Vision

By March 2018 to have at least one school in each gram panchayat in Rajasthan with: Child friendly large size school offering grade 1-12, fully staffed schools with trained teachers and principals, efficient school operations, high quality of education via child-centric pedagogy and improved student learning outcomes.
 

Members / Committee

Who were the people involved in this project from the govt/dept side? What are their profiles? Who was the Nodal? Who chaired the entire exercise? Etc.

Under the leadership of the current Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Smt. Vasundhara Raje, Department of Education, Government of Rajasthan

 

Organisations and external advisors

Which external organizations were involved? Who were the advisors? What is their profile?

Primary Philantropists: Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (Dell Foundation), Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Key Partners:

Department of Education, Government of Rajasthan

The Boston Consulting Group

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Projects / Programs

What are the initiatives driven from the Vision? Brief about the projects, their objective and scope

• Establishing integrated, staffed functioning schools- streamlined process for reduction in staffing vacancies and real time tracking of enrolment

• Designing and implementing Department systems – designing and rolling out MIS, school inspection, implementation management processes; as well as reform/strengthen existing organizational structures of all key bodies 

• Building governance structures and ownership- regular and streamlined data driven reviews at CM, Department (State and district) levels

• PMU set up steering committee under chairmanship of the Secretary School Education to review PMU on monthly basis

• Education sub-group of CM Advisory Committee reviews progress and provides advisory support on quarterly basis.

• The CM and her Advisory group review the department's performance every 6 months. 

• To manage for on-ground implementation of District Executive committees under the chairmanship of District Collectors have been constituted whenin review with District officers from education and other departments meet every month. Similar committees work at the block level under the chairmanship of SDMs.

• Initiating accountability- two channels were prioritized namely, (i) community accountability by strengthening PTA and SMDC bodies (ii) academic accountability at all levels using Board examination results

 

Impact

What has been the impact of the vision exercise? Some numbers to support

• ASER 2016 report reflecting increase in student learning outcomes:

  • Rajasthan in top 4 states for increase in reading levels of Class III students in last 2 yrs

  • Nationwide ranking of Rajasthan has improved from 23 (2014) to 17(2016)

• State board results: 

  • Improving 12th board passing rate

  • School integration has led to a reduction in the number of school management units from 82k to 63.4k, resulting in better supervision and monitoring of schools; increased school size & average number of students per class; and better availability & optimum utilization of resources. 

  • UDISE data indicates that since the launch of the Adarsh Yojana, overall school student enrolment in Rajasthan (across all schools) has picked up pace and is growing faster than that of India. The state's Gross Enrolment ratio has improved to 88% as per UDISE 2015-16. 

  • improvement in senior secondary school access

  • reduction in teaching staff vacancies

  • Establishing a real-time online MIS system

  • Ensuring direct to school communication

  • establishing a school improvement focused school inspection process

  • streamlining training to teachers

  • engaging parents and ensuring 30-40% parental attendance at Parent teacher meetings

  • Improvement in student academic performance as seen in both improvement in board exam pass rate as well as improvements seen in external assessments

  • Improving 12th board passing rate

 

Challenge 

What are the challenges encountered in implementing the vision, if any?

• Funding gaps for school infrastructure 

• Quality of teachers at in-take

• Bringing out-of-school children to schools 

• Assessment and accountability systems- further strengthening required