I. Evaluation Parameters
The following report is based on field visits conducted in early July 2017 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat where the secondary PSIPSE intervention is active. Students, parents, teachers, curriculum designers and supervisors were interviewed and filmed. Some of the photographs and films are included in this report.
The report, on the school year 2016-2017, builds on the database provided by Gyan Shala, and the brief narrative reports shared by Gyan Shala with PSIPSE.
The report aims to present: a balance between quantitative and qualitative analysis, a human focus on the end-users, the students, as well as the various stakeholders’ perspectives in making secondary education a success.
The report also aims to highlight Gyan Shala’s capacity to adjust to the multiplicity of challenges encountered in providing quality secondary education, and to begin to reflect on lessons to be learned as the program unfolds, with a view to inform a wider policy discourse.
The Gyan Shala high school program covers children in slum communities of Ahmedabad, from Grade 8 to 10. The parents of these children are mostly casual laborers and have not completed a secondary education. As the pictures and video clips attest, the educational context is particularly challenging.
Furthermore, two streams of students are enrolled into Gyan Shala's high school program: (i) those who are completing grade 7 in Gyan Shala's middle school program, and (ii) those completing grade 7 in other government or low cost private schools, where slum children study. As the data from year 1 showed, while the first stream students naturally transitioned to Gyan Shala's high school program, the children from other schools did not agree to shift in grade 8, as other recognized schools give a certificate of completion of grade 8, which has statutory value. The second stream, however, is open to joining Gyan Shala's program in grade 9, but that poses the challenge of ensuring a high success rate in the grade 10 examination, with only two years of input, when the grounding up to grade 8 has remained very poor. To address this issue, in the year 2016-17, Gyan Shala team has designed supportive coaching daily for one and a half hours in Grade 9, and two hours in Grade 8, by teachers and senior teachers.
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