular monitoring. Akshar takes care of all their medical needs, sterilisation and post-op care. A perfect model for scalable rescue of street animals where teens are employed to take care of feeding puppies and medical issues, applying daily medicines, and to care for dogs for 10 days after their sterilisation procedures, before they are sent home. Any reports of sick or injured dogs in the area are addressed quickly.If every school implements a similar model, we can end the suffering of street animals, while students learn empathy and basic medical care.

Fixing solar panels Akshar has partnered with the ‘Nalanda Project from Motivation for Excellence’ to give students access to the latest in educational technology.Students who lack the technology at home gain essential digital literacy, and students are far more engaged by the interactive learning technology than by traditional learning materials. A teenager trained to teach and equipped with a tablet becomes a very effective private instructor. Many young students are not yet able to read or navigate learning software. When guided by an older student, techassisted learning becomes more personal and dynamic, allowing adult teachers to target and address individual students' weaknesses with ease.

Fellowship school Akshar has partnered with the ‘Nalanda Project from Motivation for Excellence’ to give students access to the latest in educational technology.Students who lack the technology at home gain essential digital literacy, and students are far more engaged by the interactive learning technology than by traditional learning materials. A teenager trained to teach and equipped with a tablet becomes a very effective private instructor. Many young students are not yet able to read or navigate learning software. When guided by an older student, techassisted learning becomes more personal and dynamic, allowing adult teachers to target and address individual students' weaknesses with ease.

Akshar's secondary curriculum balances practical skills with abstract learning. Students will gain skills in school until placed in a college, apprenticeship, or high skill trade.The curriculum combines carpentry with mathematics, solar technology with physics, embroidery with economics, teaching with psychology, recycling with ecology, and landscaping with biology.

In Akshar, teens are being trained in gardening and carpentry, solar technology and, soon, irrigation, electronics and lighting. This training will culminate in the development of the Akshar Landscaping Enterprise.Students will learn how to operate a profitable business, while enhancing the aesthetics of public spaces in the community, as well as private businesses in the area.

Recycling model

Taking care of the stray The foundation has developed an award-winning, disruptive education model, designed specifically for children in poverty. To prevent dropouts, they employ older students as tutors for younger children and pay them to perform development work in the community after school.
Akshar uses child labour to fight child labour - kids in poverty need to earn money to stay in school, learning and earning. They employ children as tutors and social workers. This ensures that younger children receive daily tuition from an older, caring student.
Akshar students learn more to earn more - they pay them based on their skills and knowledge, and fine them for bad behaviour. As students move from one grade level to the next, their wages increase. Also, wages increase with teaching skill. Students are strongly incentivised to behave like model students.

Akshar places every student directly into a career - kids stay in school until the school finds a career for them -- via college or apprenticeship in a high skill trade. Teens develop vocational skills, in addition to teaching, during the critical 12-18 age group. Akshar is developing a School-to-Career Pipeline.

Akshar charges them plastic school fees - teach them to be responsible for their surroundings. If every school does this, it can impact the plastic crisis. Students learn to address the problems afflicting their communities, and they develop machines and inventions as part of their coursework to address the problems.

Akshar doesn’tbuild new schools; it fixes the existing ones – they have already started implementing these policies in a notorious government school in Delhi. Within 6 months, the school has been completely transformed, and the Education Department has praised their results. They have invited them to apply for more schools next year. They are targeting 100 government schools in the next 5 years, and have launched the Akshar Fellowship to achieve this goal.

Akshar places every student directly into a career - kids stay in school until the school finds a career for them -- via college or apprenticeship in a high skill trade. Teens develop vocational skills, in addition to teaching, during the critical 12-18 age group. Akshar is developing a School-to-Career Pipeline.

Next year, they will recruit and train 5 fellows at their model school in Assam, then deploy them in failing government schools for 2 year periods, to implement their education model.

Tree planting At the moment, Akshar needs financial assistance and help. I was absolutely stunned to know that such trailblazing foundations hardly get any financial backing. The couple have naturally dug into their personal bank balances in an effort to keep going. Local governments hardly offer any financial support as their priorities lie elsewhere. Post elections, there appears to be no money to help support such ingenious projects like theirs. What a sad state of affairs!
The need of the hour is not just a 100 schools in India but a thousand more. Akshar is training and deploying fellows to reform underperforming government schools, in partnership with local government and The Education Alliance. Fellows will work with school leaders and teachers to implement innovative methods for two years, leaving behind a transformed school with vastly improved outcomes. The future of our children is in our hands and to secure a bright one for them, we all need to do our bit. Let us all support such initiatives – pool in our funds…help out…in any small form possible.