Govt launches drive for comprehensive evaluation of 5,650 schools in Delhi
NEW DELHI: The Delhi government on Friday launched a comprehensive evaluation of all schools in Delhi on safety, learning and inclusion criteria along with the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR). The report should be ready by May 2019, as directed by the government to the respective departments.
The exercise will cover all schools administered, aided and regulated by education departments of Government of NCT of Delhi, East MCD, South MCD, North MCD, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Delhi Cantonment Board. This means nearly 5,650 schools in Delhi including private ones. The visiting and the survey of all these schools will start from December 1 and it will continue till April next year.
"The School Development Index evaluation exercise carried out by the Commission will result in a comprehensive, credible and independent evaluation of the schools on various parameters," said an official. Child safety, learning and social inclusion would be the main parameters. "All the data thus collected except private information of children shall be placed in public domain through a bilingual (English and Hindi) interactive dashboards accessible to parents for learning about the performance of the schools they may consider for admissions of their children or track the performance of the schools their children are currently attending," said an official.
Different parents have different priorities and needs of their children. The interactive dashboards would allow the parents to look at schools' performance on the criteria of their choice as they will be able to organise schools on the basis of the distance from their locality, type of the school, performance on one or more criteria, etc allowing them to make informed decisions. "Evaluation reports prepared under School Development Index project will build stronger accountability in governance as all officers across departments of education and MCDs," the official added.
He also said that the exercise would be particularly useful in building a culture that is celebratory and acknowledges high-performance schools and in subsequent cycles will acknowledge the improvement. "Key component of the Index is its clear intent of celebrating best practices, achievement, and improvement to make it aspirational for all stakeholders to collaborate and do better. Hence the tag line of the project is Enabling Schools, Changing Lives," said the official. Each school would have the log-in option and can make a submission with regard to their performance on specific criteria in case they have improved. After verification, the Commission will upgrade their performance.
