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Akshar Forum
A paradigm shift is underway
Helping schools switch to the Indian Model
Akshar Forum is a free 100-student model school established in 2016 in Assam, India. It is a testing facility for innovative teaching methods, in line with India's National Education Policy of 2020 (NEP 2020).
Akshar has launched a project to implement the NEP 2020 model in 100 government schools in Assam in 3 years.
A model for transforming government schools into sustainable communities
Capacity building for Government school teachers
Akshar has partnered with the Government of India to offer training and equipment, enabling Government teachers in 100 Assam schools to make the switch to the Indian Education Model.
Teachers learn to incorporate holistic measures of NEP 2020 including Individual Student Tracking, Skill-based groupings, Peer Learning, Instructional Technology, Vocational/Entrepreneurship Training, and Sustainable Community Development.
Government Schools
Partnering with
the Government of India
to transform schools
PM Schools for Rising India
In 2022, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched
the PM Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI) initiative, to help
14,500 schools across the nation make the change to
the new Indian model.
The plan will provide hi-tech resources to each selected school worth approximately 2 crores Indian Rupees
(or INR 20 million). Now, schools are racing to make the switch, implementing the required criteria to become holistic green schools with a student-centred pedagogy, focus on technology, and vocational skills development.
Here is a gallery of government school leaders and teachers making the switch to the new Indian model:
Innovation towards a low-cost,
child-centred pedagogy
Meta-teaching
Meta-teaching
Meta-teaching is a system devised to ensure that all young children receive the daily individual support and encouragement they need for successful Early Education.
Teachers train and employ older students as teaching assistants. The adult teachers supervise and teach the older students how to teach. Meta-teaching benefits adult teachers, student-coaches, and especially young students.
Daily one-on-one for every child
Daily private lessons
Many children lack the home support they need to succeed in school. Akshar ensures every young child gets daily private mentoring from an older student, under the guidance of an adult teacher.
The children are thrilled to spend one-on-one time learning from a teen. Teens can often relate to the children better than adults.
Private lessons for all
Many children lack the home support they need to succeed in school. Akshar ensures every young child gets daily private mentoring from an older student, under the guidance of an adult teacher.
The children are thrilled to spend one-on-one time learning from a teen. Teens can often relate to the children better than adults.
Older students help adults teach young ones...
...giving adults more time to focus on the teens in their own class...
... and transforming teens into community leaders
Learning & Earning
Many teens are under tremendous pressure to drop out of school to start earning. To promote self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship, students are employed by Akshar and earn points as wages. Points can be redeemed for rewards like schools supplies, basic sundries, hygiene products and clothing.
These "earnings" enable at-risk teens to work part-time for some of their basic needs, which empowers them to stay in school, rather than drop out to perform casual labour. They learn that staying in school leads to higher earnings. In the process, they develop professionalism, confidence, and a strong work ethic.
Learn more to earn more
Students wages are based on their academic level and their teaching skill. Students are incentivized to learn more so they can earn more. In order to teach concepts to the young ones, they are required to engage key faculties like creativity, critical thinking, and metacognition on a daily basis.
To measure teaching skill, each student self-evaluates their level of effective communication, empathy, patience and their ability to inspire their student.
Technology with a human touch
Technology
Limitless learning resources
Akshar has developed a free software built upon Kolibri from Learning Equality, a US based charity. The Akshar Kolibri app allows each student to sign in with a unique profile, which tracks the student's individual learning level, and provides custom-tailored exercises to suit their needs, in their mother tongue, as well as in Hindi and English.
Students who lack the technology at home gain essential digital literacy, and students are far more engaged by the interactive learning games, stories, exercises and tests than by conventional learning materials. Older students are introduced to coding and robotics.
Technology with a human touch
First, the teens learn...
...then they pass on what they learned
Coaching with technology
A teenager trained to teach and equipped with a tablet becomes a very effective private instructor.
Many young students are not yet able to read or navigate learning software. When guided by an older student, tech-assisted learning becomes more personal and dynamic, allowing adult teachers to target and address individual students' weaknesses with ease.
"The principle is to impart the whole education... through the handicraft that is taught to the children."
- Mahatma Gandhi
Nai Talim
Pathway to a fulfilling career
The Indian Education Model places focus on students gaining practical skills in school and subsequent guidance to college, apprenticeship, or high-skill trade.
The curriculum combines carpentry with mathematics, solar tech/electrician with physics, tailoring/embroidery with economics, teaching with psychology, recycling with ecology, gardening with biology, etc. By their late teens, students are exposed to wide range of options, helping them focus on a fulfilling career path.
Classroom desks and benches
built by students
Pathway to self-sufficiency
With Akshar's NEP model, students earn points primarily by tutoring younger students, but also by performing other roles: gardening, school lunch service, first-aid for minor injuries, feedings and minor treatments for animals, printing worksheets, plastic recycling, building classroom furniture, repairing electric fixtures, and many more roles.
When the school needs new furniture, the students build it.
When a fan is broken, the students fix it.
When the teacher needs worksheets, the students print it.
When a child is injured, the students heal it.
Every school a recycling center
A model for sustainable schools
Every student plants trees, grows food, and pays weekly "school fees" with plastic waste from their homes. Teens are employed to collect plastic from homes in the area surrounding the school, a model that can be replicated in every school to effect major change.
Teens are also employed part-time after school, creating Eco-bricks for construction, as well as new products in a Precious Plastic Workshop, including flower pots, dog bowls, jewellery and more. Students sell these products, thus simultaneously learning about machine operation, recycling, and entrepreneurship.
Sustainability
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