For elementary schools in India multi-grade and multi-level school organisation and pedagogy are viable strategies: Study

In India, The multi-grade and multi-level schools organisation are successful in the NGO sector, According to A UNESCO-Sponsored study by this blogger, in most NGOs, the initiatives on Multi-Grade Teaching (MGT) are effective as far as the learner achievement is concerned.

Rishi Valley Satellite Schools are a highly systematic and well performing cluster of MGT schools with cultural inputs into the curriculum, well-established time and learning material use routines, vertical grouping and community participation. In these schools, children have met the mastery criterion of 80 x 60 with high mean scores both in language as well as in mathematics. Better performance of children has been seen in mathematics as compared to language in all the initiatives.

The writing and reading skills are either average or below average across all the MGT initiatives. This could be because of the reasons that the cards and worksheets being the main approach make the learning of language linear and additive.

The NGO initiatives with strong community presence and technical support are also doing well. The performance of children, as far as their mean scores in language and mathematics, are concerned are above average.

Also, as far as the classroom-learning environment is concerned it ranges from strict discipline to fear-free learning environment. The best example of strict discipline been the Shiksha Karmi project in Rajasthan, despite that the children achieved fairly well.

Hence, the following recommendations are made for improving classroom practices for learning of language and mathematics.

1.    Efforts be made for transition from home language to standard language as a part of the readiness programme in different initiatives beamed at rural and tribal children;

2.    Language learning be not treated in a linear and additive way by relying pre-dominantly on work-cards and a lot of supplementary reading and writing instructional material be prepared along with ‘reading aloud’ as a part of the language learning practice from grade two onwards;

3.    In mathematics, revision and revisiting of previous inter-related concepts be built in to the MGT practice especially while taking up multiplication and division involving two or more two-digit numbers. Too much emphasis on cards and learning ladder can make learning highly linear – this caution should be the driving force to make learning more integrated and non-linear;

4.    Formative evaluation and supportive learning be systematically integrated to move towards mastery of an on-going learning episode.

In India, multi-grade teaching has come into sharp focus both due to the universalisation of elementary education movement and pedagogical considerations.