Education
Gujarat Govt. brings drastic changes in Government Primary Schools with Pragna
Pragna, an “activity-based learning”, in Gujarat’s government primary schools, has been scaled down after eight years of launch.
Pragna, an “activity-based learning”, in Gujarat’s government primary schools, has been scaled down after eight years of launch. The project has been limited to only Class I and II instead of Class I to V. The considerable scaling down has been done after spending Rs. 150 crore and conducting a series of training sessions for over 80,000 teachers till 2017.
The Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training (GCERT) Director T S Joshi remarked “The move to remove Pragna from Class III to V, and scale it down to all Class I and II, is aimed at universalising it. This was necessary for its better implementation.”
Pragna has been introduced in across 33,000-odd government primary schools. The project covered nearly 23,000 government primary schools.
Teachers have faced several problems such as maintaining order in classrooms, attention deficit due to grouping of different classes in one room, leading to additional workload on the teachers. – 2017 Report by Gujarat Evaluation Department under General Administrative Department (GAD).
A typical Pragna classroom involves seating on the floor encircling bright red coloured angular tables joined. The children are divided into four groups for effective activity-based learning. One of the teachers from Ahmedabad’s Municipal Corporation School said, “The previous traditional blackboard and desk-chair system was far better than this floor seating as now I alone have to handle nearly 40 students of both Class I and II where half the class has been taught as per the traditional teaching for a year and are now following this new one. Also, since the post of teacher for Class II is vacant I have to teach the entire class.”
To reduce the “extra load,” the curriculum has been replaced by curriculum of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Even the number of groups have been reduced from six to four, and only two subjects including Gujarati and Mathematics shall be taught.
Instead of six, Class I and II students will be categorised in four groups: partially teacher supported group, peer support group, self learning group and evaluation group.
Due to drastic changes, nearly 10,000 schools with Pragna are struggling to catch up and maintain balance.