Akshara maps Bangalore schools

Dheeksha Rabindra

BANGALORE: Karnataka Learning Partnership (KLP), an Akshara Foundation and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan initiative, has launched a Google-powered GIS map of Bangalore covering 1400 Government schools.

It is divided into nine educational blocks, which gives a realtime information about the schools and the performance of the students in each school.

KLP had undertaken a project to improve the learning outcome among primary school children in all government schools in Karnataka. In the first phase, the programme has covered 1400 government schools in Bangalore. Simple baseline test was conducted in all the schools for students between second standard to seventh standard.

It was found that out of 1,83,000 students, 46 per cent of the students were unable to read fluently. The entire information captured in the GIS map is available on the website karnatakalearningpartnership.org.

The map gives details of number of students, teachers in each school, the statistics and charts on the percentage of students who can read and who cannot read. It gives the percentage of students literacy level in each school from zero level (where the child can barely identify 25 per cent of the alphabet) to Paragraph level (here the student can read the entire paragraph). It also gives information on performance by gender, class performance, performance by medium of instruction. Red balloons on the map represent each entity.

Talking about the project undertaken by the Foundation, Ashok Kamath, managing trustee, Akshara Foundation, said, “KLP is the space created by the Foundation along with SSS to create awareness about the literacy status among children. The GIS mapping gives a complete picture of the literacy status among the children between second to seventh standard students. With GIS mapping available online, information can be accessed by everyone and it create awareness about the real literacy status in our country.”

Now Akshara Foundation has taken up Accelerated Reading Programme to improve reading ability of students in each school. The programme is being conducted and students performance and developments will be continuously updated on the website.

Kamath further added that with the controversy of the closing of English medium schools and thought about relocating the students into government schools, this data can be used by the government to check the availability of space and students teachers ratio before relocating.

Being first of its kind, the foundation wants others to use it as a model to track literacy rates to improve literacy levels.

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