Teacher: Saint Thomas Vimala, GPS Krishnavaram
Highlight: A school community is not merely made up of teachers, students and their parents; it includes every member of the village. Involving the whole community in school programs helped both sides to have a better understanding of each other. This understanding gave shape to a series of school events and a variety of extracurricular activities. As the word about the school’s commitment to education spread, the school enrolment increased.
There are many issues faced by government schools: the lack of proper infrastructure and decrease in student strength are major concerns. This is largely because of the negative image people have of government schools and the rise in the number of private schools across areas. To this end, I would like to share my inputs on how we improved student enrollment through a ‘Community Participation Programme’ in our school.
Community Participation Programme (CPP)
In my opinion, a community not only involves the students, their parents and the School Management Committee (SMC), but every member of the village. It was a challenging task to involve all of them. Our school teachers and staff members got together and planned a yearly schedule of Community Participation Programmes to bring everyone together.
Every month we had programmes such as:
| Month | Name of the Event |
| June |
Pravesh Utsav |
|
July |
Birth Anniversary of Dr. Kamarajar |
|
August |
Science Exhibition (School level) |
|
September |
Rally week (Creating awareness on social issues) |
|
October |
Hand Wash Day Food Festival Birth Anniversary of Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam |
|
November |
Children’s Day |
|
December |
Christmas Celebration |
|
January |
Samathuva Pongal |
|
February |
Community Participation Programme (Sunday special) |
|
March |
Annual Day |
For each programme, the fourth and fifth grade students of our school, created simple invitations and invited their neighbours and all the community members. We, the teachers concentrated our efforts on the participation of members of the panchayat, wealthy patrons and business people residing in the locality. We also interacted with the parents of children studying in the private schools nearby and made them participate in our school programmes.
Through these programmes, we successfully reached out to all the community members. These programmes created an opportunity for everyone in the village to visit our school, go around our thriving classrooms and browse through our students’ activities and projects. This helped us earn a good reputation in the community. This was made possible by the collective effort of our SMC and Parents Teachers Association (PTA).
More Activities
Through these programmes, we were able to understand the views of the people better and their expectations from the government schools. The feedback from the community helped us focus on the areas of their interest and improve them. We started to involve our students in many extracurricular activities like spoken English, yoga, karate, arts & crafts, smart class, movie screening, etc. We encouraged students to talk about these activities and programmes with their playmates and neighbours.
Spoken English classes
We engaged third, fourth and fifth grade students in spoken English classes once a week. During these classes we encouraged students to participate in different speaking activities such as role play, dialogue conversation, story narration, skits, etc. This motivated them to speak in English.
Yoga / Arts / Crafts
Our school teachers learned basic yoga exercises, arts and crafts activities and taught them to students once a week.
Smart class / Movie screening
On the second Wednesday of every month, we borrowed a projector and laptop from Azim Premji Foundation and arranged smart class sessions for our students. In the morning session, we played lesson oriented CDs provided by our department such as Toon Masti, Hello English, etc. During the afternoon session, we screened educational movies and animated movies. Children thoroughly enjoyed these activities and looked forward to these sessions.
Karate class
We organized karate classes for our children thrice a week after school hours. An alumnus, M. Radhika, a karate practitioner, taught the basics of karate to our students. The news of this activity spread and people started talking more about our school.
Result and reflections
By conducting regular community involvement programmes in our school, we enrolled a certain number of students from private schools during the academic year 2017-18. This was to our great surprise and I believe that this was possible only through the Community Participation Programmes. These programmes created a difference in the community and enhanced the image of our school. I feel proud to say that each class of our school has one or two students who had attended private schools earlier.
Even though we cannot equate this number with the passed out students, this encouraged us to believe that ‘Together we can change’.