English Radio project

Over the past ten years the use of English among educated people in India has increased very rapidly. English is now the main language used in higher education and in business, and is required for most university courses.

Most well-off Indian families send their children to schools where all lessons are taught in English, but generally the standard of English teaching in state schools is very low; teachers in these schools rarely speak English themselves and have no experience of hearing the language being spoken, so all they can do is teach the children to recite the standard textbook by rote, without any genuine understanding at all. Most children leave state school unable to form even a simple sentence in English.

To address this problem an organisation called the Centre for Learning Resources (CLR) is producing a series of radio programmes. The programmes help children develop the confidence to speak and understand English through games, songs and short dramas.

We’ve all had frustrating maths lessons, boring science teachers and days when we just didn’t want to be at school.

In many schools in India however the problems are much more severe. Class sizes often reach and exceed 60 children to one teacher. Textbooks are in short supply and are often out of date. Although India’s education system has been expanded to allow many more students to attend school, there has been a marker decline in the quality of education. Teachers are under trained, lessons are poorly thought out and students are not given proper support at school. In some areas student dropout rates are very high; CLR is working to reverse this trend by working with teachers, the government and students.

CLR’s aim is to improve the quality of education, they believe that children should be inspired to learn and they have shown over the last twenty five years that children learn more and have more fun when they are “doing”. CLR have devised ‘The Education Advancement Project’. The plan assigns project workers work to all types of education institute, from pre-schools, to colleges, from state schools to private schools. Project workers help to introduce new resources to school and more importantly they train teachers to use the materials effectively so that the students benefit.

CLR’s flagship project is funded by Karuna; the project was devised to help students with their English language skills. Instead of learning and practicing English from a textbook the ‘Interactive Radio Project’ gives children the chance to write and perform a radio show in English. Not only do the students enjoy the process of writing and then performing their work on air; the 25,000 students listening benefit from listening to spoken English which is creatively written and well performed. The project has improved the aural language skills of the students.

“It was fun participating in the show. We learnt many new things and learning was very easy.”

Asha Kashide, student of Waghmare Vasti ZP School

“The programme has been successful in getting rid of the students' fear of learning English. They are also very proud that they have made these games.”

Shri Bhujbal, Cluster Coordinator - Lonikand

Many of CLR’s brightest ideas come straight from creative teachers, CLR simply help refine the resources and help to roll them out in thousands of schools. The results are clear, school that adopted CLR resources and training have reduced dropouts, made learning more interesting, effective and engaging for the students and the teachers alike.

A grant from Karuna has enabled CLR to produce forty-two programmes to be broadcast in schools throughout Maharastra. In the longer term, we hope that the Indian government will fund the project and that the programmes will be used in schools all over India, providing millions of children with an opportunity to learn spoken English, opening up a wider range of opportunities for them.

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