Designing for Education in Navalgund
“Its only an hour journey from Dharwad, I will pick you up in morning” he said. We were soon driving across a beautiful flat, dry, black expanse of Deccan plateau, passing village lakes, road widening work and occasional (lucky) drizzles of monsoon that locals ‘pray for’ through out the year. “Here, it is not very developed, people find it hard to even afford basic education” says a chairman of a local English medium school. “ Government schools have failed to deliver even the simplest of the education. Their teachers are busy cooking, serving and cleaning food whole day, they have to do it compulsorily…when will they have the time to teach?” he says.
I glimpsed a local government school, nostalgic and admiring its simple architecture. Many government schools in India have a few things in common. Longitudinal arrangement of classrooms, connecting corridor, facing play area, pitched roof, small window openings, local ‘kadapa’ flooring, bare facilities like a black board, few tables for teachers and thats it. In Karnataka, government run schools constitute only 35%. Rest are Private schools. This trend of increasing Private schools are due to lack of effective teaching system, teachers and “English” oriented instructions. Also the private schools cater to demands of highly growing urban scene.
Large part of our rural population cannot afford private schools. Its not easily accessible, kids have to travel to towns. It is expensive. “I cannot pay the fees if my crop fails during the time of admission. I do not see a need to make my son learn english, as I cannot teach him myself nor anyone around here” says a local farmer. “It might get heavy on him and his confidence, but I am keen if I feel assured and get help. If he gets a good job, his life will be settled, unlike our struggles with uncertainty in farming” he says.
In an hour, we reached Navalgund. Chairman showed us around his English medium school with deep pride and gratitude to all those who had helped him achieve his dream. “I want to educate every child around a hundred villages here who cannot afford an English medium school. Our buses already reach 55 villages. These kids including the youngest (4 year olds) hop on to our buses as early as 7:00 in morning and spend their time quite joyously till 5:00 pm in evening here.” As we moved around the corridors, I saw a thousand energetic face. Some finishing their lunch, few repeating the teacher instructions on top of their voice, a couple setting up a cricket net for practice, some gossiping about us new found faces, some on computers and some waiting near their buses to return back home.
It is an overwhelming sight. “We charge very less fee here, half of the fee is wavered for those who have lost one parent, full concessions to students without parents. Parents can pay as they get their income from the crops. There is no fixed date or end date for fees” said the chairman. “ I incur loss every year, because I invest in building the infrastructure all the time, hopefully this year I should even out, if I decide not build anything more here”. I was impressed with his commitment. This also became a driving factor for me to think beyond an architectural scheme or a design solution which we usually end up preconceiving.
The school housed 1460 students from 55 villages. Over 60% of the students were girls as the school was committed to make education more accessible to girls. “Girls fare a lot better than boys here, they learn diligently, and also it is important for them to learn better because their parents decide to get them married after 10th standard. This has become a problem. I want to start a pre-university college to address this problem” said chairman. “Parents are hesitant to send girls to towns for studying and it also cost over 60,ooo rupees annually. This is an impossible situation to many farmers. Only a handful in a village can even think of this. If I start a college here with lesser fee, I may encourage them to study further”. It looked like a fair solution. For that he required to invest into infrastructure and good teachers. He already hired teachers from nearby city. 80% of his teachers travelled daily from Hubli. This made a drastic difference in the quality of instruction to students. He would bet on a similar model for the Pre university too.
Enrollment and pass percentages are quite bad in these regions. Around an average of 65–70% drop out of high school. They are suddenly handicapped to participate in the educational system. Very few succeed to pass and move further. The boys especially become socially noteworthy. They spread media influence on smaller kids in the villages. They share adult and game contents over phones to kids confusing them in early years. “ I want to start ITI (Industrial training institute) here. I want to enroll all these boys and engage them to spend times with machines and learn some skills. They do not have to study books as they do not like it” chairman continued with his ideas.
Afternoon began to feel hotter. Average summer temperatures touched 40 deg centigrade here. Its hot and uncomfortable to sit and survive classes as schools cannot afford air conditioning systems. They seemed to enjoy the cloudy monsoon. The playground was full.
We spoke to teachers, students, administration and helpers. A typical day to day issues of keeping up with standard of instructions, managing the administration, exams, difficulty in giving individual attention to students due to numbers, daily corrections, tracking the progress were problems we had seen to any school in city. But teachers here showed a sense of contentment and interest towards what they were doing, missing in city. We examined a nearby area for a proposed college building. We restrained from quickly giving design solutions as we were just beginning to touch the tip of the iceberg. We proposed to work out the areas and later work on possible solutions with complete involvement of local teachers, students and experts.
The situation of Navalgund may look similar in many places of India. India has over 1.4 million schools. Half in towns that have the potential of connecting at-least a 100 villages around. The trends of privately funded english medium school in villages continue to grow. “We do not want to take any aid from government, its a tedious process and uncertain. They keep moving people and 80% of the time we encounter difficult people to deal with. We hardly get any help. And we have no faith left. They do nothing for the farmers here too.We want to run ourselves” says chairman. Local initiatives are largely responsible for the change in educational access and are key drivers of assimilating quality education relevant to local need.
Design here can engage at various levels depending on interest and feasibility. A designer can help in organizing local content relatable to students, design a building housing the college connect for further education, think of a financial solution between farmers and schools, think of village level help to newly enrolled or drop outs and so forth. A few good influential participants and an involvement of a community could do magic to few hundred lives. We have seen, heard a thousand such examples across India and continue to stumble upon a countless local initiatives geared up for bettering the quality of life.
We will be involved in this direction till we see some impact and we are open to collaborate with any professional to help him participate meaningfully. Please do contact me at kirankulkarnip@gmail.com for any information you would like to know.
