Raabta - School Transformation Program (Summer Institute 2022)

The All India figures from ASER, 2018 show that 50% of Grade five students cannot read a Grade two text, and 70% cannot do simple division. Further data indicate that this gap increases and leads to a lack of essential skills when these students reach higher grades leading to dropouts. School ecosystems in India do not always address students' evolving needs, many of whom may be the first in their families to attend school. 

Over 65% of India lives in rural and remote regions and often lacks access to quality educational institutions, especially in rural Kashmir, Ladakh, and Uttar Pradesh. Here the ASER data reflects an even worse educational outcome level.

In these regions, we identify a lack of access to educational interventions and a lack of access to resources, including stable and reliable internet and telephone connectivity. Additionally, with the onset of the pandemic, the school teams have been struggling to connect with their students and provide temporary learning support systems to reduce the imminent learning slide in this situation.

We work to realize this through different programs to intervene at various stages of a child's education; through early childhood, formal schooling, life in their communities, and eventually their transition from schools to colleges. We are currently in the first phase of our flagship program, Raabta, a systemic (school) transformation program working with three stakeholders in rural community public schools. We are focussing on Ladakh, Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh to build our intervention.

Our solution is to transform underserved schools into lighthouse schools by building the capacity of key stakeholders such as leaders, teachers, and parents by our scaffolded approach over five years to improve student learning experiences and outcomes.

We are currently entering our first on-field training with our schools after 2 years of lockdown. The training will happen for each group of schools for four days. We are travelling to each location with a team of content experts to execute the training.

Through a school transformation program at VEF, we envision struggling and stagnant schools to be converted into centres of continuous improvement and innovation. The program will build the capacity of key stakeholders to reflect a significant development in practices, policies and approaches that will, directly and indirectly, impact student experience and outcomes. The Raabta program will help build lighthouse schools that serve as models of excellence and growth in the community that will share resources and expertise with neighbouring schools to improve education standards in the region collectively. 

As a result of improved planning, implementation and monitoring, and evaluation processes within the school, we will see sustained progress in stakeholder indicators, including improved teacher retention, teacher attendance, parent engagement, and student attendance.

The vision is to reimagine school transformation by taking learnings from existing models and working with three key stakeholders: school leaders, teachers, and parents, to bring them together to form a collective vision of each child getting an excellent education. As we bring the blended approach towards capacity building, it can be a big solution in one of our primary geographies, J&K. We believe that blended can be a game-changer for students and teachers in Kashmir and alike remote regions.