CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 

ACTIVITIES TOWARDS

EDUCATION SECTOR

Submitted by

Cristy A. Benitez

DBA 525

Dean Chona Cayabat

Southern Luzon State University

SY 2019-2020
 Education is the backbone of every society in this world. ... This study tries

investigates the significances of CSR for promoting education and various

initiatives of companies in education sector as a corporate responsibility to

expansion education.

Corporate social responsibility which is abbreviated as CSR has different sectors

like Education, Health, Environment Sustainability, Community Development, Rural

Development and Livelihood & skilling

Corporate Social Responsibility in Education

MMS Education helps nonprofits, foundations and companies advance their

corporate social responsibility missions in education.

Across the United States, organizations partner with educators and nonprofits to

lead change and make a significant impact on the education landscape. Brands

recognize this is an area of need and also an important and relevant issue for their

key stakeholders. The role an organization can play within education is meaningful.

Since 1977, MMS Education has worked with for-profit companies and nonprofit

organizations to help them make a positive impact in the education market – and

ultimately advance their corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals.

MMS Education takes great pride in developing ground-breaking CSR programs

that yield measurable results and advance our clients’ social impact in schools

nationwide. Our clients engage educators and students around a diverse set of

issues within the education setting including: health and wellness, STEAM, physical

activity and fitness, and entrepreneurship.

Our focus is in education, within the context of a broader corporate social

responsibility strategy. We work with companies focused on improving the quality

of education in the United States, and nonprofits looking to support educators and

their students, ultimately helping schools, teachers and students thrive within all

areas of education in the K-12 years.

Corporate Social ‘Responsibility’ in keeping pace with change

Everyone has a view on education. Specialists, generalists, Luddites, techno-buffs,

cynics, believers, it does not matter. And moving on this premise we will agree that

education is the highway to development and schools are at the front lines in the

battle against social and economic marginalization. We will also agree that

classrooms by and large have not changed in 100 years (give or take some)! Yet,

learner beliefs, what learners need to know, models of learning and learning styles,

processes and relationships in schools are impacted and determined by forces of

change in the world of work – political, economic, technological, social, cultural and

environmental forces of change. And this is where the trouble begins, as

acknowledging the impact of these forces poses certain questions where opinion

would vary:

 What kind of education is required to equip children to overcome

disadvantages of the social divide, and to learn to be environmentally

responsive citizens?

 If “student-hood has become a time to prepare more economically useful

adults” how do schools help students improve their employment prospects by

focusing on skills and abilities to enhance and apply learning instead of just

literacy or bettering prospects of qualifications?

 How do students use textbook / information such that it becomes

knowledge?

 How do schools help students make connections and interrelations given this

vast body of knowledge systems for knowledge creation?

 If “technology is value-neutral” how do schools use technology to determine

benefits for education and schooling systems?

 How do we define technology - do we consider other tools in the tool room

apart from computers and the internet?

  Can government schools in rural contexts provide platforms to widen

international, cross-cultural, and economic perspectives for a global outlook?

If India Inc. is becoming an interested party as a significant funder of education

provision in public schools, they carry a responsibility. They should be getting

concerned with some of these questions, and how best their Corporate savvy can

influence and inform decisions, which impact student outcomes and school quality;

as these would have an implication for our industry, now and in the future.

Especially since India Inc. represents the world of work, they should be

specifically engaging in how they can help promote those skills at the school level,

that are relevant for the work space. So CSR funded programmes in public school

education, apart from building toilets and providing mid-day meals and other

material provision, should make a conscious effort to catalyse the design and

delivery of programmes that develop the core abilities for building foundational

concepts like critical thinking, ways of knowing, problem identification techniques,

problem causing factors and problem solving techniques. There should be a

conscious effort to ensure that learning outcomes focus on transactional skills like

data creation, observational report writing, finding patterns, tools of knowing,

reasoning and drawing rationally justified conclusions. ‘Hand knowledge’ born out of

skill and tool handling, and an appetite for exploring the un-explored which make
learning engaging and participatory, are some aspects of educational experiences

which can get an impetus with corporate patronage. It’s time that the 3 ‘R’s get a

21st century overhaul.

The good news is that several state education departments are now playing a

welcoming and pro-active role in inviting corporate involvement. But it is important

how CSR monies get allocated to counter fears of lost opportunity and waste. If

someone takes the trouble to compile an estimate of the spend in public education

under government and philanthropy / CSR, then all told the sums would be

staggering. And yet what is the contribution of this collective effort to public

policy and education design? And in the final analysis, what is the actual value being

created as the outcome of monetary and human input?

