Samvit Research Foundation, Bengaluru is a not-for-profit social organization focused on research in school education.It is an open platform for scholars, educationists and researchers to integrate their knowledge from successful experiments and broad base it for large scale implementation in thousands of schools. Educationists and scholars collaborate to design simple, scalable modules – enriching education through age-specific progressive curriculum framework – for Samagra Vyaktitva Vikas (Wholesome Personality Development) of children in physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions, which are majorly missed in the current curriculum of school education.

The 6 Modules designed thus far are:

• • Viveka Bharati (Text Books) : Text Books and related Learning Resources are prepared and provided to enhance the the School Curriculum based on the recommendations on NEP 2020
  • Yoga Bharati (Yoga at School) : Age-specific practices from Ashtanga Yoga for school children
  • Katha Bharati (Stories for Life) : Personality Development – through the medium of Stories
  • Pride of India (Indian Knowledge System) : Generating pride of being a Bharatiya, by highlighting the contributions of Indians in Science, Maths, Arts & Humanities
  • Utsava Bharati (Events at School) : Children get familiarized with the local traditions and legends related with the festival by participating in the traditional and fascinating activities related to it.
  • PARAM (Personality Development of children through Stories of Ramayana & Mahabharata) : Ancient Indian tradition of imparting lessons through stories is used to educate the children and mould them to choose the right path in their life.

Our focus is to bring about small but significant change in large number of schools; this is done through three-fold strategy of:

• Designing detailed curriculum with teachers’ guide, videos and support material
• Guided Implementation through teacher training, expert support by Samvit Coordinators, collective refinement of modules through regular feedback and digital implementation tracking
• Scientific Assessment of Impact on children and teachers – this helps in creating benchmarks for research studies and creating reference for educators and researchers

Samvit works on the model of Open Source – where great people contribute in creating content and it is made available for free to large number of schools to enhance education in the country.Eminent educationists and experts guide the team of professionals at Samvit. Technology is used to reach out to thousands of schools with optimum efforts. Efficient partnership model is designed with large groups of schools for co-ownership in effective implementation of the modules.

PhD students & research associates from esteemed universities work with Samvit Research Foundation to design research projects. Research output and teachers’ feedback are used to continuously refine the modules.Samvit modules were implemented in 140 schools in Karnataka during 2019-20. In the academic year 2020-21, about 300 schools from Karnataka are partnering, including from Groups like JSS, BGS, BLDE, BVVS, VVS, ACT, Kottala Basaveshwara, Vidya Bharathi and Rashtrotthana Parishat, besides several Independent schools and Govt. schools. Ideas, inputs, content and suggestions for development of our school children are welcome from all quarters.

Background

It all started in 2016, when a core team of educationists from eminent institutions and a few enthusiastic individual scholars came together to work on proposals for the National Education Policy. Recommendations in the areas of value education, language policy, humanities and teacher education were given to the NEP Committee. While working on the policy proposals, it was felt that wisdom from various institutions could be integrated to create simple, scalable modules which could be beneficial to large number of schools.

An open education research platform was envisioned to design simple scalable modules, based on successful experiments, and implement these in large number of schools. Many a time, good ideas remain with few people; we at Samvit wanted to share these at mass level and scientifically measure the impact of the changes introduced. Study reports were proposed to be shared with National Education Policy makers to take these large-scale experiments to the next level, nationally.