Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani has recently expressed an interest in replicating Punjab’s “Meritorious Schools” model across the country. The Punjab government had opened these schools with the sole aim of tapping the enormous potential of government school students as well as providing better educational opportunities to those from economically weaker sections of society to enable them to compete for jobs.
While it is certainly a laudable initiative, the HRD minister may also like to take a look at an existing 30-year-old initiative being directly run by her own ministry, called the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas. These schools were formed under the National Policy on Education 1986, which envisaged these schools to become catalysts of a nation-wide programme of school improvement. These schools are run by the Navodaya Vidyala Samiti, an organisation embedded in the HRD ministry.
A working model
Starting with two schools in 1986, there are currently 598 such schools running across the majority of districts of the country. The main goal is to provide quality educational opportunities to the socio-economically disadvantaged youth from rural India from Class VI to Class XII. The Navodaya Schools are doing a reasonably good job of providing quality education and are far superior to the education being imparted by the government schools in the rural areas.
In fact a lot of education initiatives are tried out in these schools thus benefiting both students as well as helping in faculty development. A recent example is the introduction of Chinese language where teachers from China are teaching in some of these schools under an Indo-China bilateral agreement.
It is interesting to note that both the Punjab model as well as the Navodaya Schools’ initiative focuses on using merit as a criterion for admissions into the schools. This common feature between the two positively influences the quality of students educated in these schools. Both models also target the economically backward students, thus providing them with learning opportunities which they may not have otherwise received.
Compared to the rest of the education system run by the government, the Navodaya Schools are doing quite a successful job. While the quality and commitment of teachers in these schools is fairly high, there is one area in which they have an abysmal record. One of the key aims of these schools as stated in the objectives is “to establish pace setter institutions to be models in the districts and to be resource centres for promotion of excellence”.
Tweaks needed
It was envisaged that these schools would play a proactive role in developing the educational ecosystem of the district in which they operate. They are supposed to work closely with the state education department to improve learning levels in the government schools and act as resource centres for teachers as well as students of the government schools in the districts. They are also supposed to initiate teacher exchange programmes to encourage sharing of best practices, eradicating illiteracy and creating libraries for villages. To this end, Navodaya Schools Boards have representatives of the state education department as well as the local administration. Unfortunately there is hardly any engagement happening on the ground on this particular objective.
One hardly hears any mention of the Navodaya Schools from the state education system. It appears that, like many other government initiatives, a well-intentioned and laudable goal is not being met at the delivery and execution level. This is borne out in discussions with current and retired staff of Navodaya Schools.
The government education system urgently needs qualitative interventions to improve learning levels of government school students and Navodaya Vidyalaya are well positioned to deliver this. One possible reason for this failure is the divide between the central and state education system and their respective bureaucracies, given that education is on the concurrent list. One learning for the policy makers would be to put appropriate systems and processes so that the central and state education systems can “talk” to each other. There needs to be inter-operability between the two systems. This aspect seems to have been ignored while translating the catalyst role envisaged for Navodaya Schools in influencing the education eco-system of a district.
So before developing and expanding the Punjab government’s “Meritorious Model” schools across India, the HRD ministry would do well to leverage the learnings from the Navodaya Schools. And while doing so, it would do well to revisit and reinvigorate the leadership role of Navodaya Schools in improving educational outcomes of a district’s educational eco-system.
Hemant Sharma is an Advisor – Education at Centre for Decentralised Local Governance, Avantika Foundation, a not for profit organisation in Bangalore.
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While it is certainly a laudable initiative, the HRD minister may also like to take a look at an existing 30-year-old initiative being directly run by her own ministry, called the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas. These schools were formed under the National Policy on Education 1986, which envisaged these schools to become catalysts of a nation-wide programme of school improvement. These schools are run by the Navodaya Vidyala Samiti, an organisation embedded in the HRD ministry.
A working model
Starting with two schools in 1986, there are currently 598 such schools running across the majority of districts of the country. The main goal is to provide quality educational opportunities to the socio-economically disadvantaged youth from rural India from Class VI to Class XII. The Navodaya Schools are doing a reasonably good job of providing quality education and are far superior to the education being imparted by the government schools in the rural areas.
In fact a lot of education initiatives are tried out in these schools thus benefiting both students as well as helping in faculty development. A recent example is the introduction of Chinese language where teachers from China are teaching in some of these schools under an Indo-China bilateral agreement.
It is interesting to note that both the Punjab model as well as the Navodaya Schools’ initiative focuses on using merit as a criterion for admissions into the schools. This common feature between the two positively influences the quality of students educated in these schools. Both models also target the economically backward students, thus providing them with learning opportunities which they may not have otherwise received.
Compared to the rest of the education system run by the government, the Navodaya Schools are doing quite a successful job. While the quality and commitment of teachers in these schools is fairly high, there is one area in which they have an abysmal record. One of the key aims of these schools as stated in the objectives is “to establish pace setter institutions to be models in the districts and to be resource centres for promotion of excellence”.
Tweaks needed
It was envisaged that these schools would play a proactive role in developing the educational ecosystem of the district in which they operate. They are supposed to work closely with the state education department to improve learning levels in the government schools and act as resource centres for teachers as well as students of the government schools in the districts. They are also supposed to initiate teacher exchange programmes to encourage sharing of best practices, eradicating illiteracy and creating libraries for villages. To this end, Navodaya Schools Boards have representatives of the state education department as well as the local administration. Unfortunately there is hardly any engagement happening on the ground on this particular objective.
One hardly hears any mention of the Navodaya Schools from the state education system. It appears that, like many other government initiatives, a well-intentioned and laudable goal is not being met at the delivery and execution level. This is borne out in discussions with current and retired staff of Navodaya Schools.
The government education system urgently needs qualitative interventions to improve learning levels of government school students and Navodaya Vidyalaya are well positioned to deliver this. One possible reason for this failure is the divide between the central and state education system and their respective bureaucracies, given that education is on the concurrent list. One learning for the policy makers would be to put appropriate systems and processes so that the central and state education systems can “talk” to each other. There needs to be inter-operability between the two systems. This aspect seems to have been ignored while translating the catalyst role envisaged for Navodaya Schools in influencing the education eco-system of a district.
So before developing and expanding the Punjab government’s “Meritorious Model” schools across India, the HRD ministry would do well to leverage the learnings from the Navodaya Schools. And while doing so, it would do well to revisit and reinvigorate the leadership role of Navodaya Schools in improving educational outcomes of a district’s educational eco-system.
Hemant Sharma is an Advisor – Education at Centre for Decentralised Local Governance, Avantika Foundation, a not for profit organisation in Bangalore.