CSR in letter and spirit was meant as a great opportunity to encourage convergence

of public and private policy, initiative and ownership, with the CSR spend making

this partnership possible. Therefore, those who are looking at a prospective CSR

involvement in education should think on lines of complementing the national

agenda, improvement of education indices, addressing deficiencies in the existing

school system, and informing classroom practice with their world view. CSR

programmes need to also be planned around real challenges and developed and

progressed organically. Further, contextual nuances of geography, culture,

demographic considerations must be woven into the design, especially in large scale

pan India programmes. A cookie-cutter and copy-paste approach is lazy and

irresponsible. In many cases isolated agendas and programmes which are not well

designed/curated and lacking epistemological foundations are robbing us of a

multiplier effect.

Quality of Education and quality of education programmes under CSR

Corporate commitment to CSR is here to stay. The sheer numbers of people power

involved in NGOs, philanthropic foundations, professional service providers and

CSR teams delivering CSR programmes in education, is impressive to say the least.

With so many players involved in funding, designing, and implementing education

programmes under CSR, its ethical and important that a social audit of these

programmes is done to examine their efficacy, approach and design, intended more

in the manner of an action research than a criticism. Many programmes are run

more as experiments in a ‘project’ mode or as an 'intervention' rather than as long

term practice. And, as many programmes are started and discontinued in haste

without much regard for the disruption they cause. A quality check is surely in

order.
But what is quality education and what are its measurable parameters based on

which such an audit could be done. Experience shows that this is open to

interpretation and convenience. Given the CSR commitment to measurable impact,

policy makers should harness the advantages of CSR involvement to bring about

measurable change; which is organically progressed and held accountable drawn on

concepts of ‘Community of Practice’ and ‘Theory of Change’ to enable educational

leadership to respond to the specific learning context; where outcome (school

effectiveness) and process (improvement) can come together. The programme

design will need to balance traditional and progressive methods, referenced with

research. The objective should be to impact deep understanding leading to

academic achievement and create independent self-motivated and self-regulated

learners who can learn to learn for life.

Well designed CSR programmes should be used to inform policy and practice, and

the not so well designed programmes could be modified. Of course there would be

the attendant caveats like who would conduct this exercise and who would pay for

the cost etc. But in any case this sort of discussion and engagement among the

stakeholders from governments and the corporates will be healthy, and will allow

for evolution in our classrooms with learning and improvements. To avoid such

audits would be a disservice, as no longer can the nation afford to conduct its
public education programme in a never ending ‘pilot mode’. Therefore, this whole

strand of impact and evaluation of CSR programmes, and its implication for policy

needs to be looked at with more respect, and navigated with collaborative

participation of several interest groups, where professional egoism will have to be

cast aside.

What, why and how of Digital Classrooms

There is growing interest by companies to fund ICT programmes in schools. And

just as well as this is one area which has captured the popular imagination and

needs support, as digital inclusion in the world of work is a lived reality and not a

distant or imagined need. In the digital world everything can be simplified from

information to money to communication…there are no boundaries, no time no space.

And yet there is a whole generation of children in our country who are oblivious of

this digital transformation.

Not only is there is a digital divide but equally a matter of concern, there is a

digital literacy divide. Not only is the access to technology infrastructure lacking,

but ability or competency to work with technology is missing. Attempts are being

made by governments, philanthropists and entrepreneurs to bridge both the digital

divide and the digital literacy divide by giving access and the requisite

competencies to take advantage of this availability.

The problem arises when we ask what next? What next after you provide the

infrastructure? How is it used, how often is it used, what is it used for, by who all,

and to what end? Are these programmes integrating the skills to use contemporary

tools of digital interface that will be needed by these students at some point in

the future. Although technology is dated the moment it is invented, yet an

experience of current technologies is helpful. For example, do mapping skills

include establishing spatial coordinates with the help of GPS; or does computer

education extend to using design tools; or do curricular areas get enriched with the

inclusion of Internet of Things; or does data handling involve analytics to assist in

teaching or making decisions; or even simply are student blogs being created to

enable the faculty of visualisation, content writing and argument, so critical to

self-expression?  While many of these may or may not find their way into the

computer syllabus in senior grades in government schools, an early introduction of

such technology with the help of corporate involvement can create a lot of buzz

among the school community, with relevance for their future world of work. Even a

superficial glance through many current programmes in the area of digital literacy

and so called innovation, leaves many of these questions lingering….

