Spoken English Radio Program - SBMA

Interactive Radio Project For Teaching English Skills
In Rural And Urban Government Schools

It is important and a great challenge to impart basic functional skills in English to students studying in schools where the medium of instruction is one of the many Indian regional languages. Without basic English skills these students are handicapped in terms of opportunities for higher education and employment, and access to various bodies of knowledge and to new technologies. The Centre For Learning Resources (CLR) - has taken up this challenge and is broadcasting English lessons directly to rural and urban school children in Pune District, as well as municipal school children in Mumbai and Delhi, and both urban and rural students in the entire state of Jharkhand. For Hindi-speaking listeners the radio programme is entitled 'We Learn English/Aao Angrezi Sikhe'

Why Radio

Given the erratic electric supply in urban and rural India, radio is the cheapest, most widely available and reliable distance education technology, since it can also function on batteries.

The Instructional Process

•  We are using an innovative, interactive pedagogy known as Interactive Radio Instruction, which is being used for the first time in India. This allows listeners to not only hear English being spoken, but gives them opportunities during the radio lesson itself to speak in English. This pedagogy has been very successfully used to teach English, other school subjects and educational programs for adults in a number of other countries.
  

•  Our radio lessons contain a variety of child-friendly formats - drama, songs, language games, etc. in both Hindi and English - which hold the interest of middle school children.
  

•  Along with the focus on teaching spoken English, our radio lessons promote appropriate attitudes related to democracy, secularism, gender, health, small family norm, etc.
  

Annual Summary of We Learn English Program in Uttaranchal
July 2004 - June 2005

A meeting was held with the Minister of Education, Mr. Narender Bhandari, Education Secretary (now Addl. Chief Secretary) Mr. M. Ramachandran, and then-Director of Education, Ms. Pushpa Manus on the 4th of June 2004. During this meeting, the government agreed to partner in the "We Learn English" Radio Program by ensuring that the government primary school teachers listened to the program at the 12:10 p.m. slot. A letter was sent by the government informing the teachers of the program and the SERT and the DIETS(District level training centre) were informed that they had to support the training of the BRCs(Block Resource Coordinator -- at the block level who monitors and impart training) in their campus. The training of this program was then to be transmitted by the trained BRC to the NPRC(Nyay Panchayat Resource Coordinators) and the NPRC would in turn train the teachers.

By July, printing of all material (the poster, flyer, toran, and booklet) was complete. Also, in the 1st week of July, trainings were given to the BRC at the DIET level in both Uttarkashi (Uttarkashi) and Gauchar (Chamoli) by Hema Kulkarni of CLR. In the meantime, letters of instructions and the schedule were being sent to the teachers and the schools through the Uttaranchal Education Department, and in particular Ms. Pushpa Manus who was very interested in and supportive of the program. Jingles for the program were made and a contract was signed with AIR(All India Radio) Najibabad.

In August and September, radios were purchased from Philips India and batteries for the radios were purchased from Novino Batteries. This was before the PO was officially signed so the momentum of the program suffered a setback while the PO was discussed and finally approved. The reason for the time-crunch was that the program was to start on 15th August, 2004 in order to complete the 90 lessons for class 4, with the lessons airing 3 times a week

The start of the program was pushed to the 15th of September as the radios hadn't reached on time (due to an all-India truckers strike). The program was officially launched with an inauguration that was attended the press, NGOs, and representatives of the Uttaranchal Education Department: Mr. M. Ramachandran, Ms. Namrata Kumar (Addl. Secretary Education and Director SSA(Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan)) Ms. Pushpa Manus and Ms.Kusum Pant.

In October, the radio team followed up with the Education Department, the SCRT( and the DIETS for monitoring and the baseline survey. The government agreed to help by sending the formats to all the DIETS.

The monitoring and the baseline got well underway in November, when monitoring formats were printed and distributed to independent monitors, PU staff, and the government. The government is yet to give their report on the monitoring as the person in charge at the SCRT, Mr. Dadiyal, Director Primary Education, was transferred and the new director Mr. Nautiyal, has not been able to understand the program in its entirety

Throughout the past year, reports from the field have told us that quality of reception of the program has been very distorted in several places in the valleys. Mr. M. Ramachandran Addl Chief Secretary Uttaranchal and Cyril R. Raphael, Secretary of SBMA, wrote to Prasar Bharati for help in shifting the program from medium-wave to short-wave, to improve transmission quality. In December we received a letter from CEO Prasar Bharati saying that he had ordered the program to be shifted over to short-wave. However, as of May 2005, that has yet to take place. A midterm set of jingles was made and this time we had interviews of teachers and children who had benefited from the program

On the 18th of January, a review meeting was held that included a cross-section of Stakeholders ranging from children of class 4 to the SSA, to teachers to the entire training wing of the State Education department (including the DIETs and the NPRCs) to CLR and Plan and SBMA. Ms. Namrata Kumar, Director of SSA played a pivotal role in this meeting, providing important direction and guidance to the teachers and the training bodies. During this meeting, everyone came to a better understanding of the program and it provided an opportunity for teachers to put forward their problems and concerns. The meeting also revealed that many of the teachers had not received the training they should have been given. Some hadn't even received the booklets and torans and flyers.

A small survey, conducted by Gajendra Nautiyal of SBMA/Plan when he was collecting material from the field to make his jingles for a midterm awareness campaign, has shown that where the teacher is active and wanting to do something new, the children have learnt quite a lot from the radio program. So children in a far away village of Chamoli are actually singing "Patna City Has A Zoo" (a song taught in the program). But, where teachers are uninterested or unmotivated, the children are receiving little to no benefit from the program.

In May 2005, we were gratified that the Uttaranchal Government's SSA department, under the direction of Ms. Kumar, was planning to expand the program to 4 additional districts of Uttaranchal. That would bring the total area covered by the program to 6 the state's 13 districts.

In the last year because of the Radio Program, the partnership between the Uttaranchal State Education department and SBMA (SBMA/Plan) has grown stronger, not just for the radio program but also for other SBMA/Plan education initiatives. It is through the radio program that advocacy has taken place with AIR Najiababad and Prasar Bharati for better overall radio services in the mountain state of Uttaranchal especially during class hours when educative lessons can be aired and are aired but cannot be heard due to poor transmission quality. While SBMA/Plan provides free airing of the lessons to Uttaranchal, the state Education Department is willing to expand the program at its own cost (buying radios, providing training and ensuring that the teachers make full use of the opportunity provided.)

Since the program began, much has been achieved and learnt by all the parties involved. While the overall consensus about the program has been very positive, the poor transmission quality continues to be the most serious and often-heard concern. Nonetheless, several promising examples from this pilot project to suggest that with adequate training and monitoring and better transmission quality, the radio program can be an effective tool for teaching English to the children of Uttaranchal. However, the true impact of the program can only be felt when the program is run for a much longer period of time.