Instructional leaders in the Indian state of Punjab who are responsible for learning outcomes of 200+ schools each, were facing challenges around data collection and use. They undertook about 9000 school visits a month - with data simply recorded in a notebook. Analysing data of multiple school visits was ineffective and time consuming. They were not able to see trends or any areas of improvement.
Instructional leaders record classroom observations, teacher and student actions during school visits using a data collection and analysis tool on their mobile phones. It is easy to fill and includes questions aligned to the activities of mentors. They are able to access the easily available reports of each school/ district, and analyse the needs, by observing the large trends and patterns emerging from the data. Based on the analysis, they can plan the improvement areas and need based capacity development programs for all their teachers. Individual data is used to provide personalised support to teachers. And the continuous training of teachers enhances student outcomes.
This tool can be easily accessed on the government's national education infrastructure DIKSHA. It works smoothly even with low internet speed, is free, open source, offline first, low tech and available in local language. The leaders can even customise the data collection forms on the tool, according to their needs.
150000 education leaders in 3 states have made 707715 observations in 42000 schools, with improvements in their observation and analysis abilities.
Specific impact has been reflected in the Performance Grading Index 2020 & National Achievement Survey 2021 (both conducted by the Ministry of Education) ranking where the state moved to first position. We helped the state department institutionalise the processes - school visits, leadership development, infrastructure development etc. - on which it ranked high and impacted student outcomes. The tool's use has informed the state to make effective policy decisions and budget allocations.
In the next three years, we will
1. scale the tools for adoption with 4.5 million leaders in India
2. disseminate the resources as public goods globally
To co-create the tools, programs for enabling empowered administration please reach out to neeraj@shikshalokam.org, Chief Strategy Officer of ShikshaLokam
