In his UNESCO-sponsored study on multi-grade teaching (MGT) in India, researcher Dr Lalit Kishore, makes a plea that the mono-grade schools be treated as a specific form of multigrade schools since most primary schools are small schools in India. In a news (July 5, 2016) "Multi-grade teaching can fill the gap between formal and non-formal education to enhance quality of education" by the Flexible Learning Strategies portal [1], the work of Dr Kishore has been mentioned, the mainly practiced in the government sector in project mode while NGOs are implementing multi-level and un-graded teaching approaches in many parts of India.
"It is unfortunate that in India, educational innovations get tried out successfully in project mode but never get institutionalized. Since, no mechanism is put in place to mainstream innovations; they often result in waste of money. They get limited to report writing on conclusion without dissemination or others to learn from and enhance the quality of mainstream education," reports the news.
"According to a UNESCO-sponsored study done by Lalit Kishore, multi-grade or multiple-class teaching (MGT) have been mainly practiced in the government sector in project mode while NGOs are implementing multi-level and un-graded teaching approaches in many parts of India.
The study, on the basis of the information gathered to elicit the genesis of various MGT initiatives in the country, concludes that there are two main systemic models of implementing multi-grade teaching in a large number of schools. The first model is the MGT by design and relies upon philosophical and pedagogical assumptions, and the second model is based upon the learning from the experiences of existing initiatives and adapting them to achieve specified targets.
Another major conclusion drawn from the present study is that the MGT initiatives in India have been successful in bridging up the divide in formal and non-formal education systems. The initiatives have provided space for children to learn in groups and individually along with providing classroom instruction of satisfactory quality. In the light of the MGT initiatives which have lasted about two decades and have been successfully mainstreamed, the mono-grade teaching could be regarded a specific case of multi-grade teaching.
Making classrooms more flexible to paces of children and providing pedagogical bases to classroom processes can even make the formal mono-grade schools to move forward. MGT initiatives under Janshala Programmes and by NGOs have demonstrated this. And, this has implications for the Right to Education Act; educational policy; child policy; training and education of teachers; research; and educational management structures. Is the system listening!"
It would be pertinent to mention that the Flexible Learning Strategies for Out of School Children programme is a UNESCO initiative ( contacts : flsinfo@unesco.org)
with the aim of supporting inclusive and quality education for every child in the region. Our goal is to reach the remaining and most vulnerable 5% of children with no access to education in the region and support quality improvements in learning for every child.
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