Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre

The “Reading with Understanding Campaign” has been initiated with the objective of fostering a culture of reading and writing in schools and society. Through this campaign, we aim to ensure the availability of suitable resource materials for children, students, teachers, schools, and community members. Recent research has shown that levels of reading comprehension improve not by focusing solely on prescribed textbooks but by encouraging learners to select their own books from a vast repertoire of interesting and challenging books and other learning materials. At the level of teachers, resource agencies, and the community, it helps generate a holistic educational discourse.

Two month-long first Udaipur Children’s Book Festival (UCBF) was organized in January 2024 and 2025, as part of the “Reading with Understanding Campaign” (RUC). This event was an initiative undertaken by Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre in collaboration with various like-minded organizations for example- HT Parekh Foundation, Eklavya, Centre for Micro Finance, Rama Mehta Trust, Language and Learning Foundation, Ravindra Haurias etc. The RUC saw active participation from children, citizens, and teachers. This event will be organized annually in Udaipur and will be promoted on a large scale.

Vidya Bhavan Educational Resource Center (VBERC), in collaboration with Hindustan Zinc Vedanta, organized the “Books for Friends” activity across 71 government schools of Shiksha Sambal Program under the “Reading with Understanding” (RUC) campaign.As part of this initiative, students from classes 6 to 8 were provided with their own books, and a process of exchanging books among friends from time to time was introduced.This approach, which emphasized personal ownership of books and access to a variety of reading resources, is a significant step towards fostering a vibrant reading culture among children. In addition to the books, every student received a diary titled “Mhari Diary.”a personal diary where they could record details of the books they read and explore various opportunities for creative expression. This activity aims to empower children, nurturing their love for reading and self-expression.

The Abhilasha project is jointly run by Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre, Navgurukul, Bajaj Finserv, and the Kotak Foundation. Under this program, 82 girls from underprivileged backgrounds are being trained in coding. It is a residential program conducted on the campus of Vidya Bhawan Polytechnic College. After 15 months of training, employment will be provided in relevant companies to the girls who successfully complete the training program.

In this session, initiatives based on science teaching, teacher capacity building, and the development of science materials have been undertaken in collaboration with the CmF organization.

In April 2019, VBERC received the Shaikshik Samvardhan Project grant from Inter Globe. From 2019 to 2022, the three-year program aimed to serve students (Classes 6 to 10) in 25 (twenty-five) rural schools in two locations (Badgaon and Kurabad) in rural Udaipur. The intervention was designed to directly reach out to the learners to provide increased learning opportunities for them. The strategy was to develop a field-based team of facilitators in the ratio one per school for providing improved learning resources in the schools. It also aimed to improve teacher involvement, enrich peer-group learning amongst children, and promote respect for diversity in the classroom. Due to Covid-19, changes were made in the program with the support of school authorities, teachers, and parents.

As part of the IPEL project with Room to Read, a sociolinguistic survey in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) was conducted with the idea that its findings would influence practices of both government-run and private schools in intervention states to ensure that every child of the state was positively impacted. The study was undertaken to determine the languages and language varieties used by different stakeholders in education including students, teachers, and parents in different socio-cultural domains in the state of UP. Given that there are so many languages in UP, considerable amount of mixing of languages and scripts was inevitable. This presented an opportunity to understand the nature of code mixing and translanguaging that takes place to enhance mutual comprehensibility. A third objective was to explore the nature of attitudes and stereotypes among students, teachers, and parents. Based on these would arise pedagogical implications for early education.

VBERC has actively conducted various large-scale surveys and assessment studies. We undertook the baseline studies for two Maharashtra based organizations. The first, Maturschaya, works on rights-based approach to primary education out of Palghar district. The second Bipla Foundation (formerly Save the Children, India) is based in Pune. Through field visits, interviews and surveys we established the baseline status of Anganwadis, SMCs, and schools in which the two organizations are intervening. Learning levels in Language and Maths of student of grade 4 and 6 were also determined.

School Readiness Package Development Work with Room to Read conducted in 2021, the project aimed to develop workbook for Grade 1 and 2 children for school readiness, capacity building and material for teachers related to pedagogy and overall development of children, as well as supporting material for parents.

The project conducted in 2021-23, and aimed at developing Training Module for teachers in Bridge School Programme and conduct online teacher training during Covid-19 lockdown. Teachers of 181 centres from all over India were part of the programme. In this training we had discussionaround nature, classroom pedagogy and its related modus operandi in language and mathematics in amultilingual group

The project conducted in 2020-21, the project aimed to conduct review of Learning Centres of children, desk review of existing curriculum, content, pedagogy, and assessments as well as review of existing training model of teachers of IIMPACT. The project further conducted workshops for strengthening capacities of the IIMPACT team and suggested improvements in the pedagogical and assessment approach.

We collaborated with IIM Udaipur in a study on effects of affirmative action among the Sahariya tribe wherein 20,000 households were surveyed using digital means in Baran district of Rajasthan. The study looked at the Sahariya’s socio-economic condition against the state and national level benchmarks; it also examined their status in terms of education, occupation, income and facilities provided by various Government and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in different domains of activity. The main steps involved in the study were literature review, tool development, interaction with the Sahariyas based on these tools, conducting FGDs and Interviews with some of the stakeholders. We noted that education was a matter of grave concern; most Sahariyas were either not educated or had studied only up to the primary level. Their socio-economic status was also very low. The major occupations of the Sahariyas are agricultural and non-agricultural labour. More than 85% of the Sahariya HHs in all the blocks have monthly income and expenditure of less than or equal to Rs. 5000/.

