A Community of Lights

A single file of women, each holding a candle, walked towards an amphitheatre where their families, colleagues and friends were seated. As they entered the stage, they received the flame from their teacher. They stood proud in an arc before their community, their faces shining in their candle’s light, smiling as their audience welcomed them as the teachers of KGVK Gurukul.

My heart was with these earnest young women who owned the light.?

A year earlier, these women from the local community were being trained as child-centred teachers to create a localised environment for learning. Each day after their class, they sat together in learning circles, working out how to transact a curriculum through a treasure hunt of English-medium lesson plans supported by Ruchi, their capacity builder. This helped them grow their language skills while learning how to transact their lessons for the next day.?

A year on, the parents who had initially wanted ‘proper’ English-speaking teachers from the city now called these neighbours ‘ma’am’. If those parents had read the report by Roy Blatchford, our international advisor, who joined us that August to undertake a pro bono inspection of our schools, their respect for the work of the school teams would have been even greater.

An extract from the KGVK Gurukul Report on inspections of three schools in Ranchi: Tatisilwai, Gondlipokhar, and Rukka. Author of report: Roy Blatchford, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools, UK and Director of the National Education Trust. August 26, 2010.

Overall commentary: The schools have made a strong beginning in such a short period. Investment in training the teachers has been well judged, and the opportunities for local children to sit daily in ‘sparkling classrooms’ are to be applauded. When measured against international benchmarks, the quality of care and support given to the children rates as good, although children’s attendance patterns are variable. Provision in most other aspects is basic, reflecting the fee structure. But the provision is rooted in best international practice and has the potential to become securely satisfactory and then good.

As they stood applauding their children’s teachers for these low-cost rural schools, they witnessed a flame that would be passed to the students as they embarked on their journeys.

What made me remember this moment?

We’ve just celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights in Mumbai, in our Adhyayan office. That morning and the next, I visited two principals, Sr. Gloria, whose school, Auxilium Convent High School, Mumbai, recently featured in the top three of Maharashtra’s day schools in this year’s ‘Education World Awards and the other, Fr. Jude, who was taking over his third legacy school, St Mary’s International.? Both thanked me for helping them to become Adhyayan assessors for the learning it has given them about what good looks like, which helped them to transform their schools.

It was confirmation that I had passed on a light and lit two lamps.??

From Mumbai, I travelled to Kohima, where at night, it is lit by a multi-stranded necklace of glimmering lights that dress the steeply contoured landscape of the city.

In my role supporting the school and system leadership of the State through NECTAR, a World Bank collaboration with the Nagaland State Government, I have watched the SIEMAT School Leadership Academy team helping new and existing senior leaders across the state reimagine themselves and their leadership journeys. The impact of NIEPA’s school leadership development programme, which I had some part in developing, will be felt through the influence their alumni will have on teachers and their students' learning.

Each of these leaders carries the light back to their school.??

Next week, it will be Lucknow, where CMS, the largest school in the world, will use our Adhyayan diagnostic to underpin its school improvement.

Too often, and sometimes for good reasons, school leaders are suspicious and even fear external inspection. And yet, when I listen to our assessor-cum-school leaders speak, without exception, they talk about their learning and growth as assessors of their schools and external members of collaborative school review teams in the schools of their peers. They tell me, and our data confirms, that their schools get better faster and for longer the more they undertake the assessor journey from intern to lead.

For the past 15 years, I have worked with hundreds of schools and thousands of members of internal review teams who, having learned the skills of an assessor, look at their children, classrooms and school through new eyes.

Once you can see, it cannot be unseen. Day after day you can’t help seeing because you carry the light.???

Our assessors, with their school communities, are confident enough to keep asking themselves, ‘How well do we know our school? '

They carry the flame with them, and if they are really getting it right, they come with us to help other school communities light their own lamps of insight and action that increase the smiles on their students' faces.

If you would like your team’s light to shine brighter in your school, we would love to help you ignite the flame.?(Write to us at [email protected], and we'll get back to you)

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