Plan India launched "Positive Discipline Module"
Lucknow, June 24, 2011 - Plan India, a child centered development organization today launched “Positive Discipline Manual toolkit” for educationist to enforce violence free education in schools. Realizing the need of addressing the issue of Corporal punishment, Plan India announced this initiative as part of their efforts towards making government schools effective and ensuring a fear free environment.
Aimed for teacher, and headmasters teaching in the elementary classes (1 to 8 standard), NGO workers and education practitioners of civil society, this toolkit was launched at Hotel Dayal Paradise, Gomati Nagar in the presence of Bhagyashri Dengle, Executive Director & Asif Mohammad, Director, Program Implementation, Plan India, Bharat Bhushan, Secretary PANI, Sehba Hussain, Executive Director, BETI Foundation & State Advisor to SCPCR on RTE, Prof. Rakesh Chandra, Educationist, Lucknow University.
Since its launch at the national level, more than 300 school teachers in state of Uttar Pradesh have benefited from this manual. The module will reach out to 2000 schools by the year 2015 in seven states - Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, New Delhi, Orissa & Rajasthan to prevent violence in schools. Plan India is launching this module in Hindi, Telugu and Oriya to help reach out to more teachers and to ensure that it becomes part of the training curriculum of teachers.
Sharing an overview on the Plan India’s initiative, Bhagyashri Dengle, Executive Director, Plan India said, “We firmly believe that all violence in schools is preventable and never justifiable. Violence in schools has devastating long-term consequences for children who face it. Therefore, it is everyone’s responsibility to stop it – be it students, teachers, communities or governments. To address this issue, Plan India has strategically developed a Positive Discipline Manual which can be used by teachers and headmasters of the elementary schools to build an environment that encourages child participation and positive engagement with children in classrooms and schools.”
A Plan India study on the impact of corporal punishment in 2006, confirmed that corporal punishment was a regular feature in the lives of most children in schools. Children reported nearly 33 different types of punishment. Hence to develop a module on positive disciple was conceptualized and to achieve this Plan India conducted several studies on various aspects of education including corporal punishment and violence in schools at multiple field sites in the country. Field level workshops were conducted with different education authorities with a purpose to capture what schools are already practicing as positive discipline and behavioral changes introduced by teachers themselves to enforce discipline.
The toolkit supports training inputs to help teachers find answers for the following key questions such as; what is Positive Discipline and how to achieve this; How to change beliefs and practices of staff and children inside schools; How to change their working environment for positive energy and How to get the local education authorities perform their role in supporting this initiative.
