Chairman's Annual Report for 2006-07

I am glad to welcome you all to this first meet of our Board for the year 2006/07. Our program Sikshana is making good progress on all fronts, thanks to the generous support that we have been receiving from all quarters. I would like to use this opportunity to share with you the salient features of our achievements during the past year and seek your advice and guidance for future. 

Reach of Sikshana:

Though we intended the year to be one of consolidation, I am glad to report that the number of schools under Sikshana increased substantially from 28 to 46 schools, with about 10,000 children.  This was due to the addition of a cluster of 21 schools in the Kanakapura Zone, for which we received additional dedicated support. We have now reached a stage where a New Phase involving a substantial increase in coverage is called for in order to  achieve the Mission goal. We have accordingly decided in our deliberations during the year that we will try and seek extension of Sikshana under such a Phase to cover all upper primary schools in the Kanakapura School District, involving an addition of about 100 schools; and that this will be our focus during the current and ensuing years.  

Organization:

We have always felt that our Program needs to be run professionally and that this requires an optimally structured Organization, that does not unduly burden the resources of the Trust. As a part of this, we have inducted, during the year, a  Program Director / COO of Sikshana in Mr Prasanna, who comes to us with impressive credentials and track record. He will be responsible for the implementation of the program, with the specific task of ensuring compliance by all schools to the concepts and practices of Sikshana. To assist him, we have placed  in position one Mentor with suitable qualifications for each cluster of schools.  Arrangements have been made for these Resource Persons to visit their  schools at least once a week.

Volunteers have always been the backbones of our program. The picture regarding the Volunteer strength in City, though continuing to be fluid, has shown some improvement; the  group consisting of about 15 young professionals has now organized itself into an autonomous entity  and has been functioning effectively. If successful, this pioneering effort will be worth a detailed study and emulation in due course. The volunteer base continues to be satisfactory in Kanakapura, with most of the 12 members staying with the program for a third consecutive year.

It is recognized that a new management structure will however be required to meet the needs of the emerging new Phase, as scaling to higher levels will pose major challenges. One of the options that we need to consider seriously at this stage is to get an intern from a reputed Business school to come and work with us for a few months, with the specific objective of evolving a suitable Organizational model for the proposed scale of operations. This study should cover fresh and innovative concepts such as joint adoption and franchising of Sikshana.

Recognition and support for Sikshana:

We continue to maintain our accreditation with Credibility Alliance, which gives an assurance to  prospective donors that we adhere to International norms and standards applicable to Voluntary Sector. We have been receiving consistent support from other reputed Organizations like Give Foundation and CAF in India, besides Asha AID and Vibha in USA. At the Corporate level, we received significant assistance from Adobe, Bosch and GE.

In effect, Vibha is giving total support for covering all program expenses in the 15 schools comprising the first cluster in Kanakapura, while the Seattle chapter of Asha is providing similar help for the other cluster of 21 schools in this zone. AID is covering a major part of the expenses in the City schools. The support from Bosch has been towards providing scholarships for 108 children in the KP schools. Adobe and GE are funding our efforts in multimedia based teaching. While the former has enabled us to take note book PC's to primary schools, the latter has brought in as many as 100 plus desktops and note books. As a result, we are in a position to announce with pride that every one of our schools has now at least one desktop and a note book; our efforts should now turn towards ensuring effective maintenence of these units in the field and also to provide appropriate content to be used with them. 

Performance of Schools under the Program

As you are aware, we have been placing considerable emphasis on quantifiable targets for our program as a measure of quality enhancement in learning levels; and on monitoring the performance against them as a measure of our success. As an indication of our commitment to this concept, I am bringing to your attention in some detail the results that we had achieved in our schools during the year under review.  

One of the tools used by us in this context is the series of assessment tests under the APF model. The results obtained in these tests in the first cluster of 15 Kanakapura schools at the beginning of the current academic year as well as at the end are given below:

Improvement during the year averaged nearly 50% in this cluster.

Our target was to ensure that every school registers a minimum of 65% which signifies an acceptable level of proficiency in the class room, against a State average of 40%. We have also persuaded the schools to accept a challenging task of improving the actual score by 15% in a year. Results above show that the schools have done commendably well against these goals.

The second cluster of schools in Kanakapura was adopted late in the year and hence we were able to carry out only one of the two tests; these figures, reproduced below, still give an idea of their current academic standards for future reference. 

Results from similar tests conducted in the City schools are given below: