The Constitution of India states that free and compulsory education for all children in the age group of six to fourteen years is a fundamental right, however, the mechanisms that are present to disburse education are not robust to offer quality education to all.
“At Grundfos India, we believe in facilitating quality education for the children of our country and recently collaborated with Madhi Foundation, a non-profit organisation working in the education sector, committed to the cause of bridging the equity gap in education for children.”, Grundfos India said.
Madhi Foundation aims to deliver effective education upliftment programmes in the education sector catering to the marginalised communities across India. Its programmes have specific mandates and target different areas of intervention within the education sector. The NGO launched the ‘Transformational Academic Programme’ (TAP) in 2015 across 40 classrooms in 15 corporation schools in Chennai.
Reforming education for teachers and students
The best way to ensure that students truly imbibe the knowledge disseminated in the classroom is by ensuring that the teachers deliver it in the best possible manner. TAP is a teacher education and classroom transformation programme that aims to transform teachers through experiential, on-the-job teacher education.
It aims to address their skill deficit in language proficiency as well as awareness and knowledge about modern teaching-learning techniques (pedagogy), with the help of technology and on-ground support.
The programme also attempts to transform the learning environment for students with a data-driven focus on achieving grade-level as well as higher order literacy and numerical skills among children. This leads to mastery of critical academic and life skills by providing them high-quality learning resources and using technology to track each child’s progress.
“We decided to support this initiative as part of our CSR efforts. This comprehensive programme benefits both students and teachers. Grundfos India sponsored two classrooms at the CMS Arumbakkam School in Chennai under TAP. We hope that through this endeavour, students who were weak in subject like Mathematics and English would be able to improve their verbal and numerical competencies.”, Grundfos India said.
Impact
“Our efforts to improve the quality of education were clearly visible. Children from the classrooms that implemented TAP had five times higher mastery in English and Science and three times higher mastery in Mathematics as compared to their peers in classrooms that did not have this intervention, a recent mid-year assessment revealed.”, Grundfos India.
The teachers who were part of the programme performed better and delivered the curriculum in an efficient and interactive manner. In a recent teacher survey, 100 per cent of teachers said that the TAP programme helped them improve the quality of their teaching.
Merlia Shaukath, CEO – Madhi Foundation, said, “Grundfos believed in our vision and our programme even before anyone else did and their faith in our work encouraged to stay in the game at a time when we were still finding our feet. Today, Madhi is looking to collaborate with the state and central government to improve the quality of teacher education across the country and we would not have come this far without the support and assistance of organisations like Grundfos. Grundfos takes great pride in being a socially conscious organisation and we are immensely proud of being associated with such a company”.
Christy Stella Rajathi, one of the teachers in CMS Arumbakkam School, said, “TAP programme really helped to improve the quality of teaching. It not only helps the students but also the teachers. Prior to joining the programme, we needed more time to prepare the syllabus and we hardly had any guiding materials. But now it’s very easy to teach. All thanks to Madhi Foundation and Grundfos for this support.”
“We are ecstatic that our CSR initiative has truly been successful in improving the performance of the students and teachers. We hope to continually support the cause of educational reformation in the country so that children have a brighter future.”, Company said.
