Zeal Education

Prayog

Prayog is a program where Government schools are provided kits and training so that they can perform the activities and experiments in the textbook.

The Problem

The textbooks used in many parts of the country are translations of the NCERT textbooks. The NCERT science textbooks are filled with activities and experiments to be done in the classroom.

Government schools in most states are either primary schools (upto grade 8) or high schools (grade 9 and above). In most states, high schools have science laboratories but there is no such provision in primary schools.

A private school teacher of grade 6 who wishes to use copper sulphate and sodium hydroxide just walks down the corridor to her school laboratory; a rural Government school teacher may find that the nearest high school is 15km away!

Teachers in such schools ignore the experiments, defeating the entire purpose of including them in the books!

The Solution

The solution involves the provision of kits that contain all the materials necessary to perform the experiments.

Just providing a kit is not adequate, many of the teachers themselves would not have performed the activities, training is needed for this.

In addition, training is needed to motivate teachers to actually perform these activities, it is easier for the teacher to ignore the experiment!

There are consumables in any kit and consumables eventually run out! Also, there would be breakages and losses that are unavoidable! It is necessary to take stock every year and replenish the kits as required!

The Process

Typically, a set of 20 schools is selected, with one teacher from each school becoming part of the program.

Kits with materials are provided to each school.These kits consist of three types of materials:

Materials meant to be used by every student: These would include worksheets, where students record their observations for every activity.
Materials meant to be used by groups of students: E.g. a group of students would together explore curved mirrors.
Materials meant to be used by the teacher: These would include corrosive materials, stoves, fragile equipment, etc.

Teachers would be trained in how to perform each activity and be motivated to use the kit materials.

At the end of the year, stock would be taken of the kit materials and the kits replenished as per the requirements.