Crescent School: Site Visit
Deepak Azad,
June 1, 2012
This is what the TTF proposal told us about the school:
Crescent School is a ca. 25-year-old Affordable Private School in Bangalore with 1,200 children. The children are either orphans or children of daily wage earning parents, mostly belonging to the neighborhood community. The fees is ca. Rs 200 pm. The school is run by the Crescent Association and has a progressive management. There are about 40 teachers of which 60% are B Ed/ D Ed. However, in terms of teaching skills and subject skills, there is much to be improved. The school has the right mix, we feel, of an underprivileged profile on the one hand and a reasonably progressive management on the other, to make the Whole School Transformation project successful.
What Deepak observed:
The school started 35 years ago and today it has students from LKG upto 12th standard, along with some students in B.Com and other degree courses - all in the same building. The school is attached to a Mosque (the school building is behind a mosque), and most of the students as well as I think teachers and management are Muslims.
The current strength of the school is about 1800 students, which includes 300 students at college level (11th and above).
There are about 70 students in each of class 1 to 7 - only 1 section in each class.
Overall the school has about 55-60 teachers.
The starting salaries of teachers are
Rs 10,000 at college level (11th and above)
Rs 8,000 at high-school level (8th and above)
Rs 5,600 at primary level (upto 7th class)
Govt funds 6 teachers at college level
The school also had a midday meal program which is mostly funded by a local MP. The food is cooked within the school premises, in the attached photos there is a photo of the kitchen as well.
The school also provides uniforms and books to students.
"Women's Wing" also funds and does some activities at the school
The school also receives funding from various other sources - e.g. MPs, people from the community - each room in the school building has been funded by someone.
The school's monthly budget, according to the secretary, is about 5 lacs.
All in all the school is markedly better - at least in terms of infrastructure and funding - than the other schools I had visited earlier. The school is also located in a niceish locality, though some students come from as far as 10-15 kms away.
The school had opened sometime this week, so I could meet people from the management, teachers, students, and also a few parents who had come for admission of their kids. The management of the school comprises of professors in some degree colleges, retired lawyers etc. They seemed quite keen to provide good education to kids - one of them mentioned that last year pass percentage at 10 standard was 33%, this year it has risen to 58% and he dreams that it will reach 100% soon.
The management and the teachers also mentioned that one of the key problems is the with respect to the large number of students that take admission in 8th standard. Most of these students come from Urdu medium schools and have trouble adjusting to English medium education. I also saw the entrance exam papers for such students (the exam is just to asses the students and no one is refused admission), most of the students had done poorly, even in questions which were asked in Urdu. (I took snaps of one of the papers). From what I understood this was the biggest area of concern for the management. However, the TTF program will be mainly aimed towards classes 1 to 7. There was some discussion today about including 8th standard English and Maths teachers in the TTF program as well. According to the management students who have been in the school since LKG or class 1 do reasonably well, of course there is scope for improvement but they are not as bad as the students who come in class 8. In short, I saw a slight conflict in what the school is primarily looking for and what the TTF program aims to achieve. The TTF folks - Padma and Gazal - who accompanied me, said that they will be doing an audit of the school next week and only after that they will come to know as to what areas the school needs improvement in. I would recommend to you that you ask for audit results and try to make sure that the school's goals are indeed aligned with TTF's goals.
Also, I got a chance to sit in 2 classes for some time - a 7th standard English class and a 4th standard Maths class. In both cases the teachers were mostly lecturing the students and when they asked a question everyone would answer together. Earlier I had visited a school where TTF had already done intervention and there I thought the teaching techniques were different/better. However, both the TTF folks and the head of teachers at the school had mentioned to me that the English language skills of the teachers were an area of concern and that the teachers resort to Urdu/Hindi to explain things to students. However, the few teachers I talked to were either quite good or were at least ok. Even in the two classes I sat through the teachers spoke in English and the students understood them. Again I would recommend to you to closely look at the audit results, and maybe compare them results of other schools.
I also had a chance to speak to parents err.. grandmothers who had come for their kids admissions. According to the management 40% of the students are orphans and 90% of the parents are daily wage earners. The grandmothers I interacted with certainly fit this description. One kid's mother had expired and now the grandmother was looking after her - and was quite keen on sending her granddaughter to school but was short on money. The school does help such students. I was shown admission forms of two girls who were admitted today and had received full scholarship. There were others who had come for admission to 11th, but again could only pay Rs 1000 as fees for the entire year - in such cases the school helps with the remaining amount.
One of the things that I liked in the school was that students could study upto college level there itself. It could be fairly handy for some students especially for Muslim girls who would otherwise be married off at a young age. However, as mentioned above I was not fully convinced that the goals of TTF and the school are the same. The few teachers I talked to were, I think, not entirely sure how TTF will help them. The management while focused towards providing quality education to all students were primarily concerned about 8th standard students and 10 standard results.
I have uploaded the pics to dropbox, here is the link -
Other questions from site visit template:
Would you overall recommend funding the Whole School Transformation program with Crescent School?
- Yes.
Would you rate the school curriculum as secular, and the administration etc. as non-discriminative?
- I think they follow a state board or CBSE curriculum, so things should be OK there. However, it is a bit hard to say anything about the discrimination bit.
I went over the PDF, and here are answers to questions which I can answer and which probably cannot be answered by the information I provided earlier. Hope this helps.
PART B: The Beneficiaries and the community
At the time of enrolment, does the school ask for the names of both parents?
- Yes
What is the motivation for the parents to send their children to school?
- The few parents I spoke to talked about providing good education to their kids, and also about their inability to pay fees. The school helps with fees, has a mid-day meal program and in some cases also provides books and uniforms.
Why did the parents choose this school over the Government School?
- See above. Also this school is an English medium school, the school administrators mentioned a lack of enough english medium govt schools.
When you visited, how many children were present in the class? What is the regular class strength? What is the boy-girl ratio in the school?
- About 40-50 students were present. It was the first day of the new session, so the strength was slightly less. The total strength of classes is around 60-70. Boy-girl ratio was fairly good - close to 60-40.
PART C: Project particulars
How far is the project site from the main town/village? How do the children commute? (foot, bus etc.)
- The school is located in a fairly well to do location. As a result, several children travel large distances (>10Km) in public buses to come to school.
What infrastructure and facilities are available at the project site you visited? (eg. Furniture, buildings, toilets, library, sports, hostels, mid-day meals etc)
- The infrastructure is fairly decent - acceptable furniture, decent assembly area, play area for kindergarten children, mid-day meals.
Is the building permanent or temporary construction? Is it owned or rented? What is its physical condition?
- Permanent construction. <not sure, but I think it is owned by the Mosque or the Muslim board>. The building was in good shape.
How big are the classrooms? How many children per room? How many classes (1st to 3rd etc) per room?
- Classrooms were decent sized with about 60-70 students per class. Each class has its own room.
What is the mode of teaching in the school? (Check the appropriate choices)
- I think 'Formal'. The school definitely does not create its own study material (I had seen some of the books).
How many staff or volunteers are involved in the project? (Full-time/Part-time/Volunteers)
- 55-60 teachers
Does the organization train the teachers? Yes/No
- Not particularly. The head just has a few talks with a new teacher in the initial few days and that's about it.
Were you able to look at actual work of the students? Homework/classwork/tests etc? Comment.
- Yes. I looked at the classwork and it was mostly repetitive kind. e.g. in the english class students were often asked to write down difficult words from a lesson several times in their books. I thought the work given could have been more interesting/challenging. (Though the students did a decent job of doing what they were asked to do)