Major change in Indian educational system:

Many countries have enshrined the same goal in law, but experts say India is unusual because it has also set a wide variety of performance standards. The government has mandated one teacher for every 30 students, and is promising free textbooks, uniforms and transportation – it is even providing students’ lunches. Teachers will face new scrutiny over punctuality and qualifications, and one million new ones will be trained over five years. The law even regulates school sanitation, right down to the toilets. The cost: an estimated at $35-billion (U.S.) over five years.

While on the topic of ICT+, i.e. ICT with added social value, please vote for BOSCO-Uganda‘s entry on Africa Rural Connect: Achieving rural literacy through innovative Web 2.0/ICT use in Northern Uganda!

Having a fun day digesting all the information (and questions) BOSCO-Uganda has to offer. Here are a few shots from yesterday’s field training on GPS mapping and water testing through our Classroom to Classroom initiative. The Lead-Deadwood High School in South Dakota has fundraised for GPS equipment to bring to Uganda. Teachers here are receiving training in how to use this equipment, map water sources on Google Maps, and do some basic testing on water. The point being to engage students in both science and ICT at the same time, while teaching collaborative skills like wikispace use and Google Forums. When teachers train their students, there is the added opportunity of students learning about gathering, analyzing and sorting data.

An interesting example on how ICT can be integrated into flexible and self-directed education:

In mobile technology, it is often the developing world that leads the way – by using mobile phones to teach people a foreign language, for example.In Bangladesh, more than 1m English lessons have been downloaded to mobile phones as part of the BBC‘s Janala sercvice, the corporation announced today at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona.

Offering hundreds of three-minute audio lessons and SMS quizzes for less than 4p, Janala – meaning “window” – provides low-cost education through handsets – in a country where English is not as widely spoken as elsewhere in Asia.

The service is very simple: by dialling “3000″, mobile users access classes ranging from “Essential English” to the more advanced “How to tell a story”. The BBC has also set up a website giving learners free access to content.

These students have transferred from the Garunley Mobile School to the Abakore Primary Boarding School in Abakore Town, North Eastern Province, Kenya.

Aden Ali.

Fardosa Abdi.

Ubah Mohammed.

Interviewing the students was a challenge. While I had a translator, my presence was alarming/surprising/disconcerting. I only got through the basic questions (age, favorite subject, future profession, class ranking) – which really reveal very little about a person – before realizing that my intrusion was not really warranted. The pictures were taken for the organization who might be profiling their mobile school transfer students.

Education for Marginalized Children in Kenya funded this early childhood development center at Abakore Primary School. I would consider this good working conditions for children in Kenya: there are tables and chairs, some light, lots of books, and space.

We left Habaswein early in the morning. The sky was that eary gray before the sun burns off the clouds. We first stopped for liver, chapati, stew and tea, a tyical breakfast in the region, before driving back to Abakore and on to the Garunley Mobile School. Fortunately, Garunely was not far outside Abakore so we spent only about 20 minutes bouncing on cracked and pot-holed land before seeing a herd of goats. Loud honks from the car drew attention and we were met by the mwalimu, or teacher.

To learn more about mobile schools, I would suggest reading my first article at Toward Freedom. This meeting was more of a follow-up to look at other aspects of the school rather than the basic details. Through a translator, I spoke to a member of the School Management Committee (the community members who govern the school) and the teacher.

New developments in the mobile schools include government registration. Gurunley, now official, benefits from a feeding program. Mind you, most of the food was stuck at the World Food Program hangers since they only release food to certain key people and not directly to an approved community member. The school also needs to increase enrollment from 19 to 30 to ensure they benefit from full government grants: vaccinations, potential water services and a steady feeding program. All these are necessary to ensuring the school continues during droughts.

Classes usually happens for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening so most of the kids were away in the bush taking care of animals. None of the children are vaccinated and many were sick. When we left the family, we took one girl and her mother to the dispensary in town. A fairly decent outfit considering how rural the area is – they now also have two medical students from Nairobi on internship.

The SMC member was pretty clear on his interest in having the children of the community educated. The main reason, aside from education “being the best thing you can give a child,” was that he wanted a better life for his children. This struck me as interesting. When the schools were first introduced, most families were wary that pastoralism would take a back seat to education. The schools were accused of being there to erode local cultures and “Christianize” children.

While the schools function around the pastoral clock, the children are supposed to leave after a year and transition into mainstream schools in Abakore and other towns. So, it seems that parents are admitting to a drastic generational change which will definitely mark pastoralism over the coming two decades.