Education

CREDA believes that full-time elementary education is the only solution for elimination of child labour and general poverty. To this end CREDA has initiated many projects to get children out of work and into schools. CREDA also ensures that the children who join schools remain there and mainstream themselves into government schools.

Community Cottage Schools
CREDA has set up, with the involvement of the community, Community Cottage Schools to offer a two-year education to boys and girls. The community is mobilised to send the children to school. The mainstreaming of identified working children, including adolescent girls, is done through these Community Cottage Schools. The criteria for setting up these schools includes
· Distance to formal school,
· Pupil teacher ratio,
· Villages and hamlets having a high proportion of scheduled castes and scheduled tribe population,
· Non-availability of any other educational facility and
· Number of girls out of school.

CREDA greatly emphasizes gender equity in access. Each community school is built to accommodate 50 students with one teacher. The school infrastructure varies from simple open structures with thatched roofs to abandoned community or privately owned buildings.

The community is mobilised to participate and contribute to the education process in several ways, and these include:
· Identifying the need for a school
· Land contribution for the school building
· Land is donated by the village Panchayat, by donations from private landowners or from land holding participants who have no use for a particular piece of land.
· Maintenance of the school premises,
· Parent's Association are formed to contribute in kind or with labour.

The School Curriculum
The CREDA community cottage schools follow the same curriculum as the NFE government schools. Teachers keep 2 sets of printed books per school and these books contain instructions and coloured illustrations for teaching basic skills to the children. These books also address gender equality in their illustrations. The approach to teaching used is child based. Children are grouped according to performance levels and are imparted knowledge that enables them to join formal schools.

Along with the regular school teaching, extra curricular activities such as dramas, plays, role-playing, singing and dancing add a special dimension to the schooling process. These activities also address social issues and sensitise the community. ”Claiming ones rights in society”, “Bondage and Child Labour” are some issues that have been covered.

Each child in the CREDA schools is provided with an education kit containing notebooks, pen, pencils, drawing sticks, ruler, eraser and ink.

Mobile libraries have also been made functional in 52 project villages to help the students benefit.

Teachers/ Instructors for the schools
The CREDA teachers are chosen from the community itself. They are required to have a minimum level of schooling. Since they lack formal qualifications they are unable to join government schools as teachers. Despite this, they become teachers due to their interest in CREDA’s teaching methods and the school’s proximity to their homes.

CREDA’s teachers are required to have a minimum of 8-12 years of schooling while the Supervisors have a Masters/Bachelors degree. To become a CREDA teacher, a basic training course of 7+3+2 days is offered to the prospective teachers. Workshops and courses with external lecturers are conducted on a regular basis to coach the CREDA teachers on methodologies and other issues.

The teachers are supervised regularly and their attendance kept in check. They work for salaries far below the government schoolteacher but display the same or a higher level of commitment.

Resource persons such as lady doctors, gender advisors, environmentalists and resource groups are also invited regularly to give inputs on reproductive health, hygiene, environment, women's rights, children's rights, empowerment and development.

Mainstreaming the CREDA educated children
Some children who have been mobilised by CREDA's activities and pulled out of work, are directly mainstreamed into formal schools depending on their achievement levels, and provided with basic school going material for the same. Children in the 5-7 year age group are directly enrolled into regular schools and they receive support in the form of education kits comprising books and stationery for the first year. Older children, who need to undergo educational training are enrolled in Community Cottage Schools where the curriculum is based on the Government prescribed course for the NFE stream. After completing two years in the Community Cottage Schools, these children are examined for Class V by the District Basic Education Officer before they are enrolled into mainstream schools.

CREDA supports the enrolment of children educated in its cottage schools into regular schools and ensures that the dropout rate is kept in check. It has various mechanisms in place to ensure that no duplication or cross registration of children into formal schools takes place. CREDA volunteers check the school record to ensure that the children are enrolled in the government schools.

Vigilance Committees are setup as watchdog bodies at the village level to monitor the prevalence of child labour and to ensure that children are enrolled into schools and retained there. These Committees comprise 15-20 members who are people from the village community committed to the cause. The fact that these Committees are based at the village and their tasks are performed on a voluntary basis make the potential for their sustainability realistic.

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