Can model schools be the answer?

JOURNEY SO FAR

NO TEMPLATE FOR TRANSFORMATION The concentration of resources in model schools has benefited a select set of students, but its impact on the larger canvas of education system is hard to spot. Though egalitarian in its ambition, the scheme has bred resentment among those on the losing end of its exclusivity.

The first thing Ashish Kumar Jha noticed when he arrived at Ludlow Castle Number 3 was the blackboard. At his previous school, his ‘classroom’ was a rug under a tree in the schoolyard. “Our school building was under construction, so the junior classes studied in the playground,” Ashish said. “We didn’t have a blackboard. So our teacher just dictated the lessons.”

Even for mathematics?

“Even mathematics.”

Ludlow Castle Number 3, on the other hand, has large, well-ventilated classrooms, a library stacked with books, and well-stocked laboratories. Its teachers — who must clear a screening interview to get a job at the school — devise their own helpful study guides and stay behind after school to answer their students’ questions. Every class is limited to 35 children. Entry to Ludlow is granted only to students who pass a special exam.

Ashish and eight other current students and graduates all described their time at Ludlow as a transformative experience.

The school is part of the Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV) program to create model schools. In an education system suffering from crowded classes and missing teachers, RPVV schools were intended to be oases of academic excellence. The first three were established in 1997. Delhi now has 20. They admit only students who have spent at least two years in a government school so as to distribute their benefits to those most in need.

The aim of the programme was to provide a template for the transformation of Delhi’s 989 other government schools. Many of them are like Ashish’s old school: they lack desks, chairs, textbooks, or even enough space inside to fit all their students.

The gap between most schools and RPVV schools is typical of the Indian education system. There’s the same inequality, for example, in public higher education: a handful of high-powered IITS, IIMS, and medical schools like AIIMS attract resources and attention, while the vast majority of government institutions lack modern facilities and do little to support their students, experts say.

Though egalitarian in its ambitions, the RPVV programme has bred resent- ment among those on the losing end of its exclusivity.

“The problem with model schools is that they remain isolated models,” said Krishna Kumar, the former director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). “We keep on using limited resources to create ever-smaller rings where we can show some results.”

The much-touted success of the RPVVS, Kumar said, masks systemic underinvestment. India commits only 3.3% of GDP to education, compared to a global average of 4.9%, according to the World Bank.

“A false sense of scarcity of resources has been created,” said Kumar. “Then, at every level, you have a phenomenon of selecting the most deserving children for a small set of institutions.”

On the twentieth anniversary of RPVV, it’s easy to find alums grateful for the programme. But it’s not so easy to find evidence that concentrating the best teachers, principals, and students into small, well-resourced schools has benefited anyone outside of a tiny minority.

CLAMOURING FOR BOOT CAMP

Ashish is quiet and bespectacled. He loves mathematics. A teacher in his school at Bhajanpura spotted his promise and told him there was a government school for children like him.

“The boy just studies,” said his father, Pankaj Jha, who works as a shop assistant. “That’s all he does. No one has to tell him.”

Most of Ashish’s peers at Ludlow share stories of a teacher who singled them out from a chaotic classroom in a government school. In many cases, these mentors are the only way students can learn of the existence of the RPVV programme.

Once admitted, their school days are one long boot camp of intensive study.

“The best thing about RPVV is that the teachers know scoring in the boards won’t get you anywhere,” said Divya Rani, who graduated from Ludlow in 2016 and is currently in her first year at Lady Hardinge College, a prestigious medical school. “You need to crack the competitive exams, medical or engineering.”

In Divya’s previous school, her teachers came late to class and the students spent more time hanging out in the corridors than studying.

“It always felt like we were in recess,” Divya recalled.

Schools like Ludlow offer support for committed students lost in such environments. According to Urvashi Gupta, Ludlow’s principal, the quality of the students is the most special part of the school. “We have some exceptional teachers,” she said, “but most of our teachers are the same as other schools. We push them hard, but the students push their teachers the hardest.”

