As mentioned earlier, the SMC has been crucial in the success of the education model in Delhi. While principals and teachers created a scholastic environment in schools, the SMC members contributed towards improving this environment. Where the environment was not good, if there had been any negligence on the part of the education directorate or school, they tried to rectify it and also kept me informed. I would say that the SMC has acted like a bridge between Delhi government’s vision and the situation in schools. This can be understood through a few examples:
A school in East Delhi had a lot of garbage in it. Allegedly, a PWD contractor had left debris on the premises after some work. Apparently, even after repeated requests by the principal and deputy director, the department had not removed the construction waste. The SMC got its members together, gathered a few young people from the area to participate and cleaned the site.
In another example, hiring an economics teacher was proving difficult for a school in spite of the education department’s efforts. The deputy director could not find one even on contractual basis. The SMC discussed this. They contacted an economics lecturer in Delhi University, who agreed to teach the students of classes 11 and 12 for an entire semester of six months.
Both these incidents are from 2016. The SMC was not authorized and didn’t even have the money to hire teachers or resource persons on a temporary basis. There are many examples where, bound by rules, regulations and laws or processes, teachers and principals would lie in wait to get things done by the directorate. It was then that the SMC members came forward and found a solution. I must also add that as an education minister, the SMC acted like my eyes and ears. What was lacking in a school? Which teacher taught well? Or which didn’t? Which principal came on time? Who misused his/her position? SMC members often came to me with problems or solutions for these things. Getting new rooms built in schools, providing facilities of many kinds, repairing labs and libraries—these were some of the requests SMC members from thousands of schools came to me with over the last four years. The other big takeaway is that if I need information on any project or plan quickly, I get in touch with the SMC and get it within an hour or two while it usually takes the Directorate of Education a week to ten days to collect the same information. I have selected, on an informal basis, a coordinator for every Vidhan Sabha area. In the same way, for smooth coordination between SMCs in a district, I have appointed a district coordinator. I have made a WhatsApp group of the seventy Vidhan Sabha coordinators and thirteen SMC coordinators on which any SMC-related information or communication can be exchanged. Any work given by me reaches the SMC members of all 1000 schools in a matter of minutes.
The experiences of the last three years motivated us, and we decided to make the SMCs more autonomous. This directive came straight from Arvind Kejriwal. In 2017, we called a meeting at the Indira Gandhi Stadium of all the newly elected SMC members and principals. This was attended by almost 16,000 people. Here, the CM made the announcement that the SMCs would be allocated a fund for hiring teachers in their schools, maintaining buildings or for education-related experiments or activities. This fund would make them autonomous. It took us almost a year to put this into practice. On 9 October 2018, the education department issued the historic order to allocate funding to the SMCs. This was the biggest experiment till date in decentralizing government school administration and management not just in Delhi, but for government school authorities all over the country. No other state has given its SMCs such powers. It won’t be wrong to say that this decision was a huge step towards making principals stronger as now their decision-making abilities included everything required to run a school barring a few things like paying salaries and getting new school buildings constructed. Two months after this order was issued, I held meetings with principals of all the schools in groups of fifty over many days and tried to understand how they had used the power given to them. Almost in all the schools, where there had been a paucity of teachers and no temporary or permanent appointments in spite of the government bringing out regular advertisements, they had managed to make temporary appointments through their SMC funds. I believe that this was the first time in history that all the schools had as many teachers as they needed; be it permanent or appointed through SMC and temporary. Under this rule, the SMC was given the authority to hire someone for 200 hours for a year if there was no permanent teacher.
Other than this, the SMC fund was used by different schools in different ways. In some schools, a trolley to distribute midday meals was organized on the order of the SMC, and in a few others, carts were organized for cleaners to carry garbage to the dumping grounds. Windows that remained broken through chilly Delhi winters were mended. Some schools hired trainers for dance and theatre, while others to tutor students for JEE/CPMT entrance tests.
Every school has stories about the SMCs’ contributions. However, there have been instances of differences between the principals and members of SMCs. But these instances are probably few in number, insignificant and not a cause of concern. In most of the schools, principals have been able to bring about a change with the help of these committees. The subjects which were not being taught earlier because of lack of teachers are being taught again because of the temporary appointments. The funding has made these things easier. However, for the first three years, they didn’t have this funding. They also didn’t have the authority to hire guest teachers but some members would use their contacts and influence to get teachers from other schools or in some cases even professors from universities to teach these subjects. Be it the case of water connection for schools or the anger of guardians on some incident, SMC members have always been there for principals and teachers. In some schools, SMC members have used their contacts to get water coolers, fans, computers, sports equipment, etc., through corporate social responsibility initiatives of companies.
