Mythili, a class 5 student of the Government Higher Primary School at Koti Hosahalli here, confidently reads aloud from the English book, Sameer's House . The only time she fumbles is when she pronounces country as “count-ry”, but her teachers are not disappointed. Until three years ago, she could barely read a sentence in English. Many of her classmates eagerly partake of this activity in the school library, which is a gift to the school by the NGO Akshara Foundation.
This, along with 188 other hub (main) libraries started by the foundation, will be handed over to 565 government schools in Bangalore (Urban) district through a memorandum.
Story cards
The initiative is an extension of the foundation's Oduve Naanu programme, through which the habit of reading is inculcated among students from class 2 to 7 by way of introducing them to “story cards”.
This process uses the ‘GROW-BY model' (each letter in ‘GROW-BY' stands for a particular colour, symbolising the level of difficulty of the books).
Once a student is able to comfortably read the first level (here, green), he or she gradually graduates to the next levels involving more lines per page and more complex sentences.
“There are 1,420 government schools in Bangalore. We found that there was a gap in the system, as one out of two children could not read. After the reading programme, we decided to follow it up with libraries,” said Ashok Kamath, chairman of the foundation.
There is also at least one computer in each of these libraries. As part of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Education Department, these libraries will be operated and maintained by the Government.
Kanchan Bannerjee, managing trustee of the foundation, said that there were close to 6.5 lakh books from 25 publishers in these libraries, and on an average 15,000 books were borrowed in a day by the children. A library hour had been incorporated into the weekly time-table for every class.
Until the establishment of the libraries in these schools, members of the foundation say, there were just books gathering dust, not an active library.
“After the introduction of regular library periods, the students' focus on studies has had a sharp rise.
Colourful pictures and the big letters in these books are helping,” said G. Vasantha, headmistress of the Koti Hosahalli school.
Monitoring
After handing over the libraries, the foundation would not give up on them completely, said Mr. Kamath. “Our resource persons will monitor the trends closely. We have been working closely with DSERT for content design. We hope that the Government will take this model to the rest of the State,” he added.
