Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Government has decided to integrate a gender equity curriculum into the syllabus for students across government schools in the State.
The School and Mass Education Department on Monday signed an MoU with Breakthrough and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South Asia in this regard.
The curriculum, designed by the NGO Breakthrough, uses interactive classroom discussions to encourage adolescent boys and girls to reflect on culturally embedded gender norms, roles, and discriminatory practices to transform their gender attitudes, aspirations, and behaviours.
Through this partnership, the curriculum will be integrated into the Social Studies syllabus for adolescent boys and girls from Grades 6 to 10 in over 18,000 elementary and 5,000 secondary schools in Odisha by August 2022.
The MoU was signed at an event today in the presence of School and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Das; Principal Secretary, School and Mass Education Department Bishnupada Sethi, State Project Director, OSEPA Anupam Saha, Sohini Bhattacharya, CEO, Breakthrough and several other officials.
Samir Ranjan Dash, Minister, School and Mass Education, said, “Gender equality is very important. We are taking it very seriously.”
School and Mass Education Department, Principal Secretary Bishnupada Sethi said, “The inclusion of gender dimension in the school curriculum is a very notable step for Odisha. Despite the gains and progress, India has made in gender equality, some issues continue to remain unaddressed even today”.
“The representation of women, for example, is not significant and interventions such as this programme can bring about positive changes in the way we look at gender issues. And schools are the best places to start these conversations. We will have wide-ranging topics that will be covered in schools as part of this programme in our continued efforts to build a gender-equal world”, he added.
The curriculum was first evaluated by J-PAL South Asia in 314 government schools in Haryana and was found to shift the gender attitudes and behaviours of both boys and girls and lead students to enact more gender-equitable behaviours.
The curriculum has since been introduced in multiple states in India, including Punjab where it is currently reaching 600,000 students annually in government schools across the state.
In Odisha, Breakthrough will work with the Department of School and Mass Education to contextualize and integrate the curriculum into the syllabus, train teachers and key departmental personnel, and conduct gender sensitization workshops with teachers across 23,000 state-run schools.
Sohini Bhattacharya, CEO, of Breakthrough, said, “Breakthrough, over the last 22 years has been working towards making violence and discrimination against women and girls unacceptable.
“We need to ensure that children, especially those between the ages of 10-15 have access to the right information related to gender equality, legal rights, and healthy gender behaviors,” Sohini said.
This program is a part of an ongoing partnership between the Government of Odisha and J-PAL South Asia, wherein since 2019, J-PAL South Asia has worked with state departments to facilitate rigorous, policy-relevant research and the scale-up of successful programs.
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