Mega PTM
Another initiative to get the parents involved in the school is the parent–teacher meeting or PTM. On becoming the education minister, I realized that the doors of the schools were usually closed for parents. Except a few principals, most didn’t even allow parents to enter the school premises. Most of these parents were uneducated or with a basic level of education and had moved to Delhi from smaller towns to earn a living. For them, getting their children educated or getting them admitted to a school was a big step. Discussing their child’s education with teachers and principals was unimaginable to them. I noticed that a few principals still believed in inviting parents sometimes but that was not the case in most schools. I spoke with many students during my surprise visits to the schools. I interacted with guardians, who were waiting at the school gates for their children, and was told that many had not even had the opportunity to even step inside the school premises. In schools where principals wanted to invite them, parents didn’t have the time or didn’t realize how important it was to meet teachers for their child’s education. We decided that at an interval of three months, one day would be fixed for guardians to meet the teachers. We called it ‘Mega PTM’. Other than this, on the last few days of every month, schools could fix a date to meet parents but the date of the Mega PTM would be the same in all government schools in Delhi. We made a few special arrangements before the first PTM.
All schools were told to decorate their rooms, gate and gardens before the Mega PTM. NCC cadets or scouts were assigned to stand at the gates to welcome the guardians with folded hands and to give information of their child’s class. The guardians were then escorted to the classroom by the scouts where their child’s class teacher was waiting for them. The scouts also encouraged them to meet their child’s other teachers and the principal. The objective of the Mega PTM was not just to discuss the students’ report cards but to make parents familiar with the other aspects of their child’s personality as well—what were his/her interests other than studies; what were their health challenges; what was the environment like at home, etc.
We had made arrangements for tea and snacks
for the guardians near the gate, so that they could have a cup of tea on their way in or out. Even for this, every school was told to appoint volunteers. All these things might be a trivial matter for a big, well-established private school but for a government school, this was a big first. We wanted to make the parents feel welcomed and give the impression that we were looking forward to talking to them about their children. The biggest challenge here was getting the guardians to the school. Since many of them were uneducated, they were unsure what they would talk to the teachers about. For many others, taking a day or half a day off was difficult. Many guardians didn’t have good memories of their time in school. We were unsure if they would attend the Mega PTM at the behest of their children. There was also the fact that many children would not want to call their parents to the school for various reasons. There was a possibility that they might not even inform them. So, we made a plan to motivate and invite the parents through various means.
First, we made daily announcements during the morning assemblies that all children had to inform their parents of the date of the Mega PTM and made sure they came to the school. We started sending out text messages two days before the PTM to guardians whose numbers we had in our records. SMC members were also told to meet parents in the colonies nearby and apprise them of the importance of the Mega PTM and request them personally to attend it. Half page advertisements were also put in newspapers but the most important role was played by radio adverts. Advertisements with appeals by children were recorded. I made an appeal too in it as the Education Minister and ran them for a week on all FM channels in Delhi constantly. The result of all these efforts was that there was a discussion all over Delhi that government schools were organizing a mega PTM and parents were being requested to attend through radio advertisements. People who were well-off and had children in private schools heard these advertisements and informed their staff members, whose children were in government schools, of its importance. Not just that, they even gave them half-days and encouraged them to attend the PTM. I say this with such certainty because many people wrote about the Mega PTM on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites and shared the experiences of their drivers, guards, peons and domestic help from the first evening of the Mega PTM till the next few days. This was quite interesting.
Atishi and I visited different schools from the first morning of the first Mega PTM. We covered schools in Patparganj and Lakshmi Nagar. We were happy to see that in spite of a drizzle, children were seen walking to their schools with their parents. We also liked the arrangements that had been made to help parents and promote discussions. Initially, we thought that the parents would not be able to come in big numbers because of the rains. It was around then that we were crossing a main road in Krishna Nagar and saw a long queue in a lane. We saw the board of a government school far into the lane. At first, we couldn’t believe this queue was of parents who had come to attend the Mega PTM, but when we got out of the car and walked into the lane, we realized that to be the fact. When we went inside the school, we found that there was a desk right at the gate from where students and a few teachers were directing parents to the designated classrooms. The constant stream of visiting parents had made the queue outside swell to almost 400 people. This was a happy experience for all of us. As soon as pictures of this queue were put up on social media, TV and print media picked up the story. It almost looked like a queue of voters on election day. We went to a few other schools and by the evening, we had visited some seventeen to eighteen schools in two batches. There were many schools among these that I was visiting for the first time. The enthusiasm and active participation of principals and teachers in the Mega PTM assured me that this was a successful experiment.
