Saturday

15


June , 2019
Educational reforms in Delhi
12:40 pm

Aritra Mitra


In 2018, the Aam Admi Party-led Delhi state government’s allocation for education was 26% of its budget. The total allocation for education was `13,997 crore. This was the highest among all the sectors. The state government recently released the ‘Quality Education for All’ report.

Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister, Delhi, has written at the beginning of the report, “Delhi’s school education has been recognised across the country and the world as a benchmark for policymakers. The dramatic turnaround in the condition of Delhi’s government schools has brought us closer to our goal of providing quality and accessible education to every child in Delhi.” Sisodia has written that they have operated on a principle of ‘No Child Left Behind’ and the government has intervened to create maximum impact. He wrote, “Delhi government schemes like Chunauti 2018, strengthening of School Management Committee (SMC) and the Mentor Teacher Programme have attracted academic researchers from across the world. In fact, Harvard University is conducting a study assessing the impact of our work on SMCs.”

In 2017, at a Republic Day function at Chattarsal Stadium, Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi Chief Minister said that if people were educated and healthy, the country would progress swiftly. He stated, “Some people criticise government for spending a lot of money on health and education but I don’t consider it as expenditure but as a future investment.”

Anuj Kumar, a student of class X, said that his school in east Delhi has undergone a huge transformation in the last two years. He said, “The ambience in the school was not at all like this earlier. Our school was earlier a rundown building, untidy and known for vandalism. But all that has changed.”

According to Upasana Ganguly, an M.Sc student in Economics from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, “The new educational reforms in Delhi will help the government schools to compete with the private schools.”

Measures taken by the Delhi government in the public school education sector :

Modernising infrastructure

The increased budget has helped the government in urgently addressing the acute shortage of classrooms. The government has constructed more than 21 schools and will be constructing more. The government has also refurbished entire school building of 54 pilot schools and has worked to expand this to all schools in a phased manner. The government has also appointed estate managers in order to relieve the burden of sanitation and maintenance from teachers and principals.

Capacity building of teaching staff and principals

State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) had been undertaking teacher training before The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government came into power. In 2017, 45000 teachers underwent training workshops. The Principal Leadership Development Program was launched in 2016. It allowed a group of ten principals to meet once every month to engage in a dialogue on the challenges of being a school leader. It also encouraged them to jointly working out ways to deal with these problems.

Making school administration accountable

The AAP government has introduced three levels of oversight and supervision. The education minister himself inspects schools on a regular basis. District officials of the Directorate of Education (DoE) have also been monitoring and tracking management of schools that come under their districts. The third and the most important level of monitoring have been through a strong network of SMCs.

Improving learning outcomes

In 2016, 74% of all class VI students could not read their grade-level textbooks. On September 5, 2016, the government launched ‘Every Child Can Read’ campaign. A systematic effort toward reaching children was carried out in every government school and the results were very encouraging. Over a period of eight weeks, more than one lakh children across Delhi moved from being non-readers to readers.

The most important intervention of the government has been the ‘Chunauti 2018’ reforms. These reforms were aimed at reducing the dropout rate by taking special measures for each student so that no one is abandoned by the system. Children from classes VI to IX are organised into two groups ‘Nisha’ and ‘Pratibha’, according to the learning level of the children.

 

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