Nexus of Good: Connecting the dots

Amidst all the discussions relating to quality of school education, there is one state moving with an audacious vision of not only making marginal interventions but a holistic reform of the landscape itself—this is the CM RISE School programme in Madhya Pradesh. Spearheaded by the School Education Department, Government of Madhya Pradesh, and supported by one of India’s leading education NGOs, Peepul, this innovative programme seeks to redefine the vision of a government school in the country through its whole-school transformation model. Peepul is an organisation whose school I visited in Delhi during my tenure as Secretary, Education, Government of India. At the time, my advice to them was to explore how to take that transformative model to scale together with the government. This CM Rise school programme does exactly that, and has the potential for replication across all states in the true spirit of Nexus of Good. In fact, the recent PM Shri Schools initiative can be a further effort to bring about whole-school transformation through collaborative public-private partnerships, drawing best practices from the deep work done already by Peepul.

In 2019, Madhya Pradesh had about 1 lakh schools spread across its 55 districts for its 98 lakh children. Most of these schools were opened post the reforms and guarantees under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Right to Education Act (2009). While this led to improved access for children across the state, especially in the hinterland, owing to low population density and distances, many of these schools ended up being of small sizes.

Facing these challenges, in 2022, the Department decided to re-envision the landscape by proposing to develop 9,200 integrated world-class schools across the state which would be fully resourced and integrated (K-12), equipped with state-of-the-art physical infrastructure and offering high-quality education within approximately 15 kilometers of any location by providing transportation facilities and allowances to students in the catchment areas.

These schools would then act as resource and learning centers in their respective clusters, thereby also aligning with National Education Policy's (NEP) concept of school complexes and serving as a visual exemplar for other schools in the state. Unlike other model school programmes, admissions in these schools are open and not based on tests or other filtration criteria ensuring that opportunities remain equitable to the most disadvantaged of children.

Currently, the project is in its first phase with a total of 369 schools started. Of these, 274 schools under the School Education Department (remaining fall under the Tribal Welfare Department) have started the groundwork of resource provision and capacity building, reaching approximately 900 school leaders, 10,000 teachers and 2.5 lakh students. The infrastructure work for a few buildings is also complete. Amidst swathes of farms and villages, these new state-of-the-art buildings invoke a sense of possibility for the children and educators in the state alike.

A flagship state initiative with an investment of over Rs 10,000 crore, highest of its kind in the education sector from any state, the CM RISE Schools programme has seen investment from the highest levels, with the entire project conceptualised and initiated under the guidance of the seniormost political leadership.

To ensure that the project gets off to a solid start, two crucial steps were undertaken to ensure collective buy-in:

✼ A visioning exercise that started from the ground up – bringing principals, teachers and district officials to come together and envision what excellence looks like, and collectively crafting a vision and mission for the project. As a part of this, the core project team was also sent on exposure visits to some of the best schools across the country and abroad.

✼ Building a coalition of partners and subject-experts in different areas to support the programme: Various partners were called in to support on different aspects of creating world-class schools – from academics, holistic learning, co-curriculars to infrastructure, technology and project management. It takes a village to raise a child.

A solid set of leadership drives the change. The programme has been envisioned and led by Rashmi Arun Shami, former Principal Secretary, Anubha Srivastava, former Commissioner, Public Instruction and ably deployed by DS Kushwah, Sudhakar Parashar, Atul Danayak, Ranjan Sharma and Sangeeta Thakur—all bringing their experience of working in the government system to drive improvements. Moving forward, the programme will thrive under the capable leadership of Sanjay Goel, Secretary of School Education, and Shilpa Gupta, Commissioner, Public Instruction, ensuring continued progress and innovation. On the NGO side, from Peepul it has been led by Shiladitya Ghosh and Upasna Sachdeva, two extraordinary individuals with diverse backgrounds—one an educationist of 25+ years and one an investment banker turned educator.

A key ingredient of an exemplar school is exemplary academic focus. To make this happen, and create change on the ground, the School Education Department and Peepul conceived the novel idea of an Academic Support and Monitoring Unit (ASMU) that would be a deep collaborative endeavour between the state, Peepul and other partner NGOs. The goal of the ASMU was to empower and strengthen school leaders and teachers through comprehensive capacity building, developing them as agents of change for the school community. In addition, their ASMU sets up the attendant monitoring & incentive structures to track and recognise strong performance.

Ingredients of the change

✼ School leader capacity building: Empowering the School Leaders to lead their school communities through continuous residential training programmes, exposure visits, online training and provision of resources such as handbooks and SOPs.

✼Teacher capacity building: Ongoing professional development for teachers at the schools to adopt strategies that help create a high-engagement classroom.

✼ In-school coaching & support: This involves deep in-school support provided by the academic implementation field team from Peepul & department OICs (Officer in-Charges).

✼Parents and community engagement: Holistic school transformation isn’t possible without the support of the community, and so, towards this aspect, the ASMU enables the school leaders and teachers to better engage the parents via supporting in conducting parent orientations.

✼ Monitoring and data support: To bolster accountability for academic and cultural initiatives, a robust monitoring system was established by the Department with Peepul's assistance.

✼ Reward and recognition: Finally, one of the most critical enablers, recognition initiatives play a vital role in fostering motivation and highlighting exemplary work in the schools. These include weekly appreciation structures such as “Prerak Prayas” where efforts of teachers are shared in form of celebratory Sundays by the ASMU team, recognised on a WhatsApp group with the entire Senior Leadership present, and "Utprerak”—a web platform for cross-learning that recognises and hosts best practices.

Impact of interventions

The CM RISE programme has significantly transformed educational practices across participating schools in Madhya Pradesh. In a walk-through of a typical CM RISE school, one would observe how children’s work and learning is valued by way of the print-rich corridors and classrooms. The corridors would have different trackers or charts announcing rewards such as teacher of the month, student of the month etc., setting an environment where good behaviours and excellence are valued.

Madhya Pradesh government and Peepul present a wonderful example of Nexus of Good that is being scaled within the state through public-private partnership and has the potential of being replicated elsewhere.

Views expressed are personal