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Paldev registers a significant jump in pass percentages

HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar’s hard work to promote education amongst the poor in his ‘adopted village’ has finally borne fruit

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Higher secondary school in village Paldev
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Thirteen-year-old Rupa Patel now looks forward to attending school everyday. There is a gym attached to her school, teachers conduct classes regularly, and everyone is punctual. However, this was not the situation two years ago, in HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar’s adopted village, Paldev, in Madhya Pradesh.

This small, sleepy village in the Satna district of MP is the last village in the state, situated on the border of MP and UP.  With a population of over 4,000, this village was adopted by the minister under the central government’s Adarsh Gram Vikas Yojna in the year 2014. The most significant development in Paldev was education, where pass percentage of Class 10 went up to 77 per cent from a mere 11 per cent, two years ago, and that of Class 12 to 86 per cent from 28 per cent.

“When I adopted the village I found out that people were not interested in sending their children to school. Teachers were not taking classes. The first task was to bring teachers to school so that the students followed. We held interactions with teachers through our volunteers and sent them for training,” said Javadekar during one of his visits to the village. “Then we started a door-to-door campaign to create awareness amongst parents on the importance of education. Today the pass percentage of Class 10 and 12 has shown a remarkable jump, and I am extremely happy about it,” he added.

The volunteers on field assessed students to help improve the situation. If a student lagged behind, they were made to repeat the course till they matched the expected standards of learning. Course modules helped assess 
the students.

“A class three student knew how to write Hindi alphabets, but did not know how to make a word out of those alphabets. This has been the level of education here,” said one of the volunteers in the village. There is one higher secondary school in the village that caters to a population of almost a 1000 students. The school building was also defunct before Javadekar adopted the village. It was under him that the building was renovated and more classrooms added.

“After the renovation, more students started coming in and now we see that the attendance has gone up than in the last couple of years,” said a volunteer, Ram Kumar Gautam.

The participation of girls is more than boys in village schools. “I like coming to school now because we have a gym attached to our school and we get to do some physical activity during our breaks. At the end of each month we have a test and if we fail to answer a question, our teachers help us,” said Rohini, a student in Paldev village. 

After increasing the pass percentage, the focus of the administrators is to introduce children to technical education beginning from class nine.

While education has seen major improvement in the village, other issues like construction of toilets and roads are yet to see a significant change. The minister hopes that this change will take village forward and ‘stand on its own feet.’

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