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Education is a public good, and the commitment to ensuring its quality through public resources remains a cornerstone of our efforts. Yet, despite our steadfast dedication, we continue to grapple with significant challenges within the public education system. High dropout rates and persistently low levels of student achievement remain pressing concerns nationwide. Thousands of children remain excluded from educational opportunities altogether, while many others languish within the system, unable to truly benefit from their schooling.
But success can be realized through shared responsibility and accountability. We firmly believe that by integrating the community into the process of shaping educational goals and outcomes, we can forge a path toward a brighter future for all children. Hence, the integration of education and community participation has been a driving force behind Vikramshila’s curricular experiments in both rural and urban areas.
In 1989, when we began our journey, “Vikramshila” was at best an amorphous idea born out of a conviction for educational equity and at worst a support system for other nascent civil society organizations; we helped them improve their educational programmes. These small efforts over time took us across geographies, weather, and peoples, which opened our eyes to the intersectionality of education in India. We realised that education was only a part of the mosaic that India is.
We visited villages inhabited by snake charmers, brick kiln workers, forest dwellers and even those who lived by the ever-threatening seas and in drought-prone areas. We learnt about them; and how they survived at the intersection of caste, class, creed, gender, communal mores, socio-economical backgrounds, physical ability, and language. So we asked ourselves if education was the process of learning knowledge, skills, and character building, can a one-size-fits-all approach to it help the children of these communities? This also helped us understand why, as the Yash Pal Committee
report succinctly wrote, “A lot is taught, but little is learnt or understood”, and why education has been reduced to “mainly a process of preparing for examinations”. We learned two important lessons, which even today serve as a foundation for how we function:
While we accepted and understood that children in our country, irrespective of their background, will eventually grow up to take standardized exams and adhere to the rigid educational framework of the country, we concentrated on smoothening the transition phase between play and experiential learning and formalization through our community learning centres.
Over two decades, the Naba Disha Centres have evolved into much more than educational spaces. They’ve become community learning centres, addressing children’s psycho-social needs, a place where they can play, learn, and question freely. For some, these centres offer a sense of home they’ve never known. Mothers entrust their children to these centres while they work, turning them into makeshift child care centres. Teachers and mentors use them as laboratories to experiment with teaching methods. For others, it’s a way to give back to society or make a modest living.
Naba Disha had started initially as a community outreach program by the Kolkata Police, who later sought our support and help to provide educational support. An educational endeavour started by the police community gave us the idea to harness existing human capital systems such as Self-Help Groups (SHGs), Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), local educated unemployed youth, and parents to further our goal of providing all children not just academic education but a wider range of life skills to help them navigate their future in a rapidly changing world order.
Making Quality Education a Reality for All Children