Not all ABC and 123 - Laura Hughes

Children play on wasteland as a train goes by

Since working with the Development Education Society (DEEDS) in Bangalore , I have learnt just how important non-formal education is for India 's disadvantaged communities. DEEDS' non-formal education (NFE) centre provides a flexible learning environment for street and working children in the area of Yeshvantpur, just one of the city's 700 slums. The backgrounds and situations of the children that come here vary; from those with close families and houses, to those who sleep on the street under the care of distant and disinterested relatives. At the end of the day however, they are all desperately poor.

DiA volunteer Nabeela gets involved at the NFE centre

Because of their poverty, many of the children, often from the age of 8, have to work as railway coolies (porters), domestic servants, rag-pickers and labourers. This poses obvious barriers to their education as they cannot attend a full school day, and so the NFE centre allows them the flexibility to drop in whenever they can, and encourages the children and families to maximise the time they spend there. But how much “education” can you really deliver in such circumstances? The children are often tired from work and regularly face verbal and physical abuse, therefore “challenging” behaviour and difficulties in learning are commonplace. With this in mind, we can identify a key difference between mainstream schooling and NFE: play learning.

At the NFE centre, some of the most valuable lessons for our working children are learnt through games, puzzles and craft activities, and in lessons such as sharing resources, taking turns, listening, and following instructions. For example, take a simple jigsaw broken up and given to a small group of street children: their initial instinct is to monopolise and hide their pieces soon proves to be useless in addressing the task. Elements of cooperation and teamwork then quickly develop, along with skills in observation, orientation and problem-solving.

Children on the streets of Bangalore

Unfortunately most Indian government schools simply don't have the time or resources to stray from the syllabus into these types of activities, which are often so important to the kind of children that come from these disadvantaged communities.

It is a sad reality that for so many children who do overcome the restraints of their poverty and make it into the mainstream school system, simply adjusting to a classroom environment, never mind actually learning anything, proves too difficult and many drop out.