Education India is a work aimed specifically at Christian schools, to provide quality training for Indian teachers and appropriate resources for those schools that invite the team to help.   

We go in twice a year for one month at a time – with an unwelcome break during Covid.  The team eagerly look forward to these trips - they are always exhilarating, exhausting, inspiring and a massive privilege.  If the school is large, the whole team works together.  With small schools, we divide in two smaller teams.  Either way, we usually arrive at a school on Monday, work flat out with training staff, mentoring, having meetings with the leaders and preparing targeted presentations.  We generally leave Friday evening or Saturday morning, depending on our next destination and spend the weekend recovering and regathering our energy for the following week. 

How this will work out in our new post-Covid world is unknown, but we are looking forward to picking up from where we left off.    

We keep in close touch with our schools when back in the UK / Australia through monthly requests for updates and by prayer.  The team meet regularly on Zoom to pray together and we invite school leaders to join us on occasion.  

There are many Christian educational institutions in India.  However, they are often overcrowded and poorly resourced.  Some are in areas where persecution against Christians is rife; others are in the middle of large sprawling slums. Their staff have good intentions and genuinely care for the children, but often they work within the old Indian education system, where rote-learning and lecturing are the norm.  Classrooms are sometimes drab places and the teaching may well provide little opportunity for creativity, discussion or evaluation.

In 2009, the Government of India passed the Right To Education Act, stating that learning must become interactive and child-centred; that classrooms should be busy, purposeful places; that praise and encouragement become the norm. This is what we train Indian teachers to implement.

We work in Christian schools.  This means that beyond offering training and resources, we ask for and are given opportunities to speak about our faith to the staff and the pupils, many of whom are from other faith backgrounds.  We do this by taking assemblies, leading staff devotions and running Bible studies.  Where appropriate, we will talk and pray with individuals.