How to Make Schools Work for the Poor

There is often a huge assumption made about education which is that if a child goes to school then they are automatically educated or should be quite educated. This assumption is actually quite misleading. Just because a child attends school school does not mean they are receiving quality education. Another case is that when a child falls behind on a years curriculum, the next year they are enrolled in a new grade they fall even more behind because they were never able to get caught up. 

 An interesting program that has been started in India called Pratham aims to address this issue by creating mentoring programs that help behind students in the summer. What I really like about the program is that some of these mentors are actually students- high school students and college students. They cover every single village in India. The government has even gotten involved with this project by providing some of the supplies and facilities for these mentoring to occur. 

The main idea behind making education work for the poor is that you have to involve the community as a whole. When an entire community comes together to solve an issue, the issue becomes a lot smaller and more achievable. Pratham and for an example the Boys and Girls club in the United States are both great examples of programs that involve the community to better the lives of the youth. There is no excuse for not having such programs in every country because for Pratham the costs of running the program was very minimal. 

Another major issue the absent rates seen in many countries by both students and teachers. In India alone teacher absence rate was at 25%. Once they are in school it is not even given that they are even teaching. Some reports have shown that some of the teachers are actually spending their time drinking tea or drawing political cartoons.