Most people in rural India can hardly speak English. When compared to urban areas, villages have low English proficiency. To bridge the gap, Tejas — an initiative jointly owned by Tata Trusts, British Council and the State Government, was started in 2016.
Satyajit Salian, head of education at Tata Trusts, says, “For a few years, British Council was working with the government, training students from small pockets of the state in English language. When at Tata Trusts, we changed our strategy, from being a grant maker to being active on the ground, we, along with the British Council and the former education secretary Nand Kumar, saw that the English teaching project was working well on ground, but needed to be scaled up. We reached out to organisations and the government for the same. The need for English literacy was already identified. Tata Trusts jumped into the programme along with British Council after research was done at the grassroots level,” says Salian.
He continues, “There was a strong need for school teachers from rural areas to learn English so that through them, children could also learn the basics of the language. Our team got involved in this programme and started working on it. That is how we kickstarted Tejas.”
How Tejas works
Under Tejas, face-to-face and digital communities are formed by teachers to develop their ability to learn the language, enhance their teaching skills and knowledge in rural areas through Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs). It aims at improving the quality of English learning in primary schools.
With this aim in mind, Tejas was started in two phases (each of three years) across schools in nine districts of Maharashtra, namely Nashik, Nandurbar, Nagpur, Gadchiroli, Amravati, Yavatmal, Aurangabad, Beed, Hingoli, and one district in Gujarat.
Till now, Tejas has had around 18,000 success stories. Its work area — the rural section — is where people live in a close knit society. Getting them on board was a task at times. There was a need for a systematic process. Says Salian, “We ensured that the programme was not carried out by any external party. We selected some of the best teachers from among the State Government teachers. We started a concept of State Academic Resource Person (SARP) where core 25 people are selected on merit and deputed for three years to the State Institute of English Maharashtra (SIEM).”
These 25 candidates were selected for SARP through tests and interview. British Council trained the SARP candidates, who in turn trained the teachers on how to conduct these meetings. Salian says, “They saw one of their own teachers coming and conducting a session, that is when things settled at their end. In fact, therein lies the success of Tejas — it is created as the teachers’ own programme. We are just facilitators. Four factors that became highlights of the programme were — first, the enthusiasm of the volunteers, second, meeting the self-development needs of the teachers, third, teachers being self-driven and saying ‘It is our programme’, and fourth, the continuity in the training which resulted in increased confidence among teachers. They would immediately put into practice what they had learnt and refine it.”
Teachers speak
We caught up with a few teachers who have played major roles in the project.
Kalpana Bansod, teacher at Zilla Parishad Upper Primary school, Lathi, says, “When Tejas was introduced, I was willing to join as I wanted to know the whole structure of the programme.”
She has been selected as State Academic Resource Person in this initiative and mentors and monitors the project in Bhandara and Chandrapur districts and handles 80 TAG coordinators. She completed all training sessions by British Council. Currently deputed at District Training Centre for the same job, she says, “Even though it is a rural area, everyone is a keen learner.”
Another primary school teacher from Kavit Kheda and TAG coordinator, Priyanka Gawali says, “In September 2016, our training started. It went on for 16 days. Later, we were trained to become TAG coordinators to conduct TAG meetings every month for three clusters where we discussed training, English as a subject, activities and challenges.”
She says that after joining Tejas, her listening skills improved and it also boosted her confidence. “Later, I implemented all that I learnt from TAG resource book for my students and they also picked up the language well. Parents of these kids are extremely happy with their wards’ progress,” Gawali says.
Shrikant Game from Paithan district, teaches Mathematics and English to students of Std V to VII and is also a TAG coordinator for three clusters. He says, “Because of Tejas, I learnt three concepts — facilitation, monitoring and evaluation. After receiving training, we conduct certain activities, TAG meetings and implement them in the class for the students in the same way. For the first time we, government teachers, who have used traditional teaching methods so far, got a chance to look at training differently. Also, because of this, our attitude towards teaching has changed and we use these tools in other subjects too.”
