Nexus of Good: Ensuring last-mile excellence

One of the biggest problems in school education in India is the delivery of quality education. Peepul has addressed precisely the same, and was the well-deserved winner of the Annual Nexus of Good Award.

Peepul helps public education systems design and implement interventions that improve student learning at scale. Through deep partnerships with government school systems, they now work at scale, impacting 9.4 million+ children through their work with 270,000+ teachers — creating the conditions for the delivery of quality education for the most vulnerable in India who live on under 7,000 USD/month.

Peepul presents a perfect example of 'Nexus of Good'. To be able to scale at quality, they developed a model centred around improving student's engagement. Realising that the government school system had largely solved the problem of enrolment (through having adequate schools in remote areas) and attendance (through the mid-day meal programme), Peepul focused on moving the classroom practices from rote-based learning to a high-engagement pedagogy and learning model. Their belief has been that, in improving student engagement, children's learning would improve, and achievement against grade-level competencies would gradually become better.

This insight is an important one, and is critical to how they now operate at scale in two geographies in India – Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. Engaging every child sounds easy when you hear it but it is incredibly difficult to execute.

To be able to do this at scale, there are four things that Peepul focuses on when it partners with state government systems. First, building a toolkit of high-engagement classroom practice as an SOP/handbook of how to deliver excellence in the classroom and engage children. Second, supporting government teachers' skilling and professional development so that they are aware of classroom engagement practices and pedagogy, including innovations in teaching that they may never have been trained on. Third, leveraging the existing government administrative structures of BAC (Block Academic Coordinator) and CAC (Cluster Academic Coordinator) to create structures and rubrics for academic coaching and mentoring for school principals and teachers. And, finally, building new systems for accountability towards learning outcomes so that the state government can track progress.

Implementation

Peepul's approach towards implementation is unique – blending a deep practitioner understanding of education, an in-depth embedment in government systems and the ability to manage projects at scale, to strengthen system delivery in a sustainable manner. The interventions are data-, research- and policy-backed. Hence, it is among a handful of organisations focusing on learnings from direct interventions on one side, and large-scale capacity building of the government system on the other, with government adoption as the final goal.

Strategy

⁕ Demonstrating what is possible through their exemplary schools in Delhi: Three model demonstration schools in Delhi show the potential of public schools. They show what is possible. They exist to change the perception that Indian government schools can't produce quality student learning. In their exemplar schools, 85 per cent of students meet grade-level expectations. This number stood at 72 per cent all through COVID induced school closures. The schools also demonstrate ~90 per cent student retention and 75 per cent average attendance metrics — unheard of in India's public schooling context.

⁕ Strengthening teachers' professional development at scale: A focus is given on teacher competencies to implement high-engagement teaching practices to upskill teachers on classroom management, language teaching modules and technology for driving quality learning. During the pandemic, the teacher skilling work was able to upskill the knowledge, skills and mindset of 265,000+ teachers to create high-quality teachers for 9 million+ public school students. This work now continues through a mix of digital learning courses, face-to-face training, professional learning circles or Shaikshik Samvad, post-course classroom observations to support teachers, and rewards and recognition programmes to appreciate and call out best practices.

⁕ Systemic strengthening of mentoring, coaching and monitoring: To be able to move focus from rote-based teaching to teaching students at learning level, it is important to reduce teacher time in administrative work by increasing efficiencies in data management and student assessment, hence resulting in increased teaching time in classrooms. Together with this, there is a need to observe and recognise the efforts of school leaders, teachers and education officials through classroom observation, and to build a cadre of BAC/CACs who are skilled in mentoring and coaching, and not just monitoring and compliance. Peepul works with governments to create layers of structured academic mentorship in the school system. These principals/government officials help teachers implement what they have learned in training, overcome barriers, and get feedback on their development. Building academic mentors also helps shift the system's focus from school administration to academic enablement.

⁕ Aligning incentives and accountability: They also engage with governments to create structures to reward the right behaviours and build accountability for academic outcomes. This includes strengthening the policy framework, building accountability structures, designing performance assessments and evaluations, digitising processes, and focusing on data-based decision-making. Towards this, they also leverage government technology platforms.

Impact

Delivering quality at scale has been a holy grail. Hence, it is important to understand whether there has been a trade-off in the cost/quality equation as Peepul scaled from 1 school with 300 children in 2017 to now impacting 100,000 schools, 290,000 teachers and close to 9 million children.

Some vignettes of the metrics they have observed and tracked, in the backdrop of a much deeper monitoring, evaluation and impact framework, include:

• Teacher skilling: An improvement from 66 per cent to 95 per cent of observed teachers in a Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Course.

• Teacher mindset: A shift of 16 per cent in teacher mindsets where teachers can better identify and teach ways to depict a sustainable growth mindset among their students and themselves.

• Academic mentoring: An increase from 10 per cent observed teachers conducting classes to 55 per cent in 2021

• High-engagement classroom practice: Class observers reported that more than 40 per cent of students got a chance to speak, which increased over the months by 15 per cent (75 per cent in Feb 2022 vs 60 per cent in Oct 2021).

While these are some metrics, it is important for organisations to anchor and measure themselves continuously against metrics and milestones, something Peepul has kept as front and centre. We don't always get things right the first time but it is through collective action and learning that we can measure the impact, course-correct when needed, and demonstrate/replicate the good practices more broadly with evidence to strengthen the case for scale.

The way forward

I have been proud of what Peepul has been able to accomplish in a short period of four years, since I visited their school in 2018. As they look ahead, Kruti has in sight three key areas where she would like Peepul to pioneer and innovate and spread good practices.

First, codifying their practices so that the good practices can spread faster and more broadly. This involves developing a high-engagement teaching toolkit.

Second, leveraging the experience of quality at scale to share practices globally and be a flag-bearer of innovation and excellence from India that can be applied in other countries.

Third, system strengthening work in both Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and scaling demonstration through the audacious CM Rise School project in Madhya Pradesh.

Views expressed are personal