Remedy to bridge the gap of knowledge/skills and exam-readiness, to compensate covid lockdown losses.

Though evidyaloka has got supporting curriculum to buttress the school curriculum so as to make the student not only get thro their school exam , but also acquire the language skills that they miss in their school due to paucity of time for regular teachers and other drawbacks in school, it didn't work out successfully because the school lately realized that students were lagging (by 18 to 24 months learning) behind their expected attainment of skills in subjects  and suddenly schools wanted us to train them in reading and doing comprehension jobs.   

However, eVidyaloka VT cannot adopt the supporting curriculum (the FEC levels, and the IEC, etc.), for this newly realized task, because the students are not capable of even catching up with the stepped-down quality of curriculum by FEC and IEC, because of corona lockdown repercussions. 

But the school insists that the students cannot even read their lesson and understand them and they have to be drilled to this goal-reach by evidyaloka, whereas why the school could not device it and do the same is another question. Lot of press reports and the govt's AER report also points to same deficiency of students in 2023 report (sample: https://evidyaloka.workplace.com/groups/240047276332768/permalink/1909100989427380/ ) .

Unfortunately, when the school asks us give them these coaching,  we can neither use our FEC and IEC , nor  devise any other content differently to reach the said goal, because adding more content to the knowledge of the students in horizontal manner will not help them gain the skills or pass the exam, again because  the students have to mug up the q&a from their lessons. And to mug up the answers, they have to be able to read and understand it before mugging up. 

So such coaching has to happen within their official curriculum, not from outside. ( We dont know why Govt had  not asked the school to teach and revise the previous year's syllabus for the first 3-4 months in 2021-22 and 2022-23. So, evidyaloka can dovetail two different goals (one long term and one short term) by training them only within their school content and not away from it. This peculiar situation had been discussed with Center Co-ord also.

So, i intend to take the school lesson from the next class as a back-up effort and revise the older lessons with emphasis on reading and understanding the questions and answers. This coaching will enable the students to read their lessons at home without difficulty and assistance and that would enable them to mug up the answer and reproduce it in exam. Only this way, as a crash course in two months before final exam, goals of both evidyaloka and the school can be achieved. If they cannot read the text or questions, how can they understand the question (in exam) itself at the first instance and they cannot mug up the answer at home (typical village home where literate are less) and this could be the reason for student to drop out from village schools.

Method of execution of above plan: http://evidyaloka7.gseva.org/2023/02/2022-23-year-end-crash-course-for-grade.html,   in case similar content is not available for Term-3, from evidyaloka link :   https://wikividya.evidyaloka.org/index.php?title=TNSB-_English_-_Grade_7 

Comments on the above are invited from VT in evidyaloka and can be posted below or via nilassoru@gmail.com or at evidyaloka's workplace: https://evidyaloka.workplace.com/groups/240047276332768/permalink/1909100989427380/

By R. Saravanan, M.A. B.Ed. PGDCA. gSeva.org (volunteer for eVidyaloka / Team Everest )