Project Sangamam-Poondi
May 19th 2014
Background:
Asha Chennai has been working
with eight government primary schools in the Thiruvallur
district under Project Sangamam-Poondi.
Thiruvallur is one of the poorer
districts of Tamilnadu. It has always been a water
scarce region. Proximity to Chennai has its positives as well as negatives.
While a lot of people find employment in Chennai and auxiliary industries for
Chennai (like brick kilns and sand quarrying), the local resources are taken
away from the region including water in the form of Poondi
reservoir, river sand, human workforce etc. All this has left the mainstay of
this region agriculture in a bad situation.
The scenario as regards education in this district
is similar to the rest of Tamilnadu. Government
schools exist but with serious deficiencies. Private (read English medium) schools are coming up and eating into
the student force of the government schools. But the private schools are
often worse in terms of the quality of the teaching. Asha
Chennai believes the revival and strengthening of the government schooling
system is essential to the implementation of any mass education initiative in
India.
Government has been progressively giving more funds
to the education sector. This has also had a beneficial effect on these schools
in our project. ABL has been implemented in all the schools. Infrastructure at
all these schools has been improved. Recently laptops have been given to middle
schools. However like in other measures by government these also end up as
half-measures. Buildings are not made fully functional with required things
like weathering course, electrical wiring and fittings, plumbing and water
arrangement etc. Appropriate training and staff level to effectively use ABL
and also materials like trays etc. are not provided. Training is not provided
to the teachers to use the computers effectively at the schools. We are looking
at plugging these holes.
Here is a brief timeline of the things that have
been taking place at this project.
2004-05 |
Asha Chennai started the
project with Panchayat Union Primary schools at Kuppammal Chathiram, Kanakavalli Puram and Pattarai Perambudur |
2005-06 |
We also started supporting the school at Kunnavalam and the Balwadis at Kunnavalam and Kuppammal Chathiram. |
2006-07 |
We extended our support to the schools at Placepalayam, Nemiliagaram and Pudhur and also the Balwadis at
Nemiliagaram. |
2007-08 |
We added support for the school at SSA-Korattur. We also added libraries in all these schools.
These are still functioning well. |
2009-10 |
We discontinued the support for Kanagavalli puram, Kunnavalam and Pudhur and in
its place added support for T.B. Puram and Yelappanaidu Pettai. We stopped
support at Kanagavalli puram,
Kunnavalam and Pudhur
because of several factors like lack of adequate support and since the number
of government teacher were sufficient for the strength of the school. We
provided computer labs at all the schools with computers that were donated
for us by the company Inautix. |
2011-12 |
We discontinued support for Nemiliagaram
because the government started one more primary school in that area and each
school was so small that one teacher could manage the number of students
(less than 30 each). We also discontinued support at SSA Korattur
since the government itself appointed a third teacher (for 80 students) and
our teacher also stopped working because of marriage. |
2012-13 |
We added support for the school at Allikuzhi and Thomur. |
2013-14 |
We withdrew support for T.B. Puram
and Yelappanaidu Pettai
as both these schools have got additional teachers
from the government and the teacher student ratio is good at these places. We
added support for two more schools at Gandhigram
and Kachur at the start of the year. Then we
received a request from the middle school at Ramancheri
as they were converting to an English medium school and they didn’t have any
teacher to teacher English medium at the primary school. Since we wanted to
participate in this experiment of the government we decided to support this
school as well. During this year we also built toilets for the schools at Placepalayam and Allikuzhi with
funds from Asha Frankfurt. |
We are currently supporting Kuppammal
Chathiram, Pattarai Perambudur, Placepalayam, Thomur, Allikuzhi, Gandhigram, Kachur and Ramanchery.
Locally the activities of the
project has been coordinated by the project coordinator Srinivasan. We have further provided teachers to these
schools. We have been continuing to improve the infrastructure at these schools.
We also sponsored the annual day functions at all these schools.
In doing all these activities we have been happy to
find a supportive and energetic set of teachers at these schools. The district
and panchayat officials have also been very
supportive.
Schools/Balwadis to
be covered:
Kuppammal Chathiram
School (from August 2004)
The primary school in Kuppammal
Chathiram has 85 students and 3 government teachers.
The school has adequate building space to comfortably seat the children. Asha is providing one teacher Deivanayagi
to this school. The number of children at this school has been reducing over
the years because of the presence of a English medium
school right adjacent to this school. In the last two years the trend has
started reversing.
Pattarai Perambuthur
School (from Dec 2004)
This has 105 students and 4 teachers. This school
has also seen a big drop in the number of children because of various factors
including drop in the population of children in this area, joining convents in Thiruvallur and the closure of two brick kilns in the area
which meant the children coming from there are no longer coming to the school.
This trend has started reversing in the last two years.
Asha has been providing one
teacher, Tamilselvi, to this school. The school was
first chosen as one of the model schools for Activities Based Learning. This
has now been adopted at all the schools we are supporting.
