There are always students with strong potential in an art form or sport who may or may not also be interested or strong academically. These students need to be exposed to art education and sports in schools. This will give them the opportunity to discover their interest, unlock their strengths, build skills in these activities and excel in their limitless ways resulting in self confidence and well-being.
Though the curriculum of NCERT and SCERT (Telangana) encourages sports and art education (The State Board of Telangana says that in higher classes, every class, every day should have sports period and the CBSE board mandates every school to reserve a minimum of 2 periods for art education every week for classes 1 to 10), it is not implemented effectively in low-budget private schools and government schools because of lack of capacity and resources.
Only 18% of private schools charge fees higher than Rs 1,000 per month and there are around 1 Million teacher vacancies at the school level. With this, we have an unfair and highly biased academic oriented meritocratic measurement and selection approach; and the best and the brightest get into the better colleges, and perhaps, they will also get better rankings in life. These rankings can help children from low-income communities to change their current reality . Thus, stakeholders prioritize academics and it becomes very challenging for them to allocate resources and put efforts towards art education and sports.
At Aikaarth, we give children the platform to explore their true and fullest potential, to find and spread their light.