Show Us The Impact: Why AAP Government Must Assess Its Teacher Training Programme

In another flashpoint, the AAP government has alleged that the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, V.K. Saxena, has turned down a proposal to send 30 school teachers from New Delhi to Finland for training.

As per reports, the Delhi LG has asked the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the agency carrying out the programme, to submit a cost-benefit analysis of the training.

For the past five years, the Delhi government has been sending various delegations of principals, vice-principals and teachers to the UK, Finland, Singapore and so on with the aim “to improve school education in Delhi government schools”.

According to the government, it has sent 1,079 teachers to different countries for a similar foreign exposure visits or training. It has also facilitated the training of 860 school principals in the institutes like IIM Ahmedabad and Lucknow.

In the Budget 2020-21, Rs 60 crore was allocated to SCERT to conduct in-service training of teachers and heads of Delhi as well as MCD schools. It is also expected to conduct quality research to improve school and teacher education, hold B.Ed courses and develop curriculum and resources materials.

Last year, in July 2022, SCERT conducted a similar programme, in which 30 principals and vice-principals were taken to Cambridge University in the UK with the following objectives:

1.    To use Digital Technologies in the Classroom- Visions and Practices

2.    To reassess the role of effective leaders

3.    To learn to manage high-performing teams

4.    To visit local schools and understand the pedagogies used by them

This report features the different learnings of some of the participants from the 8-day course.

The key learnings vary from creating more spaces for students to read to inculcating digital tools in teaching. However, what is missing is a lack of qualitative assessment to understand the measurable impact of the government-funded programme or even a follow-up of whether the learnings have been implemented at an individual school level.

Considering there is a lack of any such data or reports, one must then resort to broad parameters to understand the efficacy of “Delhi’s Education Model”.

As shown in Swarajya’s previous article, AAP’s education model has little to write home about dropout rates, learning outcomes or even pass percentages.

In a scenario where the impact of a policy is not verifiable, is it not important to question its efficacy or rationale?

The manner in which the training is being conducted seems to indicate a lack of seriousness among the policymakers. The same sentiment seems to be expressed by the Delhi LG when asking for a cost-benefit analysis of the policy running for the past five years.

Instead of politicising, the Delhi government needs to look at the concerns raised, objectively. In the absence of outcome analysis, the initiative comes across as more of a political gimmick than a well thought policy intervention.