who In Tamil Nadu education model, children are placed centerstage. Provision of breakfast in government schools is part of a decades-long vision in the state to ensure holistic education

  On September 5, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal visited Chennai to launch the “Prehuman women scheme”, which again trended across India. This is not all. A recent report by a research team headed by Kathak of the University of Chicago on learning loss and recovery in Tamil Nadu in the context of the pandemic, says, “Despite large learning losses, two-thirds of the absolute ‘learning loss’ appears to have been recovered by May 2022, six months after schools reopened. Recovery was strong and comparable for students of all ages”. The report attributes this strong and speedy recovery to the “Education to Home” scheme, launched in October 2021, and recommends this model as a low-cost, mass-scale and faster recovery model for low and middle-income countries recently, public education in Tamil Nadu is attracting not just India’s attention but that of academia across the world.

  Tamil Nadu made education a priority even before Independence. Tamil Nadu’s literacy rate has been consistently above the all-India average. Post-Independence, K Tamarac, who was the chief minister of the state for nine years from 1954, brought about a renaissance in school education. It was during his tenure that the number of government schools increased considerably. He brought in the midday meal scheme to increase enrollment. The “Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme” is, in fact, a continuation of this scheme.

  Now, nearly 70 years later, another renaissance in school education is on its way in Tamil Nadu. M K Stalin declared that his government is determined to give the utmost priority to school education. Already, in the first year of its term, the government has rolled out various schemes for promoting and ensuring holistic education.

  The “Home Education”  or the “education reaches home” scheme mentioned above is one of them. Under this, Tamil Nadu recruited two lakh volunteers, with a stringent filtering system, trained them and sent them out to reach the children at their homes. As an extension of the Education Home program, “Letter and Number”, a program to strengthen foundational learning, was initiated to ensure that by 2023, all students by age 8 will possess reading, comprehension and basic arithmetic skills. Primary school teachers across the state were given training in the new model in May before the schools reopened.

  In addition to these academic initiatives, the Tamil Nadu School Education Department in its movement toward holistic education is promoting various activities on art and culture in government schools. Workshops on various art forms are conducted periodically. Internationally acclaimed movies for children are screened once a month. Starting with Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid in August, followed by the Iranian film Children of Heaven in September, the children were not alone in watching the movies. Various child rights activists, artists, writers, filmmakers and other renowned contributors to education and art including prominent film directors Mys skin  Amer and actor Nasser joined the children to further enrich the screening experience. The screening was followed by a discussion moderated by these special guests.

  Another initiative toward holistic education is the sports battery test. The Tamil Nadu State Education Department, along with the Tamil Nadu Sports Development Authority, has come up with a battery test that closely represents the various physiological demands of sports. Students from classes VI to VIII will take this test at the beginning of every academic year. It will be recorded in the mobile application launched for this purpose, thereby ensuring a comprehensive database of the physical fitness of the students across the state. Children who clear the scale will be further screened and allowed to study in sports hostels, where they will be provided with education, sports accessories and training, at the cost of the government.

  Oleksandr, Consultant High-Performance Specialist at the High-Performance Academy in Nadia, Gujarat, in an interview with Bridge sports magazine in 2020, talked about which model of sports talent building will suit the Indian environment. “Each state should examine its children longitudinally from the age of 9 to 10,11, and 12 years. Their growth and development pattern should be observed, and norms and standards should be developed. This can help the sports authorities in profiling and analyzing what the 95th percentile is, what plus 2 Sigma and minus 3 Sigma are and where the issues lie, and they can know exactly what to look for. Based on this data, the physical educators, coaches, and administrators can identify the best talent from the state population and then adjust or map that population to the sports where the state has a potential.” The steps taken by the Tamil Nadu School Education Department exactly fit these guidelines. Digitizing the battery test data into a common pool allows for a systematic and scientific analysis.

  There are various other schemes as well. The ‘Prehuman women scheme’ provides a scholarship of Rs 1,000 per month to all outgoing girl students of government schools for higher education to ensure they do not drop out after schooling. The chief minister scheme provides skill development and career guidance support. There is also a provision for home-based education for children with special needs who have restricted mobility. The reconstitution of the School Management Committees to ensure people from vulnerable sections, including women, single-parent children, members of the transgender community, the differently abled, sanitary workers, AIDS patients, and SC/ST communities are given importance and representation.

  Education during the Renaissance was created with humanist ideals that emphasized reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world. The schemes rolled out by Tamil Nadu are based on social justice, the core ideology of the Dravidian movement. The humanist ideals of reason, scientific inquiry and human fulfillment are within reach of every child and enable them to “flower in goodness”, as philosopher J Krishnamurti puts it.

  The Tamil Nadu government is attempting to achieve this through its infrastructure. On the other hand, it is important for the parents and the community to willfully participate and take up responsibilities in monitoring, questioning and implementing these schemes so that public education is child-centric.