The symposium on ‘Future of India through Education’ in Goa addressed by Education Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia on Monday generated a lot of attention and enthusiasm in educational circles for the well-implemented reforms in public-funded education by Delhi UT Government. The same day the Washington Post lauded Delhi for introducing the most creative and innovative ‘happiness curriculum’ that was recently launched at the hands of Dalai Lama. The curriculum, based on mindfulness practice, gratitude, morals, value-based stories and activities is expected to help children think logically and creatively and understand their role in the social system and nature.
Deservingly, the Huff Post (NY Times) ran a cover on the Delhi pattern of reforms on three occasions over the last two years highlighting the well-implemented reforms focussing on the core objectives of learning.
The reforms yielded substantial quantitative and qualitative results. There was 700% rise in Delhi government school students cracking IIT entrance exams. For the first time in 2017 about 372 students of Delhi government-run schools cleared the prestigious Joint Entrance Examination compared to previous year when some 40-50 students were able to sail through.
Delhi also won praises after government school students’ demonstrated stellar performance in CBSE Class X and XII exams.
Given that Delhi government schools are the only schools in the country that take CBSE exams and that the students in government schools come from disadvantaged backgrounds, yet recorded a high of 90.68% pass percentage breaking its old high by 2.37%. Secondly government schools have started doing better than private schools and also recorded 7.6% higher results than the national CBSE average.
This rare feat is unbelievable but very commendable.
It all started with passing a bunch of bills to introduce major regulatory changes in the education system including the Delhi School (Verification of Accounts and Refund of Excess Fee Bill) 2015, the Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill 2015, and Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Delhi Amendment) Bill scrapping the no-detention policy from entry level classes.
The ministry cracked down heavily on cheating in exams by stepping up inspections and monitoring. The education minister himself led the charge for meticulous inspections of schools displaying rare courage to force erring private schools to refund excess fees and donations charged with an interest of 9%. Infrastructure was upgraded on a war footing, managers were appointed in each school for looking after repairs and maintenance and to liaise with the PWD. The government created a record by asking all School Managing Committee’s to be constituted on a single given date across the state and accordingly in as many as 1023 committees were reformulated and empowered to ensure ongoing accountability.
After putting in place the regulatory, supervisory and infrastructural requirements, the focus was on building skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic to bridge the gap between current learning levels visa vie the curriculum.
Based on inputs from its Education Advisor, Atishi Marlena, the Delhi-model fundamentally rejected the idea that success in reforming education can be captured only by metric of annual board examinations. This led to various school interventions focussing on Classes 6 to 9 for bridging learning deficits.
Spoken English courses were initiated. A program called Chunauti was launched at reducing dropout rates and impacted around 9.5 lakh students by dividing them on the basis of their learning levels to provide additional learning support. With this the result of Std 6, 7 and 8 improved. Through Reading Campaign, nearly 1 lakh students of Std 6-8 moved from non-reader to reading grade and the downslide in Std 9 was reversed, improving the pass percentage of Std 10 by 3 percentage points.
The Pragati scheme in collaboration with an NGO created supplementary foundational learning material for classes 6-8, the JodoGyan started for children in classes 1 and 2 was extended with one class each year up to Class 5 wherein the teachers were sensitised to a different view of mathematics involving thinking and reasoning. The results of these interventions showed a 3-fold improvement.
Principal Development Program was launched to develop managerial and administrative calibre. Motivated facilitators on training from IIMs helped re-training of teachers. Two other government schemes to shift from external supervision to supportive supervision will too bear results in the long term; increase in budget of trainers for teachers from Rs 300/day to Rs 5000/day will help improve quality.
The best thing to happen was in terms of budgetary allocation to education. The Study of State Finances conducted by the RBI reflects that no other state/UT spends as high as Delhi “ 26% in the current fiscal. This shines in comparison to average of 14.8% for all states. Goa spent a little over 12.5%, down from 14.4% in 2016-17 based on the revised estimates.
The Delhi-model has been recognised across the world as a benchmark for policymakers. Its success has demonstrated that the revolutionary-makeover of archaic and bureaucratic educational machinery is achievable if one has the will, passion for change and by placing ‘trust’ in the ‘right people’ to implement change. Goa has a lot to learn. We have more to do than GSIDC renovating schools.
