Teacher Centric Refrom : Why It's The Need of The Hour

In a “devil is in (implementation) detail” type of conversation, I spoke with Kanchan Lall, the Director of Partnerships and Operations at The Education Alliance.

Kanchan, who found her way into the education space by chance meetings with super inspiring people, has since dedicated a decade to it, a testament to her unwavering commitment. She shares her organization’s role in collaborating with state governments to co-design, build capacity, implement, and monitor education programs. We spoke about a lot , partially because of the complexity of education, but tried to focus on teacher professional development.

Kanchan starts by telling us that while a lot has been done over the last few decades to deliver ‘access’ to education to students and to implement systems and processes for teacher training. Somewhere on the teacher side, ?these efforts have not necessarily been teacher-centric per se. She echoes the NEP’s call that teachers must be central to fundamental education reform. ?For example, she calls for a more immersive- apprenticeship model- curriculum in pre-service training. Once in-service, she says it's key for the ‘system’ to support teachers fully and set them on a professional learning journey in a mentoring-coaching format rather than one focused on ‘performance management’. ?The gravity of this task is immense.

But that is a big gap. And we discuss this missing piece. Kanchan tells us how the lack of ?‘citizen ownership’ of education at all levels is a major issue that has not been addressed because we don’t know the ‘how’ of it. ?She briefly touches on Delhi’s attempt with School Management Committees and how they can play a crucial role. She stresses that so much that happens with children depends not just on schools and teachers, but on the entire community, highlighting the need for collective responsibility in education.

She points to the paradox of how ‘community ownership’ may sometimes be ‘easier’ in rural communities because the social divides across teacher-student bodies are not so deep. ?For example, she tells us how, in many urban schools, the ‘social status’ of teachers is vastly different from that of a student body and students who may be coming from the migrant community. How do you bridge that divide, and how does it factor into learning outcomes? There are no easy answers.

We jointly lament that education is still not a ‘hot topic’! It doesn’t attract public fury or protests.? Perhaps where we have some control is the efficient deployment of available funding. ?This efficiency demands that we ask questions like: What will we do with 5 , single-teacher schools that merely meet the ‘access mandate’? How do we pool resources to build quality schools with multiple teachers rapidly? With legacy policies focused on access, is it possible to respond in a manner that addresses the current need with a 25-year horizon?

Can we move faster from the “access mandate “to school rationalization? If the intention was to bring the school to students, and we have achieved this in terms of ‘ visible physical infrastructure', can we now focus on quality? Kanchan discusses the Madhya Pradesh model of school rationalization.

It is not just time to raise the bar on public funding by the central and state governments; it is long overdue. There is foretelling here, too. Kanchan warns that if we don’t pay heightened attention to all aspects of this complex problem of quality schooling, from increased public funding to excellent execution, we won’t be spared. We will have to spend on upskilling, vocational bridge courses, health, and mental health at later stage. Kanchan provides the formula for a way forward:

The public sector has scale and budgets; the private sector has agility and independence. A symbiotic relationship can yield great results in terms of innovation at scale.?

Finally, a common thread among those in education that I speak to is patient optimism and hope that comes from understanding the complexity and scale of the challenge coupled with a deep sense of purpose.

Kanchan dreams about a need assessment study on what a teacher actually needs!