The Education Unit is working towards enabling the State, civil society organizations and community to promote and provide quality education to children of Odisha, adopt a targeted approach in planning and implementation to effectively address residual issues and gender gaps, and equipping to maximize on the available resources.
With the support from a strong technical group, Education Unit provides the spaces and environment for
- Mobilizing education experts, professionals, practitioners to organizations, ideas and professionals within/outside Odisha and bridge the gap between policy, programmes and practices.
- Creating data-base and conducting surveys, studies, evaluations, preparation of comprehensive reports , training manuals ,pilot projects on issues and topics through theoretical and field–based research to bring about perspectives and knowledge to HDF’S work as well as the work of state agencies to achieve the MDG goals.
- Conceptualizing and brainstorming on the possibilities, potentials of different /alternative mediums and creates an approach for programmes /projects for the collaborative partners.
Education Unit has established its partnership with UNICEF, Centre for Civil Society (CCS), XIMB, PRATHAM and other development agencies in facilitating programme planning, capacity building exercises for functionaries and studies.
A few endeavors and impacts...
State level Consultation on achieving SSA goals in Odisha
On 4th August 2008, Human Development Foundation (HDF) had organized a State level Consultation in 
Hotel Swosti with support from UNICEF on ‘Achieving Sarva Sikhya Abhiyan goals in Odisha: Emerging role for Civil Society and Government’. Senior Bureaucrats, Educationists and Social Activists were present in the consultation and had rendered their erudite inputs on different rudiments pertaining to education. Mr. A.K.Rath IAS, Secretary Elementary Education & Literacy, Govt. of India had inaugurated the first of its kind consultation in Odisha. There were a chain of speakers who had participated in the discussions and had put forth their views and suggestions on the collective role of Government and Civil Society in Odisha for the real grounding of SSA. Some of the eminent participants and speakers were, Mr. Shadrack Omol, state representative of UNICEF-Odisha, Mr. D.K. Singh, Director OPEPA, Mr. Tara Dutta Director SC/ST department, Govt. of Odisha, Prof. Radha Mohan, Mr. S.B. Mishra, former Chief Secretary, Govt. of Odisha, Ms. Kasturi Mohapatra of OLS, Mr. G.C. Nanda, Mr. K.C. Samal of NCDS, Dr. D.P. Pattnaik noted linguist, Dr. D.K.Roy and Mr. Sudarsan Das.
Technical Committee Meeting on Early Years of School Education
The meeting of the Technical Committee was held on 22nd July, 2008 in HDF premises with representations from Unicef, university, academic institutions, NGOs, TE & SCERT and was facilitated by Shri D. K. Ray, Executive Director, HDF. Besides other dignitaries, Mr. Dhanada Mishra, Prof. U. N. Dash, Mr. Zachariah, Programme Manager, UNICEF, Mr. Prosun Sen from Unicef, Prof. S. Tripathy, Director of TE & SCERT, Dr. M. M. Mohanty, Prof. Khageswar Mohapatra, Dr. G. C. Nanda, Dr. D. C. Mishra, and Mrs. Nivedita Scadder presented their views which confirmed to group consensus. It was agreed upon to consolidate the activities, to begin the intervention with in the following areas
Enlisting the Best practices, Addressing the basic issues of access, enrolment, and infrastructure, Publishing Research Monographs, Advocacy Group through Teachers, Community Perception of SSA: Does community own the School, Mapping out Gender and Category Gap in EE, Direct Intervention in Establishing Model schools in each block with consistent Academic Support and Monitoring Services, Analyzing the Fit between Teacher-Education Curriculum and School Curriculum, Teaching-Learning Process: Have things changed, Linking ECE to EE: State of Art and Future Expectations, Family-level Intervention on Children’s Educational Needs and Context-sensitive and Culture-sensitive Curriculum: Setting an Example.
Odisha Bikash
The effective implementation of national flagship programmes remains a key contributory factor for positive transformation in the social sector in India. In Odisha, the development indicators that were very low in the previous years
have started to show a degree of improvement during the last few years. Despite this development, the state is still in a critical situation and the initiative needs to be sustained and accelerated. What probably needs to be done is finding ways for the meaningful and rapid implementation of these programmes, assuring quality and addressing specific challenges and issues.
One of the ways to accelerate social sector development, through the effec
tive implementation of the national flagship programmes, is to create a Development Forum or Think Tanks that can keep a watch on the different developments and look at the situation and suggest ways and means for effective programme implementation. Towards this end, HDF and UNICEF have partnered to initiate the process of establishing an informal development discussion and action forum: Odisha Bikash involving key actors; the state government, UN / International agencies, leading NGOs academicians and civil society. It is envisaged that the development discussions will be backed by technical papers and evidence based case studies which will help different players to formulate operational strategies for accelerating implementation of the flagship programmes and also bring down few action agenda for the state.
For 2008, it is envisaged to initiate
- Action in management of 3 Ms (Mortality, Malnutrition and Malaria)
- Early years of school education.
- Stocktaking of human development issues of the state and consolidation and integration of Government and Non-Government initiatives.
Training of Trainer's for District Resource Group
The key links between sanitation and health cannot be overemph
asized especially in the context of growing evidence that most common diseases are related to water and sanitation. Water and sanitation related diseases grossly impact the health of children; mortality, morbidity, malnutrition, low attendance in schools due to regular bouts of diarrhea and malaria. It is because of this that UNICEF supports the government initiative of the Total Sanitation Campaign with a focus in five districts.
However, i
t is increasingly being realized that sanitation is not so much a matter of construction as is believed but has much to do with the change in behaviour. This implies that there needs to be intensive mobilization to promote behavioural change amongst community to use toilets. In order to reach the lowest rung of the community effectively, UNICEF designed a cascading system with the DRGs (District Resource Group) to support the DWSM in the implementation of TSC.
On the above backdrop Education Unit in Collaboration with UNICEF organized a series of training for District resource Groups in Five districts of Odisha. The objectives of the training programme were
- To reorient and strengthen the role of DRGs in the districts.
- To help the DRG’s understand and comprehend the Operational Plan.
- To help the DRG’s in facilitating a GP Sanitation Plan.
- To enable the DRG’s to guide the stakeholders in the district and block level.
- To share the problems faced in their concerned districts so that steps can be taken to overcome them.
- Along with an action plan for their concerned district mentioning a time line for completion of district level training to be developed.
- To strengthen the communication and capacity development activities at the district level.
It was organized in Five Districts of Odisha viz. Koraput, Rayagada, Mayurbhanj, Dhenkanal and Ganjam.
Short paper series in progress
- Disparities in Elementary Education
- Public Private Community partnership in School education
- Households’ expenditure in Education and per child cost
- Multilingual education in Odisha
- Policy & Pogramme- A Reality: case of KGVB in Odisha
Publications in Process
- State of School Education- Odisha and
- Early years of education: What next?
