Building a Saksham Haryana

Education is a critical variable in many outcomes for a citizen or a policymaker when it comes to determining long-term outcomes such as skills, earnings, and the overall prosperity of a country. The case for India and its states is no different, with policymakers taking action to improve education outcomes among students.

We launched a poll, asking you about one such initiative, which is the NIPUN Bharat mission.

India aims to achieve its NIPUN goal by 2026–27.

Saksham Haryana (Education) was an initiative that came before the NIPUN Bharat Mission with a similar goal: to improve learning outcomes among students. Launched in 2017, Saksham Haryana (Education) aimed to achieve grade-level competency in 80% of government schools in the state, with a high emphasis on secondary education.

When Saksham was launched, most districts in Haryana performed lower than the national averages across grades in mathematics and language.

However, in the following three years, through various interventions and reforms taken up by the government, Haryana became one of the states that showed the most improvement, with nearly each of its districts outperforming the national averages.

We launched a poll to know your perspective on Saksham Haryana (Education) and the shift witnessed in the education system of Haryana.

Samagra PoV

In our view, the education system of Haryana, from 2017-2020 (pre-COVID), witnessed a shift from being ‘Comatose’ with low ‘political salience’ and low ‘system capacity’ to ‘Battle Ready’ with high ‘political salience’ and high ‘system capacity.’

The Saksham Haryana (Education) initiative, spearheaded by the Chief Minister, aimed to make 80% students grade-level competent in the elementary grades in the state. This shift was propelled by increased attention to education, evident in the state's performance in ASER and NAS surveys.

Increased political salience, led to system capacity being built over the 3 year period with reforms on the process, people and infrastructural fronts. At the process front, key changes included: digitizing all education data, revamping assessments for competency-based learning, delivering competency-based remediation support, and ensuring timely textbook delivery. This was further complemented by cascaded and data-backed reviews at district and block levels. At the people front, administrative and academic levers were strengthened. Online and transparent teacher recruitment and transfers were implemented, the school mentoring cadre was strengthened and teacher training was enhanced so as to be centered around pedagogy techniques for outcome achievement. At the infrastructure level, learning materials were upgraded and digital infrastructure was developed to aid the aforementioned processes.

Additionally, direct involvement of the Chief Minister through quarterly reviews and gamification strategies like Saksham Ghoshna fostered accountability and shared vision among stakeholders, making the system 'Battle Ready'.?

For a better understanding of the Governance Matrix, refer to this page on our website.

Let us know what you would like to hear more of, and stay tuned for our next poll!