Articles by Gopika Kumaran

Gopika is passionate about education and public policy systems. After her Economics degree, she went on to do a fellowship in the development sector and wants to work with the government in the future.

Shilpa, a fellow educator, and I have been teaching at an under-resourced government school in Thyagaraya Nagar for the past two years. We started in August 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. The students we teach are first generation learners from an urban slum community in Thyagaraya Nagar, and their parents are daily wage workers, house help and roadside vendors. One of the things we noticed was that there is hardly any parental involvement in the child’s educational journey. The only time parents are called in is to hand over documents, sign applications, or for one-way parent-teacher meetings,…

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