Newsletter and Annual Report 2023-2024

HELGA TODD FOUNDATION Newsletter and Annual Report 2023 – 2024

The trustees and associates continue to explore and develop new partnerships and alternative ways of working whilst maintaining our focus on the mission so dear to Ram Todd’s heart, namely “to advance education by the promotion of teaching in India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the UK and Germany ……. firstly to women students and teachers and secondly to colleges, other institutions and charities”.

The charity has continued to support training and running courses by deploying remote learning. The charity has continued the partnership with the Commonwealth Education Trust. We have also embedded our work with Key Education Foundation by running short courses, developing training materials and organising two visits to Bangalore: the first by two of our volunteers and again in August 2024 by two practising teachers.

Commonwealth Education Trust 2030.

https://commonwealtheducationtrust.org/

During this year we have extended our work on the Teach 2030 programme. This programme is run in partnership with the Commonwealth Education Trust [CET].

A trial programme with Calcutta Rescue has been completed and all twenty teachers successfully passed all the modules. In January, trustee Ben Taubman visited Calcutta Rescue and presented all the teachers with their certificates of completion.

Ben observed the teachers in their classroom settings and was impressed by how they were incorporating what they had learned from the programme into their lessons.

The Teach 2030 programme has been extended during the current year to other schools in India, including Shri Sain Vidyar Mandir School in Kaithal, Him Jyoti school in Dehradun, Florence Nightingale Inter College in Lucknow and Key Education Foundation in Bengaluru. In all, 53 teachers have been following the programme.

A variety of models to deliver the programme has been used and an in depth evaluation has been carried out to determine the model that best achieves the aims of the programme. This evaluation will help the Foundation determine the best way forward in the coming year.

Working on Early Years education with Key Education Foundation in Bangalore

https://www.keyeducationfoundation.org/ 

Developing Bite-sized courses with the KEF team

During Summer/Autumn 2023 our volunteers supported KEF by developing a couple of ‘bite size’ on-line courses. The courses were requested by KEF as a result of classroom observations made during their original London schools trip. The two courses included ‘book making in the classroom’ and another practical activity, ‘dough disco.’ The KEF team trialled the ideas with their own classes, and went on to produce their own training videos based on these activities.

Teach 2030 with KEF

We are pleased to say that a selected group of trainers from KEF has been working through the Teach 2030 programme to prepare themselves to work with other teachers. These will include teachers from government schools.

Volunteer visit to Bangalore January 2024

Two members of the Helga Todd Foundation visited Bangalore in January 2024. The goal was to follow up on ongoing collaborative work with the KEF team. 

The programme involved the HT volunteers observing lessons, and giving feedback to teachers, principals and KEF staff. Group discussions with the KEF team were animated and constructive. Our overarching positive conclusion is that the teaching team is young, dynamic and has a clear vision of what they want to achieve. They have already won contracts to provide early years education support to government schools in Karnataka and other states. They also continue to develop online materials to support teachers and parents. What we hope to offer to the team is our experience, practical ideas and support.

Plans for future

August 2024 two practising teacher will be spending 3 x weeks in Bangalore

1 x week working in a school

1 x week visiting schools

1 x week working with the KEF team.

Work for the future

We have scheduled regular zoom meetings with KEF to establish future plans and projects. Our team will be discussing how support can be provided for the following –

• any developmental ideas that the visiting volunteer UK teachers may gather and bring back from their July 2024 visit.
• The possible positive impact of new early years curriculum initiatives being rolled out across India.