THE BEST AND THE REST

Divya’s experience of disengaged teachers and unfocused students is typical of government schools. Still, in eight months of reporting on Delhi’s public education system, Hindustan Times has met dozens of kids passionate about succeeding in school. With a punishingly rigorous examination regime that calls for extensive memorisation, sometimes of surprisingly advanced topics, many Delhi students push as hard as Gupta’s pupils. Those outside the RPVV system, however, do not receive the special resources and forms of support described by Divya or Ashish.

Ludlow belongs to a network of four schools with excellent facilities. The Delhi government has been using them for experiments with model schools since they were founded in 1970.

The inclusion of the Ludlow schools in the RPVV program, in 2007, provoked a backlash from the local community, according to Prahlad Sawhney, a former MLA from the Chandini Chowk constituency surrounding Ludlow.

“Once these schools became RPVVS, they stopped giving admission to children from the neighbourhood,” said Sawhney. He came under pressure from his constituents to help their kids gain admission. “How can you suddenly declare that four best schools in the neighbourhood are out of bounds for its children?”

In 2011, the Department of Education relented to Sawhney’s frequent protestations: Ludlow 1 and 3 remained RPVVS, while Ludlow 2 and 4 returned to being ordinary schools.

Even the most spectacularly qualified applicants cannot always receive admission. Abdul Basit got a perfect grade-point average in his Class 10 examinations and still was denied entry to Ludlow 3 because he’d always attended private school.

TP Singh, a deputy education officer on the RPVV board, defended the policy of limiting admission to those who have attended a government school for at least two years. “Most students in government schools come from poor families,” he said. “If we open admission to everyone, we will also get applicants from private schools, who have possibly received better facilities and parental support.”

To Mohammed Raees, Abdul’s father, this policy penalises working-class families that suffer great hardship to send their children to a good private school. Raees assembles inexpensive radio antennae in a tiny four-man workshop in north-east Delhi.

“Some sell for as little as ₹80 a piece,” he said. “These are cheap products. My margins are tiny. I worked very hard to send Basit to private school for as long as I could.”

Many parents have made the same calculation: across India, half of all urban children go to a private primary school and 36% to a private secondary school, according data compiled by Geeta Kingdon, a professor education and economics at University College London.

The two-year rule, Raees pointed out, forces parents to risk a poor primary education in the slender hope that their child might make get in an RPVV for senior classes.

SPREADING THE WEALTH

A new initiative from the current Delhi government may have the potential to do what RPVV has not: to focus on specific schools while also effecting a more general reform in public education.

“A system cannot change the inequality of opportunity if it replicates the same inequality,” said Atishi Marlena, special advisor to Delhi’s education minister, Manish Sisodia.

While Marlena acknowledges that RPVVS offer students like Divya and Ashish a path to a rigorous education, she is more focused on upgrading the crumbling physical infrastructure of Delhi’s many non-model schools. As a first step, 54 buildings are being rebuilt and equipped with new laboratories, libraries, gyms, and classrooms in which the blackboards have been replaced by touch-sensitive screens.

This might seem to be another scheme that concentrates resources in a few lucky schools, but Marlena insists that her government will keep renovating schools each year with the aim of ultimately upgrading every single one.

There’s evidence to suggest that fixing physical infrastructure plays a big role in restoring faith in the government system. One afternoon, in a freshly-refurbished school at Rouse Avenue, a group of Class 12 students took turns playing instructional videos on the large smart-screen installed in their classroom.

“The department has provided us with video study material, but we encourage students to bring things they find interesting,” said Davindera, Rouse Avenue’s principal. “It keeps them engaged.”

We have some exceptional teachers but most of our teachers are the same as other schools. We push them hard, but the students push their teachers the hardest.

URVASHI GUPTA, principal, Ludlow Castle-3 If we open admission to everyone, we will also get applicants from private schools, who have possibly received better facilities and parental support.

TP SINGH, deputy education officer