Education Initiatives

Education is the only key factor that can bring in social transformation. BJS has worked in education from three perspectives, contributing with a set of interventions for students’ learning, improving quality and providing intervention programs to educational institutions and contributing to social cause through these educational institutions. BJS began working with a strong focus on education initiatives with all these perspectives in the first decade of 21st century after its core work in disaster response and social initiatives. During and after disaster response having created a niche in rehabilitating disaster affected children for their education since 1993 and having established a permanent Wagholi Educational Rehabilitation Center (WERC), BJS decided to work on School Education for improving Quality of education. With this idea, Mr. Shantilal Muttha initiated a basket of programme called EDUQIP (Educational Quality Improvement Programme) addressing the need of different stakeholders like students, teachers, principals, governing bodies and authorities.

In 2003, Shri. Shantilal Muttha launched a new initiative of BJS – Federation of Jain Educational Institutions (FJEI) to unite thousands of Jain educational institutions under one umbrella for collective strength, with the vision to collectively contribute to Nation Building and with the objective to collectively strive for transforming these charity institutions to quality institutions.

Based on the experience of long years between 1985-2015 and all education related work done through BJS and FJEI, having the belief and complete conviction to do a fundamental contribution to the domain of education and to bring in revolutionary changes in school education with the objective to transform the school educational system of India, Shri. Shantilal Muttha founded a not-for-profit organization Shantilal Muttha Foundation (SMF) in 2015. SMF focuses on up-scaling BJS educational initiatives across the country especially for integrating them in the government system.

EDUQIP Programmes focused on:

Assessment of school, teachers, students.
Enhancing institutional capacity for quality improvement based on diagnostic.
Empowering key stakeholders like Managements, Principals and Teachers.
Introducing technology for school operations.
Integrating value education in schools.

Since 2003, the EDUQIP model got expanded to Pan India being able to reach to more than 4000 government schools:

2005 – For 3 years in all government schools in Andaman & Nicobar
2007 – For 3 years in all Government schools in Goa
2010 – For 1 year in all private aided missionary schools in Goa
2007 – For 3 years in all Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti Schools (in every district of India)
2009 – For 3 years in all Government schools in two districts in Gujarat

Since 2003, EDUQIP is implemented at various points in more than 500 Private schools across India.

By 2009, BJS developed a huge experience in school education domain by reaching to more than 4000 schools in India. Its research based programs were implemented in large scale projects for government schools of many states after signing MoUs with the respective government authorities. BJS experience, competency and programs were tested and enhanced during the rigorous association with various state governments with their reviews by government experts and technical committees. Here onwards, BJS focused on two areas as its core expertise in school education.

1. Developing and implementing effective school assessment and accreditation model to facilitate quality improvement with all stakeholders

Developing and implementing Value Education model to integrate it with State syllabus and schooling system.

During 2009-2012, BJS redesigned these programs to address further development in the school domain such as National Curricular Framework (2005), RTE (2009), National Curricular Framework for Teacher Education (2009), impact assessment studies of the work and various global research studies in the field of education. BJS ensured participation of educationists and academicians of the national and international repute and also ensured that the ground level experience of managements, schools stakeholders and government officers is also used in taking its program to next level of effectiveness.

BJS implemented these redesigned programs through large scale pilot projects in government schools:

BJS School Assessment and Accreditation (BJS SAA) – Since 2012, signing MoU with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Meghalaya government, BJS SAA was implemented in government schools handing over school level reports, action points and cluster level, district level and state level reports to government authorities.

Mulyavardhan: a value education program – Since 2009, BJS focused on developing an acceptable, scalable & replicable by any state & educational institution. With this initiation, large scale pilot in 450 government schools in Beed district of Maharashtra state with the permission of Zillah Parishad was initiated. BJS developed this Beed experimental laboratory for value education and as part of it designed various activities on Value Education were developed for standard I to standard IV, appointed local teachers to take up Mulyavardhan activities in the 450 selected government schools and executed the programme, designed support & monitoring system, carried out impact assessment studies through scholars of Cambridge University , Oregon University and NCERT. The Beed experimental laboratory continues to run but with a plan to gradually scale down the operations as its purpose of setting model to showcase the workable model on value education has been fulfilled.

Mr. Shantilal Muttha established Shantilal Muttha Foundation (SMF) to specially focus on large scale implementation of this educational work in government network. BJS continued to implement educational program for required channels with the support of SMF.

Read More about BJS work in Education and this evolution, SMF and WERC in the following sections.

RATIONALE

The students are at a crossroad when they complete their school level studies, especially at the level of Xth & XIIth standards. Today students have far too many options before them, but lack of expert professional guidance makes them unsure of their career plans. It has been observed that many students blessed with a high IQ look out desperately for proper guidance on career related questions & issues at this stage, & with the right guidance they can steer their career towards the right path.

The career guidance process helps the students to identify their strengths and needs and builds a plan based on their personal profiles. It gives the students an access to information and empowers them to achieve their potential, and experience success and gratification from whatever they choose.

SOME SALIENT FEATURES OF THE PROGRAM:

- To develop positive attitudes towards lifelong learning and skills, which meet their personal, social, career and educational need.

To provide students with basic economic understanding, skills in understanding themselves and educational/occupational opportunities and skills.

RELEVANT QUESTION/ISSUES covered under this program:

- How to select & opt for a career path post class X / XII.

- How to prepare prominent & important entrance examinations like IIT-JEE, AIEEE, CET, BITS, AIPMT.

- How to aim for and obtain various student scholarships.

- How to obtain bank loan for higher studies.

How to allot times for studies and other daily routines & create a perfectly balanced time-table for all the activities, and many other such very relevant & important issues at this vital juncture of life.