Tools And Techniques To Enhance Education In India

Education is the top priority of nations across the world. Initiatives to help children attend school and improve the quality of education can change the scenario of growth and prosperity. According to the Annual Status of Education report 2021, at an all-India level – for children in the age group of 6-14 years, enrollment in private schools has decreased from 32.5% in 2018 to 24.4% in 2021.

In order to record steady growth and improve the quality of education, certain measures should be taken. To start with any solution and transformation it’s important to identify the root cause of the problem.

Education In India has degraded due to multiple reasons:

Lack of proper infrastructure
Poor pedagogy skills
Lack of trained teachers
Using theoretical approaches in imparting knowledge
Poor assessment/evaluation of the child’s learning
High competition among the schools

To overcome these challenges and improve the quality of education, schools can evaluate the following factors:

1. Maintained infrastructure

A School should motivate the students to come to school by providing the basic amenities required as per norms. It should have a spacious classroom with furniture, board, electrical fittings, clean and hygienic toilets, an activity and play area, laboratories, and a computer lab. But having all those amenities without their proper utilization and maintenance may demotivate a child from going to school. Well-maintained infrastructure creates an environment to learn.

2. Pedagogy skills

The concept of learning, unlearning and relearning need to be implemented over here. We need a transition from rote learning to conceptual methods that can keep the teachers and students engaged. The liking or disliking of a subject depends on the method of teaching. We need to enhance and upgrade our teaching skills for a better outcome.

3. Quality of teachers

Most schools compromise on quality by hiring teachers at less pay. Teachers are the key elements in the classroom that ignite the minds of children for seeking knowledge. We need to improve teacher quality by providing training and equipping them with modern teaching aids, tools, and methodologies such as smart classrooms and digital course content.

4. Extra-curricular activities

Pressurizing students will deviate their minds from their studies and which may hamper their interest in continuing their education further. A school should be involved in various co-curricular activities that serve as a key component in sustaining students’ interest in school. It should have proper sports facilities and avenues for cultural events that help in building the life skills and personality of the students. Inter-school competitions should be organized.

5. Proper implementation of a government initiative

Various government initiatives such as the RTE act and RMSA were great in bringing change to the school system. According to RTE, the pupil-teacher ratio should be 30:1 at the primary level and 35:1 at the secondary level.

Some private schools do follow the guidelines but somehow we lack proper monitoring and evaluation to implement them on a large scale. A proper channel needs to be developed to ensure the smooth functioning of the program and initiatives in private schools for improvement.

6. Assessment and evaluation tools

Taking proper and summative assessments will provide a better understanding of the child. Individual differences should be kept in mind while preparing the evaluation tools which should also include critical/higher-order thinking skills. Based on the results, we would be able to evaluate the learning level of the child and by taking the necessary steps, the quality of education can be improved.

7. Community building

Peer learning is vital at every level. To improve the quality of education we can build a school community where all the stakeholders along with the community can come together to share their ideas, challenges, and solutions with others as cross-functional learning. Thus, it will enhance the connectivity and productivity of the school.

Improving the quality of education in the school will create an enabling environment that will embed the concept of lifelong learning. The students will remain enrolled in the school and learn and become enablers and productive whereby they can participate in nation-building.

Advantages of smartboards in schools:

Eliminating harmful chalk dust from the air that they inhale and significantly reducing the strain that is put on their eyes while trying to figure out what is written on the dusty chalkboard, smartboards, and whiteboards have been transforming teaching methods for quite a while now and need more attention and acknowledgment. When compared to chalkboards, smartboards have diverse advantages. Smartboards not only help to keep the students attentive and drawn to the subject that is been taught but can also make any subject seem interesting and doable. You can use smartboards without a computer or interactive whiteboards instead of chalkboards to bring is some very positive changes in your classroom.

You will observe that your efforts are reaching the child and are also being reciprocated by him in the form of good results and exam performances, just by interchanging a chalkboard with an interactive smart board. A prominent advantage of a whiteboard over a chalkboard is the ease of projection. Since, the chalkboard is made out of a darker surface, projecting anything on it will have very poor visibility but a whiteboard, on the other hand, does the job seamlessly.

Interactive teaching methods in education that can be very useful in schools:

Introduction of technology in the classrooms- 21st-century kids have grown up with technology and high-tech devices from the very beginning. But what most parents fail to understand is, the use of technology that helps in building a great learning environment for their children and brings about changes in the teaching methods in education, can do wonders for their academic performance. If they’re given access to interactive fat panels, whiteboards, smartboards, tablets, and other such devices, learning will become a fun and enjoyable process.
Visualization of ideas and concepts- As someone rightly said, education shouldn’t be limited to bookish knowledge and facts. It should be governed by physical experience and first-hand learning of concepts. This is only possible with proper visualization of every idea and thought that is presented to them. This is one such advantage of smartboards in schools, where several high-quality pictures and videos can be played. This is how visualization can be achieved.
Cooperative and huddled learning- Encouraging students from different levels of academic capacity of work on group projects and discussions while helping each other can be a great way of instilling interactive education among students. Teachers can give puzzles and experiments to students and arrange group presentations to promote cooperative learning.
Encourage their inquiries and questions- Help students clear their doubts and queries about a certain subject as many times as you can. Encourage them to ask questions to the teacher in charge as well as to their peers during study sessions. All these habits help in clearing up concepts amongst the students and consequently have a positive impact on their scores.
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All these teaching methods in education and learning can be of great use to children with special needs and those who need to be extra attentive in order to understand a certain topic. Parents, teachers, and educational officers must inculcate these things into everyday school settings and observe the positive results on their own.