Simple Schools: Delhi

10 years old Saloni's parents did not get a chance to go to school, but they dream of a better future for their daughter and believe that education is the only way to make that dream a reality. Saloni’s parents, much like millions of parents in India, send their child to a nearby government school, with this hope that their child is learning well and is getting an opportunity that was denied to them.

But the truth is quite opposite to that; Saloni can barely identify basic Hindi alphabets and cannot solve simple Math problems like dividing 150 by 2, or read basic sentences like “I walk down the lane. It is a narrow lane.”, even after being in school for 6 years. Saloni is not alone, this is the harsh reality for nearly 113 million children in our country. The government schools are often ill-equipped, in terms of teacher development, curriculum, holistic development, community engagement, etc. to impact these students

At SEF, we believe that this problem needs a complete transformation of the government schools from within. And this solution needs to be owned and led by those who are directly impacted by the problem.

In 2016, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) identified these problems and started a School Quality Enhancement Program, to transform public schools in New Delhi. SEF is a partner organization working along with SDMC to improve the conditions of public schools and advocate for changes that should become a part of the government policy, in order to create a sustainable change in the status of education in the state and the country.

Through this Whole School Transformation Project, our team works with 4 key stakeholders to transform the teaching and learning practices inside government school. We focus on:

• Building Student Leadership
• Strengthening Instructional Leadership & Teacher Development
• Building an invested community of parents
• Streamlining administrative practices inside the schools

This equips us to transform underperforming public schools into centers of excellence that will enable the government to fix gaps in our public education system and empower our children to better tomorrow.

Over the last 4 years, SEF has reached out to over 80,000 teachers and directly worked with 150 teachers and 700 students across 3 states in India.

With the current SQEP partnership with the government In Delhi, we will involve 500 children and 13 teachers across 2 government schools.

Our students were exposed to a diverse range of skills like music, public speaking, storytelling, sports, and even farming. Meanwhile, our government school teachers were supported with continuous leadership and professional development training workshops from our end. Within the first year of support, our parent community across our Simple Schools became more active and deeply invested in how they can be better guides and mentors for their children at home.

We have also measured the following impact over the past year:

Our students have mastered more than 50% of the grade level math content taught to them in the 2017-2018 academic year.

Increased enrollment and 82% attendance in all our classrooms

All our teachers have shown an average increase of 1 level (5 level scale) on our Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.