Deep in a Habiganj tea estate, a young girl has received the gift of education, something that would have been impossible to conceive of even a year ago.
Labourer Jasim Miah of Surma Tea Estate in Itakhola, Teliapara has two daughters but never dreamt he would be able to give either of them a proper education.
Because of the remoteness of the family’s place of work and residence, taking the children to the distant school was not a feasible option for the family.
But that was before the school came to them instead.
His elder daughter Sheuli Akter now attends school regularly where she is learning Bangla, English and mathematics.
The Online School that she attends is a new fixture at the tea estate.
Her classmates, Hosna Akter, Hafij Uddin, Abra Sapowan, Shuvamonda, are all children of tea garden labourers.
The distance education programme is conducted online via videoconferencing technology with the aid of moderators in the actual classroom.
Morzina Akter, a member of the local community with no teaching experience, helps with teaching and operations at Online School.
The objective of Online School is to ensure quality education for underprivileged and secluded children living in urban slums and in remote areas. It also helps to develop teachers.
Online School is a joint project of Grameenphone, Jaago Foundation and Agni Systems Limited.
Grameenphone, a top mobile operator, is providing financial and connectivity support for the programme.
Jaago Foundation, a non-profit civil society organisation is responsible for providing on-the-ground services, run school operations and design curricula for the classes.
Agni Systems Ltd is providing last mile internet solutions for the schools. Agni also provides technical support for internet connectivity to Jaago Foundation for the initiative.
Online School uses simple videoconferencing technology to operate distance learning classrooms. WebEx, a CISCO product, is used to conduct classes.
The school utilises laptops, webcams, sound systems, large screen TVs, sketch boards for teachers and at least 1.5 MBPS data speed (duplex). To ensure the data speed, the project uses fibre-optic or radio connectivity for its internet connection.
Curricular content is either collected from outside sources or developed by the project itself.
Beginning with the Elementary Class, a combination of Play Group and Nursery, students of Online School have reached Class 1. The school follows the English language version of the national curriculum.
Grameenphone started the first Online School in August 2011 with 80 students. At the end of the first academic year, a comparison of performance was done among similar types of schools – Banani School, Rayerbazar School and Online School.
The findings were clear.
On a GPA scale of 4, Online School had a year-end average GPA of 3.3725 while Banani School and Rayerbazar School achieved 2.8675 and 3.08, respectively.
Today there are 693 students in 10 schools located in Gazipur, Gaibandha, Rajshahi, Madaripur Bandarban, Teknaf, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Habiganj and Lakshmipur.
Online School’s Teacher’s Centre, a set of studios, was established to host distance classes from Dhaka. It is situated on 3,000 square foot of space in Rayerbazaar and consists of 10 studios.
It is capable of hosting 10 classes, each 3 to 4 hours long, simultaneously. The centre can handle 20 classes every day.
