NDMC assesses students and teachers
EVALUATION 42 council schools chosen for a fiveyear plan to improve learning levels, train teachers
NEWDELHI: A large section of teachers and students who were rated lowest in an evaluation programme in schools run by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) showed improvement at the end of the first year of the plan, officials said. Academic performances of teachers and students in NDMC schools are being evaluated under a five-year programme.
The civic body started the programme in 2017 to assess 7,170 students from Class 5 to Class 8, along with 423 teachers from 42 of the 45 schools in its area.
For the first time, the civic body collaborated with the Quality Council of India (QCI) as well as group of subject experts, mostly teachers and principals from Kendriya Vidyalaya and State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT). In the last one year, the selected students were asked to participate in different activities to help them improve their knowledge of the subjects.
“We didn’t expect any miracle when the programme was kicked off last year. It was an experiment to understand if things will work this way or not. To our surprise, it did work and about 50-60% of the teachers as well as students falling in lowest categories showed an upward trend,” said an official from NDMC’S education department.
An official said the evaluation was being conducted to not just understand the students’ capabilities, but also to look at the skills that teachers may lack such as communication, subject expertise and student management.
The NDMC’S programme is among several schemes launched in schools run by the Delhi government and civic agencies to help weaker students.
From April 2018, the Delhi government and three municipal corporations — North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporation — launched ‘Mission Buniyaad’ to improve the students’ basic learning levels. In 2016, the state government had launched a scheme called ‘Chunauti’, to assess students of Class 6 to Class 9. Also in 2016, a similar scheme called ‘Unnati’ was launched by the NDMC.
However, this is the first such scheme in Delhi in recent years that included evaluation of teachers along with the students.
THE RESULTS
NDMC officials shared the result of the programme with HT on the completion of its first year.
When the programme started in 2017, of the 423 teachers evaluated, 156 were categorised in the lowest C category. However, after the completion of the first year, only 10 teachers remained in category C. Similarly, there were 2,366 students in the lowest D category last year. By the end of the first year, this number had reduced to 932. Officials said most students have graduated to the slightly better C category. The number of students in the top category — A — remained the same. Only 72 students were placed in A category.
FOCUS ON TEACHING METHODS
NDMC officials said the Class 5-8 students were grouped in four categories — A, B, C and D — indi- cating performance of students from high to low. While A was the highest, D was lowest category. Similarly, the teachers were clubbed into three categories from high to low — A, B and C.
The experts had initially rated the teachers and students before starting the five-year programme and then again categorised them towards the end of the first year.
“We decided to go with teachers and students of Class 5-8 as these years of elementary education are considered to be important for doing well at the secondary and senior secondary level,” said Naresh Kumar, chairman, NDMC.
“Over the last one year, experts visited the classes randomly and observed the teachers and their communication with the students. During this process, they gave suggestions to teachers about study material and methods that can help them improve the performance of their students,” a QCI official said.
Under the programme, the experts asked teachers to use simple examples and arrange more group discussions or activities to help kids, especially those below average.
Suman Rana, who teaches mathematics to Class 8 students at Navyug School in Mandir Marg explained the techniques they were taught by experts, “I planned a number of activities which helped understand my students better. Also, I started using examples from everyday life to explain mathematics. For example, to help kids understand how to plot numbers on graphs, I gave them the example of lifts in malls showing negative numbers for basement and positive on upper floors. The parking below the ground floor is usually negatively numbered like the numbers below the x-axis on a graph.”
For students too, interactive tools were suggested to improve their knowledge.
“It soon became a daily schedule. We first read each chapter in class; we then shared the meaning of difficult words and then encouraged students to recite it in a rhythm. To make learning fun, we even asked them to play role of various characters from book,” said Glory Mary, Class 5 English teacher from NP Co-ed Senior Secondary School, Lodhi Estate.
We didn’t expect any miracle when the programme was kicked off last year... To our surprise, it did work and about 5060% of the teachers as well as students falling in lowest categories showed an upward trend.