Weaving education into the social fabric

Thirty-five-year-old Pushpa Ragam talks about the ways in which her students have not just managed to relate to her but also express themselves better in the English language. A teacher at a government school in Hyderabad, Ragam was talking to the media after an interaction organised by the Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad which trained them as an outreach programme.

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) which opened the Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad in 2011 will be formally inaugurated on September 20.

With an intention to improve the standard of teaching and provide quality education and develop home-grown leaders, the AKDN has taken two steps.

One is the Academy which is part of the 18 academies planned by His Highness Aga Khan in South and Central Asia, Africa and Middle-East. The other is the outreach programme through which the AKDN looks to improve skills of teachers so that they can better impart English language.

“Through the outreach programme, we try to improve the English language capacity of the teachers. What we did was dealt with the pedagogical strategy of the teaching the English language,” said Dan Arnold, facilitator of the training programme of English language.

Instead of just making students learn, the teachers are trained to  teach students how to acquire the language. “Basically what we do is teach students English at their subconscious level by helping them express in their thoughts,” said Ragam who was part of the five-month training programme  that is held at the sprawling 100 acre campus of the Academy, which boasts of five fields, swimming pool and other facilities.

At present, the Academy has over 50% students studying at the campus that get anywhere between 5-100 percent financial aid in the IB curriculum academy. The financial aid to deserving students too is part of the social uplift initiative of the AKAN.