I always quote an incident from the first Mega PTM. On seeing parents and teachers conversing while passing through a corridor in a school, I would sometimes enter the classroom. In one room, a young teacher was discussing the education of a student with his/her parents very patiently. Other parents were also present. I quietly went and sat on a bench at the back. When their conversation got over, the teacher saw me and got teary-eyed. She said, ‘Sir, you have opened the eyes of teachers by organizing the Mega PTM. You have also changed our thought process.’ When I pressed for more details, she told me that the child of the parents she was talking to was weak in studies, and she had always assumed that the parents were negligent and never paid attention to their child’s education. On talking to them, she realized that they left home between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. every day to wash the cars of rich people or do some other cleaning work. After this, they went to the vegetable market between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. to buy their daily stock and sold this all day on thelas. After knowing all this, she realized how difficult it was for parents who left home at an unearthly hour and were themselves uneducated to pay attention to their child’s education. ‘It is the responsibility of us teachers. We get paid for doing it. We have to take care of their child’s education. Our eyes have opened today.’ The teacher’s eyes shone as she said this. Maybe other teachers experienced this too that day. My belief is that the Mega PTM broke the wall separating parents and teachers. Whichever school I went to, there was an atmosphere of festivity and celebration. I still remember that on almost all the streets, I could see children taking their parents to school that day.
After this, the Mega PTM was organized after every three to four months. The dates were decided well in advance. Parents were informed through their children, the SMC, newspapers and radio. I paid surprise visits to schools in different areas every time and found the atmosphere of festivity every time—children walking hand in hand with their parents. I have seen students talking about the Mega PTM in the morning assembly. There has been an increase in the trust between schools and parents. I have asked students about the benefits of the Mega PTM. They have admitted that there has been a change in their parents since the Mega PTMs started. The most remarkable example was narrated by a girl in the morning assembly of Khichdipur School. On being asked whether the Mega PTMs had made any difference to their lives, this child stood up and said, ‘My mother would always ask me to do housework. I wanted to study but she would insist that I help her out. When she came for the Mega PTM, our teacher told her that I am a good student. After that, she started telling me to focus on studies, study well and that she would handle the housework.’ This is a big change and maybe a big step in building cooperation between parents and government schools to help improve the future of their child.
EDUCATION AS A FOUNDATION
The ‘Education Model of Coexistence’: Jeevan Vidya Shivir
I visited a school at Patparganj village the day after swearing-in as the education minister of Delhi. This was my first surprise inspection.
I found the doors and windows broken, fans broken and electrical wires dangling. I asked the principal about the condition of the school, to which he replied, ‘Sir, as you know, most of the students come from the slums out back. They spoil everything. You must know what kind of children come here.’ With this one answer, I caught the pulse of the disease. It is this attitude towards underprivileged children and their social and economic environment that has made the school system fail. We have taken the responsibility to educate these children, but we complain about them and say they aren’t up to it. That means that only if the children were intelligent and came from an intelligent environment, would we give them an intelligent education. What we don’t understand is that we too can work towards creating an intelligent society through education. But what can be done? This is the root cause of the problem. While we have to find a solution, we cry over the problem being a problem. This was my first lesson as the education minister. I understood that while getting the doors and windows fixed was one task, reorienting the approach of educators was more important. Reforming the education system of Delhi and creating a new society through education was my mission as the education minister.
To achieve this, I needed a team and nothing could be b
etter than one made up of officials of the education department because they had both the authority and the experience. However, they lacked initiative and direction. From the initial meetings at the Delhi secretariat and my surprise inspections at schools, these officials realized how serious we were about education. We weren’t just interested in dusting off the rusted structures but getting them on track and making them run smoothly. That was the mission of the Aam Aadmi Party government. My first challenge was to present a blueprint for future plans to all my officers, from senior ones in the education department to those at the district and zonal level. This was done to have a frank and open chat with them and help them understand the importance of all the structures and systems around education; to explain what was lacking in the education we were offering and in which direction and how to progress in the next five years.
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