Now, walls will teach too

Imagine a school with numbers embossed on its stairs, walls of classrooms and corridors having maps of India and the world and window panes painted in different colours.

The North Delhi Municipal Corporation will introduce such designs based on the concept of Building as Learning Aid (BaLA) in all its upcoming primary school buildings.

The objective is to improve education quality in schools by incorporating activity-based learning, child-friendly and inclusive education.

BaLA is an innovative concept for improvement in education quality through intervention in school building and infrastructure.

Kabir Bajpai, a consultant of BaLA with the Union human resource department, said the concept assumes that the architecture of a school can be used as a resource to improve teaching and learning process.

“The BaLA intervention could be at two levels. First, develop space that create varied teaching-learning situations. It includes classroom walls, corridors, staircases and outer space like the playground. The second stage involves introducing elements of imparting education, which are in-built in walls, windows, doors, ceilings and even the floor,” he said.

The North Corporation is constructing 45 school buildings, which are likely to become operational in eight months.

On Tuesday, the civic body’s education committee called a meeting of the elected members of the committee and engineers of the building department to deliberate on the issue. Bajpai explained the concept to them.

Rekha Gupta, chairperson of the education committee, said the idea behind the meeting was to introduce the elected representatives and engineers to the concept.

“At present, school buildings are mere concrete structures. However, small innovations like introducing maps on window panes, printing numbers on staircases, and printing alphabets on walls can help in imparting education in an interesting way,” she said.
“Apart from that, other innovations like printing a game of ludo on the floor, and providing a small enclosure on the ground for sand art will help in overall development of kids,” the chairperson added.

Gupta said the corporation will soon finalise construction guidelines to be followed by the building department while making an estimate of all the school buildings in future.
“We are planning to form a core committee, which will have representatives from the building department, finance, education committee and BaLA experts. The committee will finalise the guidelines for construction of school buildings,” she said.
She said the committee members may visit Gujarat to see how the concept has been incorporated in almost all the schools in the state.