How does a state go about transforming its entire education system? This was precisely the goal the Government of Haryana set for itself in 2017, when it launched Saksham Haryana, its flagship programme aimed at improving the quality of education in the state and making 80% students in classes 1-8 grade-level competent, or Saksham in all government schools in the state. Currently, Samagra’s Saksham Haryana-Education team, with support from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, works with the Chief Minister’s Office and the Department of Education to design and implement state-wide interventions to facilitate attainment of grade-level competency in the state to enable the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in Haryana. The first phase of this engagement concluded in May 2019, with 86% of students in classes 3,5 and 7 declared grade-level competent in Hindi and Math. Currently, for elementary grades, the team is working on post COVID remediation and overhauling of state conducted assessments. In secondary grades, the team’s focus is on e-Adhigam, Haryana’s tablet based learning program which is also India’s largest Ed-Tech program in govt schools.
Samagra’s approach to transforming school education combines both academic and administrative reforms. This means we focus as much on improving the quality of classroom interactions between students and teachers (through remedial classes, assessment reforms, shifting focus from syllabus completion to competency-based teaching, tech-based assessments, large-scale tablets program), as on making the education system administratively more efficient (by ensuring optimum teacher availability in schools, robust review and monitoring mechanisms, ongoing mentoring and training support for teachers). These academic and administrative reforms are combined with accountability initiatives such as cascaded review and monitoring mechanisms and third-party assessments, to keep track of progress and carry out timely corrective action.