Placepalayam School (from Dec 2006)
The
Panchayat Union Middle School at Placepalayam
has been in existence since 1948. In 2012-13 thanks to the improvements we have
done to the school, this has been converted into a high school. The high school
(classes 6 to 10) and the primary school (classes 1 to 5) will function independently.
The high school has 122 children and 6 teachers. The primary school has 65
children and two teachers of which one of the teacher
is not effective because of health problems. We are proud to report that the
students our teachers trained for a number of years have now performed very
well in the 10th std
board exams.
Asha is
providing one teacher Anitha Devi for the primary
school. They needed one more teacher at this school. The teachers appointed a
PTA teacher Hepsiba to this school. We are planning
to bring in Hepsiba also into the Asha
fold this year.
Thomur (from 2011)
This school has also been upgraded to become a high
school last year. Once again the primary school and high school will function
independently. The high school will have 120 children and 5 teachers. The
primary school will have 55 children and 2 teachers. We will continue our involvement
with the primary school. Our teacher was helping them with their computers. We
will continue teaching computers to the high school children as well.
Allikuzhi (from 2012)
This is also a remote school in the same vicinity as
Placepalayam and TB Puram.
Being a remote school getting government teachers who would stay is a problem.
The school has 72 children and three government teachers of which two are very
new. Asha has been providing one teacher for the
school who also helps with teaching computers at that school as well as T.B. Puram and Placepalayam.
Gandhigramam (from 2013)
The schools is situated in
a tribal area. The primary school there has 55 children and 2 government
teachers. The area is a very poor area and is badly in need of our support. The
Balwadi in the village attached to the school has not
been functioning. We hope to add support for this school and Balwadi. One teacher we provide would be able to manage
both these roles. Asha has been providing one teacher
for this school.
Kachur (from 2013)
The school has 90 children and 3 teachers. They are
in need of an additional teacher. Asha has been
providing one teacher for this school.
Ramancheri (from 2013)
The school is a middle school. There are about 60
children in the primary sections (class 1 to 5) and about 20 children each in
classes 6, 7 and 8. The school has 6 teachers which is
close to being adequate. However this is one of the schools where English
medium has been introduced. English medium has been introduced in classes 1 and
2. They need an additional teacher who knows English to teach these classes. It
is to be noted that three of the government teacher in this school have good
English. Couple of them have taught in English medium
schools for several years before joining as government teachers. Asha has been providing one teacher at this school from
about Sept 2013.
Balwadis at Kuppammal
Chathiram, Gandhigram, Allikuzhi and Thomur
These Balwadi are the
feeder Balwadis for the respective schools. There are
25 students at each Balwadi with one teacher and two
Ayahs. We provided some mats and play materials for the Balwadis
every year. We provided some sports materials, painted the Black boards and
provided plates and tumblers to all the Balwadis. We
need to provide some more materials to these Balwadis.
All of them require electric connection/fittings and some sprucing up of the
insides.
Other General Inputs From Asha
Asha Chennai has undertaken
several projects with government schools. As part of these projects Asha Chennai provides several standard inputs including,
Further this project being in a remote area would
require a local coordinator and cannot be executed directly by the volunteers
in Chennai. Srinivasan would perform the role of
coordinator for the project would require a salary.
The following table identifies the allocated and
actual expenses under various heads for the project in the year 2009-10.
TDB
SNo
|
Work
Item (and what was executed)
|
Amount
Budgeted
|
Amount
Spent (approx)
|
1 |
Teachers’ salaries – We added support for one more additional
school (Ramancheri) with the same number of
teachers. |
Rs
423,000 |
Rs
418,275 |
2 |
Coordinator’s salary |
Rs
117,000 |
Rs
117,000 |
3 |
Infrastructure Works and materials at
the Sangamam Poondi
schools and Balwadis – Fans were purchased for the schools at Katchur
and Gandhigram. Black boards were repainted at all
schools. |
Rs
55,500 |
Rs
40,075 |
4 |
Educational, reading and sports
materials for the schools and Balwadis. Sports and learning/teaching materials
were provided. |
Rs
150,000 |
Rs
75,500 |
6 |
School bags for Children from all
schools. Tumblers and Plates for children. Mats for children to sit on. Other
material for the schools. Of
these we provided only mats. We did not provide school bags for children
because of lack of funds. |
Rs
261,000 |
Rs
12,100 |
7 |
Admin Expenses Office room rent/maintenance and materials
– We more or less spent this entire
amount. Note we are not paying rent for this year. Miscellaneous Emergencies/Services Documentation/Conveyance – One camera was purchased with this
budget. This is used heavily for all the project photos. Coordinator Vehicle Maintenance |
Rs
50,000 |
Rs
32,300 |
8 |
Evaluation and training Volunteer/Intern travel Only
one volunteer site visit was charged against this. |
Rs
35,000 |
Rs
3,000 |
9 |
School day functions at all the Sangamam Poondi schools. |
Rs
60,000 |
Rs
42,500 |
10 |
Toilet construction at Placepalayam and Allikuzhi – This is completed at Placepalayam.
