Date:26/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/26/stories/2008112658250200.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Nagaland team in Chennai again to study ABL methodology

K. Manikandan

A Singapore team is expected to come here in a fortnight

— Photo: A. Muralitharan

Refreshing technique: A delegation of teachers and administrators of School Education Department of Nagaland interact with students at St. Thomas Mount Panchayat Union Primary School in Perungalathur near Tambaram on Tuesday.

Chennai: A 60-member delegation comprising administrators and teachers from Nagaland are on a week long visit to Chennai to study the Activity Based Learning methodology in government primary schools.

After visiting a couple of government-aided schools in Chennai on Monday, the team visited St.Thomas Mount Panchayat Union Middle Schools in Nanmangalam and Perungalathur near Tambaram on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters, members said this was their second visit to Chennai to study the ABL methodology after a trip in July this year.

Ayie Yhome, State Research Associate, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Nagaland, said the north-eastern State was also implementing an Activity Based Learning methodology in primary schools since 2003-04, but it was just a new form of pedagogy with slight modifications to the conventional methods of teaching.

When the officials heard about Tamil Nadu’s model of the ABL in primary schools, the Nagaland government sent a smaller delegation in July. Impressed, the delegation stressed the need for replicating similar teaching methods in Nagaland too and hence, this visit. The striking feature of the ABL in the government schools they had visited so far in Chennai was that students were engrossed in their lessons, he said.

“In conventional methods, students are distracted and their concentration is never inside classrooms when the teachers take classes. But this [ABL] is so impressive, the students pay complete attention,” Mr. Yhome said. “Another feature we noted here is that teachers do not have the cane. They mingle among students as friends,” he added.

The role of the teachers was crucial. He said that without textbooks, their burden and responsibility might have increased, but their dedication and sincerity was most important for success of the scheme. The delegation would be submitting reports about its observations, student behaviour and performance, role of teachers and the overall effects of ABL in improving quality of education to the Nagaland government.

It would also invite State Resource Persons of Tamil Nadu SSA to make presentations to senior officials of the School Education Department of Nagaland, Mr. Yhome said. He hoped that TN’s model of SSA would be replicated from the next academic year onwards in more than 1,400 government primary schools that taught about 1.5 lakh students in classes from I to V.

R.Malathi, Senior Consultant and M.Raghuraman, State Coordinator, SSA, said that so far, teams from Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka and the Union Territories of Puducherry and Chandigarh had visited the State to study the ABL in primary schools. These apart, a delegation of lecturers from the US and a team from Sri Lanka also visited.

A Singapore team was expected to come to Chennai in about a fortnight, they added.

Apart from briefing the delegations about the salient features of the ABL, how it worked with students and teachers, coordinators from the State office also toured all over India, making presentations to the respective governments on the modalities, cost component and other formalities need for implementing it.

They said the interest shown by other State governments was only a pointer to the success of ABL pioneered by Tamil Nadu, where it was tested in just over a dozen Chennai Corporation schools before being expanded across the State.