Language Learning as a foundational skill in the world of work

One area which CSR funding could be promoting is language learning as a

foundational need for the world of work, as foundational a strand, if not more as

the digital inclusion. To encourage inclusiveness there is a need to prepare

students to be confident in their expression for them to be able to compete and

succeed in any kind of environment. Language skills help in gaining confidence and a

language barrier in English language communication is becoming a big problem in

providing equal opportunities to students, to compete in urban environments.

Research has shown that for long-term language competency, especially in a foreign

language like English, learners must get involved in the learning experience

functionally where language use gets practiced contextually, repeatedly and

without fear of making mistakes. In the context of a pluralist culture like ours,

language learning needs to be scaffolded with bilingual language learning, at least in

the initial period. Further, active contextual vocabulary needs to be supported with

oral and written communication skills, deep engagement with material in the English

language which improve listening, speaking, reading and writing competencies in

their immediate environment for a whole language approach. English in most

classrooms and most definitely in government classrooms is taught as a subject and

that too passively. As a result, learners fear it and are hesitant in exploring their
self-expression in this language, losing out on critical downtime during school years

to learn a new and foreign language of commercial importance.

Brooding over Impact

Companies have the mantle of delivering programmes that are measurable for

sustainability reporting. CSR is policy bound to report impact but its concerns of

sustainability aim to typically measure impact annually. Which is all very good, but

when programmes are delivered in government schools and in areas suffering from

long neglect, to show results that fit conveniently in a corporate reporting cycle

may be a bit problematic, as the impact will probably manifest gradually and

longitudinally, dependent as it is on too many variables and factors, and even to

recount these is occasion for a dedicated piece of writing. Because of this gradual

and delayed emergence, practitioners should not abandon or denounce programmes,

as that would be throwing the baby with the bath water!

On the other hand, government largely limits its accountability to enrollment,

retention, attendance, assessment and some curricular and training interventions.

While assessments and evaluation is a priority for schools, the directional intent of

evaluating the impact of their work is aimed at assessment ‘of’ learning rather than

‘for’ learning. This half-informed approach has also crept into the impact evaluation
practice followed under CSR programmes in education - where assessments and

their evaluation is mistakenly presented as impact. Although critical, the

preoccupation with impact assessment should be handled with a fine a balance, and

skill and ability needs to be created to manage this aspect rationally. And this

should form part of the narrative and not the whole narrative - the tail should not

wag the dog. Moreover, the noise around impact assessment is expected to

intensify, when the non-detention policy till grade 8, is discarded, and the

obsession with exams and marks will be back with a greater bang. It is quite

possible that in the initial cycle of school projects focused on progressing learning

levels may not be to the levels expected, once the renewed practice of tests at the

elementary level kicks in. So as practitioners and policy managers are we prepared

for and with our own reaction to slow outcomes in this scenario?

Readiness under CSR to engage in education

At the school the student encounters a combined impact of the social context,

native ethos, school culture, teacher work, classroom practice, management &

leadership. All these experiences contribute to student achievement & formation

of attitudes, abilities, behaviour, skills and knowledge. School improvement is about

raising student achievement through enhancing the teaching–learning process and

the conditions which support it; it is about strategies for improving the school’s
 capacity for providing quality education. Now how do companies plan to locate the

praxis of their CSR programmes in such an eco-system? 

Corporate Social Responsibility Capabilities

Backed by more than 40 years of working with schools, systems, administrators,

and agencies, MMS Education is a leader in understanding the education market

and how to best reach and engage students and teachers. From strategic planning

and concept development to full-scale CSR program implementation, MMS

Education leverages our in-depth knowledge of the education market to reach,

engage, and measure social and business impact within the education community.

Our competitive advantage allows us to take a CSR program through its entire

lifecycle, ultimately bringing CSR programs to market and scaling them nationally.

MMS has helped develop and activate visionary national CSR programs that have an

immediate and sustainable impact on education, including:

 the nation’s largest in-school health and wellness program, reaching more than

70,000 schools nationwide.

 dynamic online reporting and data visualization tools to identify and monitor key

performance indicators (KPIs) for key stakeholders at the national, state, and local

levels.

 grant and awards programs upwards of $30M that have supported schools,

students, and educators.

 strategic partnerships within education, corporate, health, and philanthropic areas

for nonprofit organizations to advance shared goals.

 in-depth market analysis and research, including focus groups with teachers to test

a new initiative or focus within an existing CSR program.