Platform Schools: Inderjit Khurana

If the child cannot come to the school, then the school must come to the child.
- Inderjit Khurana, Ruchika Social Service Organisation

I first learned about Inderjit Khurana and her platform schools a few years ago when watching PBS's New Heroes program. Now that I work on international child labor issues, I've come to appreciate her work even more.

As a schoolteacher, Inderjit Khurana used to take the train to work. And each day, in the stations, she would come into contact with dozens of children who spent their days begging from train passengers rather than attending school. She learned that it was not a rare or isolated problem and that millions of children in India live on the streets.

Convinced that these children would never be able to escape their conditions of poverty and homelessness without education, and realizing that it would be impossible to enroll these children in school, Inderjit decided to create a model program for "taking the school to the most out-of-school children."

Khurana founded the Ruchika Social Service Organization in 1985 to bring schools to the children. Her "train platform schools" aim to provide a creative school atmosphere and equip children with the basic levels of education necessary to allow them to work productively, enjoy many of life's pleasures, and become positive contributors to their communities.

Khurana's ultimate goals reach far beyond the 20 platform schools she and her colleagues have created in India's Bhubaneswar region. She is determined that her program become a model for effectively changing the lives of the poorest children throughout India and the world.

What three lessons has Inderjit learned while working with child laborers?

1. Schools for working children should have absolutely ZERO barriers, whether physical ( e.g. walls) or of day to day organization ( e.g. Of rules and regulations); and should require MINIMAL disruption of the children's existing routines. i.e. schooling in their space, their time, according to methods and with curriculum closely related to their life-experience.

2. The schooling programme should incorporate transition from the Platform School with its informal, activity oriented format , to Mainstream Schools' traditional structured methods of teaching. For this to be successful, the transition in teaching methods of the informal school to the formal school should be gradual. AND there should be a sponsorship programme thereafter which incorporates provision of books, uniforms and continuing monitoring cum counselling relating to the child's progress in the mainstream school.

3. For older children who are unable or unwilling to enter into mainstream schools, the best school would be a programme of vocational training equipping them for entry into the workforce. Their entry into the earning fraternity becomes a visible symbol for others to emulate and and will encourage other working children to at least try going to school.