While the centrality of teachers’ role in the learning process at schools is widely recognised, challenges on the ground come in the way of quality outcomes. Based on preliminary insights from a pilot study of schools in the National Capital Region, Amarjeet Sinha distils lessons from better performing schools – broadly pertaining to adequate staffing, effective school management, and a robust system of teacher development. 

The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 recognised the centrality of the teacher in the learning process, based on which the National Council of Teacher Education prepared documents for the Curriculum Framework for Integrated Teacher Education Programme, National Mission for Mentoring, and National Professional Standards for Teachers. However, these documents do not adequately recognise the real challenges that teachers face on the ground, which are coming in the way of quality outcomes.

Hallmark of well-performing schools

If pass percentage is the basis of comparison, this year’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) results brought home the point yet again that schools under the centrally funded Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) school systems are the best performing. When a Quality Performance Index (based on the average marks secured by students in a school) is considered, there are many pedagogically innovative and well-managed private and unaided schools that do very well.

The categories of schools that perform the best have adequate staff, efficient and effective school management, and a robust system of teacher development as their hallmark. Every teacher in these institutions is selected through a transparent process, and is provided opportunities for professional development through mentorship, intensive pedagogical preparation and supportive monitoring. They work on the principle that a qualified teacher at the entry level needs all the support, mentoring, professional development, and exposure to develop into a successful teacher. These institutions follow a no-vacancy policy – they keep a panel of trained teachers ready to fill vacancies immediately, until a new teacher is selected. 

Looking at many other schools, mostly government-managed or poorly managed private schools, we find that they also recruit trained teachers from the teacher education system. Unfortunately, they do not provide them with the opportunities to utilise that excellence for school performance. The teacher-like qualities of a newly recruited teacher are sapped by factors such as low salary in many private schools; an inadequate total number of teachers of many types (regular, contractual, consultant, guest, retired re-employed) in government schools; dysfunctional school management including poor maintenance; weak or no monitoring or mentoring; absence of teacher performance assessment; huge non-academic workload in the form of election duty, census and survey duty, and other non-academic responsibilities like managing the mid-day meal programme; creating student Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APPARs) or other IDs; multiple WhatsApp-based daily reporting tasks, and so on. Newspapers have reported that some schools do not have even a single student passing the Board exam, a severe indictment of the school system.

The Public Report on Secondary Education

As part of the Public Report on Secondary Education (PROSE), an initiative of the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, a pilot study is being conducted in the National Capital Region (NCR; including Delhi and surrounding districts of the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan). This study, which will be undertaken in schools across 10 states over the next three years, is providing many qualitative insights on human development aspirations and their fulfilment or denial in some form. It is raising household- and school-level issues, including gender and social factors, income and spatial location of households, unequal relationship of aspiring communities with schools, and the formal bureaucracy of school administration and teachers. The interface of informal communities with limited means with a school system that is opaque and powerful, shows up in many instances. While many teachers and principals are working very hard to ensure that children learn and progress in their lives based on their human capability, there are many others who are finding the absence of basic adequacy and functionality to be a major challenge. The School Development and Management Committee appears to be an ineffective institutional formation to bridge the gap between the community and school functionaries.

Through this process of visiting a large number of NCR schools, there are clear lessons from schools that do well. This post is an effort to identify some of the key factors that contribute to success in school education. 

What lessons do better performing government and private schools offer?

Adequate staffing of schools

First, the adequacy of teachers, sports coaches, music and art teachers, counsellors, non-teaching staff, computer teaching faculty, etc. is a non-negotiable for the effective functioning of a school. In the absence of key teachers in subjects like mathematics and science, schools fail to perform. The lack of facilitation of children in sports, music and arts also makes it impossible for teachers to recognise the excellence in each child. Such recognition has the potential to transform a child’s performance – both scholastic and co-curricular.

Further, mentoring and professional development become challenging without an adequate number of teachers, as no teacher can be spared from school duties for training courses. Unless schools are authorised to fill up vacancies with trained teachers until regular appointments are made, capacity will remain a major issue.

