Tour of select government schools in Madanpalle, AP : Mixed bag / mixed reaction

The last 2 days saw Subbu (key member of Sikshana) and I visiting a number of schools that we've adopted in the Madanapalle area of AP. While, for Subbu, this was a follow up meeting, it was a "brand-new" experience for me. Given my lack of local language (Telegu) skills, my role was more of an observer than a real player.

I came back with mixed feelings : Some good / positive outcomes where we (Sikshana) seems to have made a dent and some real worrying points. The worrying points first....

a. In 4 of the 7 schools (particular area), we found a couple of students (typically boys !) being classified as MR ie. euphemism for Mentally Retarded by the local teachers. These were all for class 4 students. While it is certainly not rare to find these in government schools, what was shocking for me was....
   - The ratio of such classification ie > 15% in some of the schools
   - The "casual" manner in which these kids were being discussed in front of the other students. Esp. the usage of words like "duffer" etc.
   - Resignation / acceptance on the part of the teachers that they (the students) were in some way beyond redemption and hence the need to exclude them in counts of any kind for literacy levels.

There is a definite need for some kind of an independent survey and support structure in these schools. Given that the classifications I saw were already at class 4 (typically 8-10 age group), I'm afraid that some of these branding would have already settled into the psyche of the kid in question ?

 b. There seems to be growing resignation on the part of the government teacher (maybe as a result of years of non-involvement) that they have NO SAY in the structure of pedagogy / testing process etc. Driving to a distinct lack of ownership. Case in point :the new "benchmark" tests


    - There has been a new introduction of something called the "Benchmark" test for class 4 that seems to have almost ZERO relevance to the field situation. In this test, a class 4 student is "benchmarked" on class 4 syllabus !. The baseline is not even class 3 where I'd see some logic to the process ?
    - The marks / questions and gradation all are not linked to each other ?
    - The teachers, when questioned, state that they've raised this at their internal meetings, but, have not got a remedial message. All are busy either administrating these tests (one more in the series) or justifying the results !
   
More importantly, there seemed to be a certain level of resignation on the part of teachers to the fact that the government would eventually "privatize" the whole primary education process and hence there was no real incentive to "voice" their opinions ?

There were however, some silver linings. We were thrilled to find a school which had ALL (100% of the students in class 4), capable of reading / writing Telugu fluently.

As Subbu commented : this was a real Independence celebration for the class ie 100% literacy