Parihara Bhodane & Oduve Nanu partnership program with Akshara Foundation
The Education Department, Government of Karnataka and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has
launched a program since last year with an objective of "Mainstreaming subject specific slow learners by paying
individual attention to their learning process". It is remedial program proposed to benefit children from all the
government primary schools in the state. Teachers across the state are trained for this initiative and a set of
Teaching/Learning material (TLM) has been created and distributed. Last year this program was monitored
by Akshara Foundation through its partners (including Pratham Mysore).
Based on this feedback, the Department has again requested Akshara Foundation to monitor
Parihar Bhodane for the year 2008-09 with the following objectives:
- To what extent the program is regularly implemented?
- How many children are benefited from this program?
- Is the program carried out as per the spirit of its design?
- What are the problems faced by the teachers/schools and what are their suggestions
for effective implementation of the program?
The Strategy adopted to meet the above objectives is to visit 60 schools per educational
block to cover about 10,000 schools, which is close to 20% of total schools in the state till the end of Dec 2008.
Role of Pratham Mysore in supporting Parihara Bhodane:
- Pratham Mysore is supporting the program by partnering with Akshara to monitor schools
in 33 educational blocks across 5 Revenue Districts namely Mysore, Mandya, Hassan, Chamarajanagar
and Kodagu in South Karnataka reaching 1980 schools.
- A weekly report is being submitted to Akshara on all the above issues.
- Apart from quantitative data on these issues, this year it is proposed to bring in lots of qualitative data
on how the program is implemented.
- It is also proposed to interview/hold focused group discussions with parents, children, SDMC members.
- It also proposes to record innovative strategies followed by teachers/administrators.
Monitoring Oduve Nanu (Reading program by SSA):
To improve the reading ability of students in primary schools, Sarva Shikshana Abhiyana,
in association with Akshara Prathistana, has introduced the Oduve Nanu programme, which makes use
of colourful cards to teach slow learning students.
Over 3.5 lakh primary school students of standards 2 to 7 will come under this program
which commenced on August 14. For the first phase of the program, 12 districts from the state have been
selected. They are Bagalkot, Bijapur, Bidar, Gulbarga, Raichur, Koppal, Bellary and Yadgir from North Karnataka.
Chitradurga, Kolar, Chikballapur and Chamarajnagar from South Karnataka.
Under the program, a total of 60 colourful cards of A4 size are used. These cards are divided into
two sets. The first set of the cards are meant for students who cannot identify the alphabets and the second set is
for those who are familiar with the alphabets. About 10 to 15 cards consist of pictures, 16 to 28 have words and
word formations, 29 to 60 cards have stories and poems. These cards are supplementary to the textbooks and do
not have provision for home work.
Selected teachers have been trained in day-long workshops. More than 40,000 teachers' guides
have been printed to make the program more effective.
Role of Pratham Mysore in supporting Oduve Nanu:
Pratham Mysore will partner with Akshara Foundation to support the SSA program of monitoring
Oduve Nanu (Reading) in Chamarajanagar district. The aim is to reach 240 schools across 4 education blocks.