Empowering the school management to ensure functionality

Second, functionality is needed for teachers and schools to perform better. If the water purifier does not work, the fan is not functional, the benches are broken, and the principal has no authority to undertake these tasks at their level, it will remain a dysfunctional school. There are no institutional infrastructure creation and maintenance systems in most such schools, making a falling building and new construction coexist in a haphazard manner. Schools ought to be autonomous, with accountability to local communities and parents. They must have untied funds to take care of all their maintenance needs. We need to move from distrust to trust.  

Space for pedagogical innovations

Third, cascade mode of training – where institutions at the national, state, district and block levels in turn take responsibility for teacher development – does not work at either the elementary or the secondary/senior secondary level. What is needed is the space to carry out pedagogic innovations that are part of professional development courses. Apart from the PM SHRI (PM ScHools for Rising India, a programme that provides adequate resources for teacher-led pedagogical innovations), many KVS and NVS schools were feeling the challenges of carrying out such initiatives. Even KVS and NVS needed these additional resources, despite being better endowed than many other government schools. Teachers must have the resources to experiment, to enable learning by every child.

Improvement of school performance takes place when quality is regularly monitored. KVS, NVS, and good private schools have a very intensive quality and capacity development approach, both institutional and at the school/class level. Identifying outstanding teachers as a resource, setting up training and resource centres with the best faculty, and using outstanding schools as centres for teacher development are some approaches that have worked very well. Routine teacher training by State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs) or by Institutes of Advanced Studies in Education (IASE) is often not so impactful.

Teacher performance and accountability

Fourth, the subject of teacher performance and accountability is always a sensitive one. It is important to develop quality monitoring parameters as part of teacher performance assessments. As many private school chains have started doing, the Modified Assured Career Progression has been replaced by a Performance Based Career Progression, where teachers' performance is assessed by those responsible for academic supervision. Rigorous academic supervision is what makes teacher development contribute to school performance. We cannot afford survival of mediocrity in the teaching profession. Annual performance assessment of teachers with a functional mentoring and support system for quality and excellence, will lead to greater teacher-led pedagogical innovations. Seeing how teacher recruitment has been mired in corruption in many states, it is important to make teacher performance assessment central to school systems. The school-level leadership team of the principal and vice principal must have authority to monitor teacher performance.

Letting teachers focus on teaching

Fifth, it is time that there is consensus across all political parties and government departments that the teacher is in school to teach, and not for non-academic responsibilities that interfere with school performance.  We construct school buildings but do not allow excellence to develop by diverting human resources for non-academic tasks. This practice must end at once. There is also a need to ensure that a teacher’s time is spent on academic activities and classrooms, rather than non-academic duties. 

Engagement of parents and the community with schools

Sixth, decentralised school management and parents’ engagement in schools is a common feature of all well-performing schools. Home plays a very important part in the academic performance of children from low-income households. They need a partnership between the teacher and the parents to be able to leverage opportunities for learning and excellence. Decentralised community action involving teachers and parents in a supportive role is needed for schools to shed their adversarial role vis-à-vis parents and children. Teachers cannot remain dismissive of the abilities of children from low-income groups in some schools, as proper nurturing and support has seen transformational changes in many other settings.

Salience of the school principal position

Seventh, the special selection of school principals makes a difference, as it is not a position that can be offered to anyone. There must be leadership and competence to lead a team. Parental engagement also builds the pressure for performance, and associating with them becomes an important factor in school performance. Every good school affirms that the school leader matters the most.

Concluding thoughts

Good ideas will not translate into effective practice unless the constraints are addressed through adequacy, functionality, and teacher-led pedagogical innovations. For these activities, there is a need to craft a new consensus among all partners and players for excellence in schools and monitoring of school performance. The management of school systems calls for qualitative changes and not routine tinkering. The schools that do well offer easy-to-discern lessons for those that do not. Acknowledging the challenges is the first step towards a renaissance in school education. Let all concerned make that first step.

The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the I4I Editorial Board.