Programmes

LIBRARY PROGRAMME IN MCD SCHOOLS: 2010-11

(School based Model)

Background-Pratham Delhi has been working with the Municipal Schools since 2001 initially through its Balsakhi programme and subsequently through its Library programme. Since 2008-09, Pratham has set up library programme in almost all the schools of the five municipal zones- Shahdara South, Shahdara North, Karol bagh, Civil lines and Rohini. In 2009-10, Pratham operationalised its Library programme in 650 Municipal schools of the same 5 zones. The key components of the programme, implemented through one trained volunteer of Pratham, are:

  1. Distribution of Story books and related activities
  2. Basic literacy with children who need additional learning support

Key outcomes and issues in implementation during 2009-10

Since the approval of MCD was to place only one library volunteer in each school irrespective of its enrollment, Pratham had to revise its programme implementation strategy in order to make sure that children who are covered under the programme really benefit from the intervention. This included:

  • Working with School HMs to get at least 2 periods with the same section of children per week.
  • Working with only Std III-V children in case there were more than 12 sections in the school

With this strategy, we impacted reading level of 7837 children of Std I & II from 168 Schools. Similarly, the reading level of 96056 children (Std III-V) was impacted from 379 Schools. We also used Urdu reading material in 18 Urdu medium schools. Besides, during the year more than 1.6 lacs children borrowed books regularly.

Plan for 2010-11

Based on the experiences of previous years, Pratham Delhi proposes to work closely with the Municipal schools and follow the need based approach in order to provide greater learning opportunities to children and more help to schools. The approaches to be followed are as follows:

  1. Introduce Model library with a collection of about 500 titles of graded story books (each having at least 3 copies) in schools meeting the following criteria:
    1. More than 90% children in Std III-V can read a text fluently.
    2. School infrastructure permits the use of one room exclusively for Library purpose.

  2. Basic Reading programme in other schools with an objective to help children learn to read so that they can access story books regularly. For this, we propose to place one Pratham volunteer per school having upto 8 sections so that each section gets at least 3 exposures per week.

  3. Add one more zone- West due to its geographical proximity to Pratham’s existing programme zones, to introduce the library programme. Pratham Delhi will leave out those schools of West zone where any other NGO may be working.

Summary of the plan 2010-11

  1. Pratham Delhi to work in 6 zones of MCD, namely Shahdara South, Shahdara North, Karolbagh, Civil lines, Rohini and West. While first 5 are existing Pratham programme zones, the West zone is a new one. Total number of schools is likely to be 700.

  2. Setting up of a model Library in shortlisted schools. It is expected that about 100 schools will meet the two criteria proposed above.

  3. Reading enhancement and book distribution programme in remaining schools of the 6 zones.