Intervened VB Nursery school in 2014 and Anganwadi centres in collaboration with Seva Mandir in 2016-19 supported by Hindustan Zinc Limited, to understand how children learn in early age and implement the findings to enhance grasping among children. This flagship programme of VBERC is known as the Khushi Aanganwadi project that provided the model and materials to Seva Mandir to continue and sustain this programme. Pre-school education is a vital component of Aanganwadi work and in 2016 Vidya Bhawan was invited by Seva Mandir to collaborate on this component in Aanganwadicenters. Initially the work was started in two blocks i. e. Girwa and Jhadol. From 2017 the project area was expanded and three more blocks i. e. Mavli, Kotra and Sarada were added. VBERC trained 182 Field Monitors of Seva Mandir and trained over 1384 AWWs building their capacity in the area of preschool education.

Conducted from October 2012 to June 2014, the project’s work areas included initiating and designing a course for training and capacity building of library educators, and strengthening of the library promotion within the classrooms of Vidya Bhawan Basic School. The program funded by Sir Ratan Tata Trust.

The project conducted from 2016 to 2019, and aimed to work in Gola and Podiayahat in Jharkhand in collaboration with TRI and in consultation with PRADAN to bring about qualitative and quantitative changes in primary education with the help of local community through activation of School Management Committees, training of education change Vectors, school libraries, discussion on educational issues in small groups, vacation camps and focus on irregular students. VBERC worked in 136 primary schools in 118 villages of 20 panchayats in the 2 blocks.

In recent years, the VBERC has also started participating in research studies at the international level. The project ‘Research in Accountability in Indian System of Education (RAISE) which is formally entitled “Making the elementary schooling system in India work for disadvantaged learners: A cross scalar comparative study of accountability relations”, is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the Department for International Development (DFID), UK. The project is located in VBS and is being coordinated by Preeti Misra of the VBERC. Prof Caroline Dyer of the University of Leeds is the Principal Investigator (PI) and Suraj Jacob (CEO, VBS), Arthi Sriprakash (Cambridge University) and Rahul Mukhopadhyay (VBS) are the co-PIs.

The Quest Alliance works in 2600 elementary school in the Samastipur district. It works with government schools on two issues: arresting dropout rates and linking learning with early skill development. The VBERC worked with the Quest field team on education and learning area. The work involves Principals of thirty schools in ablock of the district and two schools for a total transformation of the way schools functioning with the students, among themselves and with the community.

The VBERC also worked intensively in the 60 schools in 14 slum-area of Udaipur supported by a grant from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) for 5 years. Its basic objective was to improve the quality of learning in the schools. VBERC made contacts with UNICEF Rajasthan and extended the activities of the MSDF project to other districts such as Rajsamand. An important part of working in the slum areas was the VBERC Mobile Library. Started in 2005, the Mobile Library initiative supported 4 by the Give Foundation aims at cultivating reading habits among the children of the kacchibastisof Udaipur. It focused on 6 slum clusters and provides children with attractive and illustrated story books and magazines. The Mobile Library bus visited each slum bastionce or twice a week. About 40 children accessed the library at each cluster and about 40% of them are girls.

Vidya Bhawan had worked in Hazira with SHELL(now HLPL-Hazira LNG and Port limited), as a partner from 2005 to 2015, Hazira project, at that time, followed provisions of SHELL good neighborhood policy, meaning, creating a good will in the community closer to SHELL business.It is a growing industrial township located on the Arabian seashore. Many major industrial houses of India have their production unit in Hazira. Industries are major source of employment in the area. Hazira has significant number of migrant population mainly from Gujarat, Bihar, MP, and UP.
SHELL commissioned a feasibility study in Hazira to take a snapshot on the status of schools in the area. The purpose of the study was to get a qualitative overview of the status of school education in government schools of Hazira. The finding of the study is to act as a sounding board for understanding and planning possible intervention in education in Hazira and eventually in the whole state. The intervention started by commissioning 12 activity centres, located in each government school. In each of the 12 schools, that had one instructor, local female, with potential to engage with students. The activity centres had a library, with children’s books in Gujarati, English and Hindi, along with reading materials on pedagogy and the nature of subject content, also in Gujarati, for teachers. The project provided materials for use by teachers in the classroom teaching, to supplement textbook conceptual area. Later on Mobile library was added in the community outreach program.

Started in 2017 till 2021 with elementary teachers of 3 VB schools, the project worked on identifying existing language and mathematical skills, social and cognitive growth of children by conducting regular meetings with teachers, and also proposed reading material and activities along with regular assessment strategies of children for future.

Conceptualised in 2003 and went on till 2011, an NFE course was made for Seva Mandir’s NFE instructors’ capacity building. The course was divided into three levels with the main components as worksheets, tutorials and written exams (language, mathematics and child learning process). Evaluation, monitoring and literacy camps were conducted for Seva Mandir NFE instructors and students from 1998 to 2001. From 1999 to 2001, a study comparing impact of one instructor vs two instructors on students was conducted.