An academic audit conducted by these Pune-based educationists in Chandrapur revealed that it’s as important to follow up on notable efforts as it is to initiate them

It’s a lesson everyone involved in the cause of spreading education in a bid to turn around India’s literacy figures, may well need to learn. That it’s great to put out tables, chairs and computers in schools, paint the walls of the classrooms, make functional toilets and give  drinking water facilities, but how many times have we stopped to ask one basic question as we go about investing our precious time and money in the task, which is---Is learning happening?

It was precisely to find this out that Pune-based educationists Devika Nadig, former principal of Karnataka High School and Vijay Gupta, a IT alumni and former vice-president Wipro, undertook the crucial work of an “academic audit’’ in schools located in the interiors of Chandrapur.

The initiative came from Ambuja Cement, that as part of its CSR initiatives, is working with Government managed schools in parts of Solan district in Himachal Pradesh and Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. The broad objective of the initiative is to bring quality education to every child who has access to these schools. With the efforts in these two districts around four to five years old now, the company felt it was the right time to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the initiative to learn see how effective has been the intervention in creating the impacts as envisaged. 

“We parked ourselves in Chandrapur in mid-September for about a week. Every day we would visit two villages where we would talk to the children and make them take our especially devised tests for Marathi and Mathematics. At the same time we met up with Gram Shikshan Samitis and also the Mother Teachers Association (MDA) in the villages, says Nadig who with Gupta runs Shikshangan, a centre devoted to promotion of quality education in schools.

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