9th Mile, Khanapara, Ri Bhoi, May 25, 2022: As part of its outreach initiative, the University of Science and Technology Meghalaya has donated quality desk bench to Phaguna Rabha High School at Jatiya, Kahilipara, Guwahati. Shri Mahbubul Hoque, Chancellor of USTM and Prof Alaka Sarma, accomplished educationist and Executive Director of Akshar Foundation, apart from the teachers and students of the school, officials of USTM and teachers of Akshar were present in a formal ceremony held at the school campus in Kahilipara today.
Speaking on the occasion, Shri Mahbubul Hoque said, “There is potential for lot of development in the Government schools and self financed institutions or private corporate must come forward to support the public institutions considering the benefits of the masses, especially underprivileged section of the society who cannot afford to go for private institutions”. The Akshar Foundation, a non-profit educational organization, has adopted this school and USTM has partnered with Akshar Foundation to empower education by extending humble support like proving furniture, financial assistance etc.
In this context, Prof Alaka Sarma said that the main problem of the Government schools is high dropout and low enrolment rate. “The main reason behind this is, the students are generally weak in certain subjects like Maths and English. They don’t have any facility to catch up the unlearnt things of a particular class in the next class to which they are promoted. The Akshar has done a baseline study of the government schools of Assam with a survey of different schools during December 2021 and found that the learning outcome of the students is extremely poor. This is the first school we are providing support service, and we will be slowing extending our service to other schools”, she said.
Parmita Sarma, Co-Founder and Associate Director at Akshar Foundation said, “Akshar is engaged in remedial teaching through the pedagogy developed by us which is aligned with the National Education Policy 2020. We are also giving vocational training to the students. The salient feature of NEP is that the drop out children should be enrolled again and for that remedial teaching is must. According to our pedagogy, a student may be in class 5 as far as Maths is concerned, in class 3 as far as Assamese is concerned and class 2 as far as English is concerned. We have reclassified the students and are teaching them as per their need through remedial teaching with help of Tablets, Worksheets and engagement of senior students to teach the junior ones”.