At Allikuzhi construction of the new toilet is
mostly complete. But repair work on old toilet is still pending. |
Rs
280,000 |
Rs
249,000 |
|
Total Expense |
Rs
14.36 Lakhs |
Rs
10 Lakhs |
SNo
|
Work
Description
|
Cost
and Modification Details
|
Total
Cost for Asha
|
Common Items |
|||
1 |
Additional teachers (Incl travel)
Kuppammal Chathiram
– Deivanayagi -- Rs 3200
Pattarai Perambudur
– Santhasophya -- Rs 4400
Placepalayam -- Anita + 1 -- Rs 2775.
Thomur - Gayathri
-- Rs 3850
Allikuzhi – Sandhya
-- Rs 3775
Gandhigramam – Sathyavani -- Rs 4075
Kachur – Janova –
4400
Ramancheri – New Hire
Computer Teacher – Sailaja (to be replaced
by Asha -- 4200). |
8 schools. Currently 8 teacher. Need one more at Placepalayam.
Average cost was Rs 3850 incl. conveyance. The base
salary would increase by 300 and there would be a performance based increase
of between 0 and 500 (expect average of Rs 250).
Travel allowance will be increased to Rs 800 from
current Rs 500. Expect average salary incl.
conveyance to be Rs 4600 per person. 10*4500*12 + 10*3000 |
Rs
570,000 |
2 |
Tumblers and Plates. Some
replacements, say a total of 200 would be required at all schools. |
At the existing 8 schools only replacements
required. 200 * Rs.100 |
Rs
20,000 |
3 |
School bags for all children. |
The Rs 200
is the average price for a mix of small and big bags from our vendor. This
would depend on the vendor selected. This year requirement is about 650 * Rs 200. |
Rs
130,000 |
4 |
Educational materials Geom. Instruments Slates Teachers kits Trays Colours
Atlases |
Just FYI, this does not include
computers and accessories which we are doing for all our schools as part of
the Education and technology effort. |
Rs
80,000 |
5 |
Sports Materials Plastic balls for younger children,
Footballs for older children, Tennicoit rings,
Skipping ropes, Snakes & Ladders, Ludo etc.
board games |
|
Rs
30,000 |
6 |
Teachers travel to Chennai This year we intend to bring the
teachers to Chennai once a month for interaction with volunteers, potentially
have follow up training etc. |
Van rental – Rs
2800. Breakfast, Lunch and tea/snacks – Rs 1200. Rs
4000 * 10. |
Rs
40,000. |
7 |
Evaluation and other training costs |
For trainers going to Thiruvallur for follow up training at the schools. |
Rs
10,000 |
8 |
Black board and scribble area
repainting |
Twice a year for all schools. |
Rs
40,000 |
9 |
Volunteers/interns from Asha Chennai would need to make one trip a month for two
days to the villages to monitor the work, retrain the teachers and report
back to Asha. |
Each trip would require the
following, Bus Fare + Local auto etc. – 500 Food – Rs
150. Honorarium – Rs
600 We are assuming two people travel
together for the above. There would be 8 trips during the project duration. |
Rs
10,000 |
10 |
Coordinator Salary Rs 12000 * 12 +
3000 |
Given the increase in the number of
schools etc. I will propose to increase this to Rs
12,000. |
Rs
147,000 |
11 |
Coordinator Vehicle Maintenance |
Rs
5000 |
Rs
5000 |
12 |
Furniture for the office (note we are
not paying rent this year) |
|
Rs
20,000 |
13 |
Miscellaneous (emergencies, services,
etc.) |
Rs
10,000 |
Rs
10,000 |
14 |
School day and other school functions |
|
Rs
60,000 |
15 |
Other Admin expenses (conveyance,
documentation etc.) |
|
Rs
15,000 |
16 |
Replacement Mats at all schools |
200 * Rs
120. |
Rs
24,000 |
17 |
Kitchen shed at Gandhigram.
Currently they lack proper cooking area. It is done with wood burning stove
indoors. |
|
Rs
20,000 |
18 |
Kitchen shed at Placepalayam.
Currently they lack proper cooking area. It is done with wood burning stove
indoors. |
|
Rs
20,000 |
19 |
Play/Learning materials for the Balwadi. |
For each Balwadi Open shelves – Rs
3000 Other materials – Rs
7000 |
Rs
40,000 |
20 |
Painting of scribble area and one
black board at the Balwadis |
4 * 1500 |
Rs
6,000 |
21 |
Two uniform sarees
and bag for teachers. |
10*2000 |
Rs
20,000. |
22 |
Rent + Electricity + Internet
Connection for Thiruvallur Office |
Rs
1000 rent + Rs 1000 for electricity + Rs 1000 for network. |
Rs
36,000. |
Fund Requirement/Schedule Summary
Total Project Funding Requirement Approx
Rs 13.5 Lakhs.