Project SATH led to significant strides in Odisha’s ‘sarkari schools’

The Government of India took several breakthrough initiatives including ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ and ‘Integrated scheme of Samagra Shiksha,’ to address low access to Elementary Education, thanks to which we stand at near-universal access today. While this is a huge win for the country, it also comes with the realisation that it is only the tip of the iceberg with multiple quality challenges left to be addressed. To undertake system transformation, NITI Aayog initiated Project SATH-Education (Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital-Education) in 2017, in the States of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. These three states were selected out of fourteen interested states through the Challenged Method Guidelines of the Government of India. The idea was to select the most challenging states where systemic reforms in education were very much required. Ever since, there have been tremendous gains in access and equity of education as well as in learning outcomes in all three SATH states including the state of Odisha.  However, all is not won yet – especially as student learning levels have been hit by ~2 years of pandemic-driven school closures – a challenge that most states are grappling with.

Project SATH had a systemic approach to school education reform that prioritised structural and governance reforms alongside learning interventions. This was underpinned by the belief that fundamentals such as right-sized schools with the necessary teacher strength, robust organisation structures, governance, and data-driven accountability are essential precursors for successful in-class interventions.

In Odisha, a robust diagnostic of the status of school education was conducted in 2017 before Project SATH kicked off. On learning outcomes, Odisha was below the national average for all grades as per NAS scores – scores had declined by 17-21 points for class 5 between 2011 and 2014. ~42% elementary schools had <50 enrolments leading to high pressure on a school’s resources, which often had 1-2 teachers only leading to multi-grade teaching. There was a host of data being collated, however, there was no single-source of truth to facilitate data-driven decision making via structured reviews.

As a result, multiple interventions were designed to address these gaps – four of which were (1) Learning Enhancement Program (LEP) i.e. to improve learning outcomes via remediation (2) Garima School Certification to create healthy competition amongst schools for improved learning outcomes (3) Launch of Odisha School Monitoring Application (OSMA) for ongoing school-level tracking and data-driven decision making (4) School consolidation, to optimise sub-scale nearby schools for effective resource utilisation.

First, Odisha launched LEP in 2018 for Grades 1-9th, and the programs were called Ujjwal (grade 1-5), Utthan(grade 6-8) and Utkarsh(grade 9). These were based on the concept of “Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL)” which encourages teachers to conduct lessons at the actual learning levels of their students rather than focusing on completing a standard curriculum as mandated by the grade and age. The programs entailed a 40 day remediation Learning Camp at the beginning of the year followed by 2 periods of remediation during the rest of the academic year. The LEP resulted in a 10-15% improvement in learning outcomes. Further, learnings from the program led to state’s focus on the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy(FLN) Program in line with NEP-2020, planned to launch in Academic Year 2022-23.

Second, Garima Certification was another significant lever to improve learning outcomes by recognizing and rewarding schools by creating healthy competition. There were three tiers in the program – bronze, silver and gold, defined on the basis of proportion of students meeting grade-level competencies. All elementary schools could nominate themselves for evaluation, and then independent verification was conducted by the state machinery to qualify schools as Bronze or Silver. In 2019, ~24,000 schools applied, and over 6-7 months, 8700 schools were certified as Bronze and 2800 schools were certified as Silver. These were rewarded and recognised by state and district administrators, and the entire process led to great enthusiasm amongst schools leaders to be labelled as top performing schools. 

Third, OSMA or the ‘Odisha School Monitoring App’ was launched to monitor schools, provide real-time feedback to schools and middle-managers on areas for improvement and track improvement over time. The tool enables monitoring for school headmasters, cluster, block and district leaders as well as state leadership. The data from OSMA has been instrumental in enabling data-based decision making via a structured governance cadence with state, district and block level review meetings with pre-defined agenda. 

Fourth, the school consolidation initiative in Odisha has led to positive returns. Sub-scale schools do not have the size, capacity, or resources to deliver high-quality teaching. In March 2020, the Government of Odisha approved a bold large-scale merger policy and set an ambitious vision for the state. About 2,000 same campus schools were consolidated. Consolidation/optimisation is in process for second phase. 

In order to make sure that the implementation at the district, block and school levels was conducted without hampering access, it was important to create a clear and exhaustive guideline for the implementation modalities. These guidelines were then disseminated and training workshops for each step were carried out with the District and Block Level Officers. Tracking of these modalities was also important to ensure effective implementation at scale. Analysis on GIS data of all the sub-scale schools was done to identify prospective satellite schools’ distance from lead schools. 

In order to ensure equity in access for all students, district and block officers performed in-person verification on the ground to ensure the viability of mergers for each satellite school.  Factors such as geographical relief, demography, barriers such as railway lines, national highways and rivers without bridges were also kept in mind while approving schools for consolidation. The list of proposed schools was then submitted to the State Level School Consolidation Committee (SLSCC) for final approval. SLSCC analysed the submitted data and approved consolidations in line with the stipulated guidelines. 

To make consolidation a success, a grievance redressal mechanism was also put in place at the block, district and state level. These complaints were then investigated by the District Grievance Cell through on-ground visits which furbished a factfinding report to the District Collector. Upon examining these submitted reports, the District Collector recommended changes, if any, to the state which further examined all recommendations and approved/rejected the grievance and recommended order of continuing with or stopping the school consolidation. This all was done to make sure that the school access of any student must not be hampered. 

The state has come a long way since the initiation of Project SATH. Odisha’s performance in PGI rankings is a testament to the same. Odisha has shown improvement across all five indicators (Learning Outcome and Quality, Access, Infrastructure, Equity and Governance) in the PGI Assessment of 2019-20. In NITI Aayog’s SEQI Rankings, the state moved from rank 13 to rank 7. However, as across most states pan India, pandemic-driven school closures have led to learning losses. Hence at this stage, it will be critical for the state to address these in mission-mode before re-embarking on their at-scale transformation journey. 

END OF ARTICLE