Adhyayan Foundation empowers government schools to do a self-review, and then use that data to set goals and level up
It is an important day at Government Secondary School (GSS) Pabua, nestled in Seppa, East Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh. Books are brought up-to-date, attendance is marked, Google forms are duly filled, and handwritten notes have been neatly jotted down in diaries.
This is not a group of students taking an exam, but 14 teachers and a headmaster awaiting a review visit from Adhyayan Quality Education Foundation (AQEF). AQEF is a Mumbai-based capacity-building organisation that has worked with over 10,000 government schools nationwide. A tight team of 40 members work with schools to formulate an improvement plan, collect data and observations towards the implementation of that plan, and feed the data into a dashboard. The insights are used to support training that improves quality of leadership and learning in schools.
Since 2021, GSS Pabua has been part of AQEF’s pilot intervention program to conduct a self-review and chart an action plan for child-centred school improvement. The school is using data and documentation to address its most pressing shortcomings – lack of teaching expertise, low attendance, and poor Class X results.
AQEF was co-founded in 2015 by educator Kavita Anand. During her prior role as the Principal of Shishuvan, an English medium school in Wadala, Mumbai, Anand -- along with an OFSTED UK Officer who had visited her school – put together a school quality measurement framework, as a roadmap to achieving the standard of a good school. Over time, the framework was offered as a support service to private schools.
In 2015, Anand was one of the members on the advisory committee with the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) that released Shala Siddhi, a national school quality framework.
This framework has 46 standards across seven domains - Enabling Resources of School; Teaching-learning and Assessment; Learners' Progress, Attainment and Development; Managing Teacher Performance and Professional Development; School Leadership and Management; Inclusion, Health and Safety; and Productive Community Participation. A mandatory self-review categorises schools into Levels 1, 2 or 3 (3 being the highest) on the seven domains.
Through AQEF, Anand extended support to government schools via state and district level interventions to translate policy into action-based goals. In 2017, the NGO made early footprints in Goa, and eventually scaled to Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Nagaland and recently, Maharashtra.
In Arunachal Pradesh, AQEF works across 280+ government schools, spread across seven districts.
AQEF follows a decentralised model, forming school complexes as directed in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. “A complex is a cluster of schools that work together for the overall improvement of schools and education standards in the district. The schools share teachers and resources,” Tiasha Bannerjee, Deputy CEO, AQEF, explains.
Hitey Sangyu, who is also the complex leader of Seppa, which has 11 schools in its complex, adds: “In a complex, each school conducts its Shaala Siddhi review and a baseline dipstick study of learning levels in children. We share our goals, conduct peer reviews, collect evidence through documentation review and observation, and gauge what support is needed.”
During visits, AQEF reviewers note down what a school is doing well, and share it with the complex. “We update Google Sheets before and after each intervention. Teachers also maintain a record of below-average students and personally follow their progress level,” Bannerjee, explains.
Sajan Chetri, who teaches Mathematics at GSS Pabua says being part of a complex enables peer learning. “A school in Bana village came up with the strategy for one teacher to mentor a group of five weak students. We have also implemented this,” he says.
Teachers are part of WhatsApp support groups. They also have access to Teaching Learning Materials (TLMs), a set of educational materials that help make learning fun for students and help in designing lesson plans.
Each year, a school is able to make action plans for one or two standards. Sangyu began with health and sanitation. “Students littered the compounds, didn’t wash their hands regularly, and kept the toilets unclean,” he says.
So he began using assembly time to encourage good hygiene and sanitation habits. Class captains were appointed to monitor class cleanliness. The Health Department was invited to conduct awareness programs on menstruation, the use of sanitary napkins, and tackling anaemia for girl students.
“Today, our campus hostel is tidier and the school ground is litter free. Most children wash their hands after using washrooms and before eating meals. We keep a check on them,” says Sangyu.
Attendance is a challenge at GSS Pabua. Students often come from remote villages, navigating bumpy terrains and inadequate infrastructure to attend classes. “When a student takes sick leave and goes home, there is a high chance they won’t return for 10 days,” says Dhruba Kalita, science teacher, GSS Pabua.
In August 2023, the school began efforts to raise the Class X attendance, which was as low as 30 per cent for most students, to 50%. The staff counselled students on the importance of not missing classes, and began calling parents whose children had less than 70 per cent attendance. “This year, around 15-17 Class 10 students out of 33 are regularly attending class,” says Chetri.
According to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the pass percentage for Class 10 in the academic year 2023-24 in Arunachal Pradesh was one of the lowest in the country, at just 49.38%.
So the state began focusing on improving Class 10 board results in 2021, when the AP government announced it as the Year of Education. Zaro Lingfa, District Project Coordinator of Samagra Shiksha -- a government program initiated in 2018 to improve school effectiveness -- formed a district task force to improve the Class 10 results.
“We chalk out a basic syllabus for them to study, give them multiple-choice questionnaires and past papers to practice, and organise extra support classes,” says Chetri. Their efforts showed results in 2023-24, with a pass percentage of 83.33% at GSS Pabua.
In August 2024, Sangyu made an action plan to improve some of the standards under the domains Teaching-Learning and Assessment, where the school stood at a lowly Level 1.
Teachers got access to RLMs, undertook training on how to use TLMs and made lesson plans to motivate students. Under the domain Enabling Resources, the teachers and staff got together to set up the science lab (through community funding), library (with books from Adhyayan) and installed computers (through CSR donation).
“After a goal on a standard is achieved within 3-5 months, a review confirms the shift to Level 2. A Google form is filled out before and after the intervention. We note every action taken with observation notes,” says Sangyu.
During visits, Adhyayan’s field team fills out a quality assurance form to determine how well the system and complex leaders can achieve the goals.
The dashboard displays a school’s data on domains, action plans, number of support visits, complex meetings held, evidence collected, quality assurance observations and improvement validation.
The NGO uses this data to create weekly and monthly reports on an individual school level, as well as district and state levels. “This allows us to communicate with district officials on progress and pain points. We can point out exactly where things are going well, and what areas need support,” says Hengam Riba, former program Manager of East Kameng currently posted in Roing, Lower Dibang Valley.
“During district review meetings, we bring the Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Director of School Education and District Project Coordinator, School Heads, and teachers to come together to study the dashboard and identify the next steps. These could be syllabus completion timelines, the need for new learning resources, space for peer learning among teachers to share strategies for challenges, need for counsellors, etc,” says Riba.
The dashboard allows for discussions and planning of overall state and district activities, presentations in conferences and seminars by the state/district, and research on overall growth. The NGO also uses it to track deliverables and progress and report to donors.
Last year, the NGO launched Abhyaas, a collaborative LMS for educational leaders in India to learn about different aspects of school improvement.
“Before this, the district or state official could not gauge where things were going or what was happening on the ground. Today, this can be monitored, leading to evidence-based, data-driven decision-making,” says Atanu Das, project manager of Tripura.
Chetri sees a slow and steady change in the teachers. “It is evident in our actions – regular attendance, detailed lesson plans, feeding observations and queries on WhatsApp groups. We have even become counsellors to students to bring them back on track,” says Chetri.
Teachers feel they are part of a movement. “Before the intervention, we taught without a plan. Ek dheelapan tha (there was a lackadaisical attitude),” Chetri explains. “It helps that we have someone above us we are answerable to. We have become students, learning to be better teachers. When we see the data, it shows us that our work matters.”
*Names of the children have been changed to protect their identities.
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