Model School Khunti

The problem

Khunti district in Jharkhand is populated mainly by people belonging to the ST. The terrain of the district is hilly and undulating and there is quite good forest cover. There are 86 Gram Panchayats in the district with over 84000 students enrolled in standards 1 to 10. The schools, in particularly the more remote villages in the districts, tend to show the infirmities one may expect in far flung villages. The district administration is very keen on improving the performance of the district in education and hence wishes to provide the best amenities to the school teachers and students.

The solution

With a view to set a standard of quality for the schools, the District has chosen to create a Centre of Excellence in school education. The Centre will be housed in a large Model School in Khunti town.

This project was started in the month of November 2018. The DC set a timeline of 6 months for completion of Infrastructure related work. It started with planning for school merging process and maintaining the teacher – student ratio (PTR). It was decided to create this school as one of the best school in term of infrastructure and learning in Jharkhand. Since then, the focus of engagement on this issue has been convergence of various schemes in the school to keep building on the same vision, for example schemes under District Innovation Fund, Aspirational District Fund, CSR was taken with the need of this particular school as priority. A baseline survey and need analysis to check the learning level of the students and other requirements of the school was also done. Going forward this will be matched with the outcomes derived at the end of this year and later.

In the process of making the Model School Khunti as a center of excellence in learning in Khunti District in Jharkhand for primary, middle and high school students, a total of 7 schools (4 Primary, 2 Middle School and 1 High School) were merged into one single school. The total infrastructure of 3 main schools  situated in close vicinity of each other was merged and renovated for the purpose. Each of these three schools had its own campus. All these three campuses have now been connected to each other and are now a part of one single large school campus.

A total were 1891 students are enrolled for the academic session of 2019-2020. This includes 673 in primary, 810 in secondary and 408 in high school. The visible improvement in the facilities and infrastructure has created a favourable buzz in the town and many parents are interested to withdraw their wards from private schools and enrol them in the new Model School. Thus the enrolment is expected to increase with time.

Facilities Completed

An amount of Rs 3.68 Crores has been spent until 2019 by the district administration on the above. The funds were obtained by using various schemes. 2.96 Crores were taken from the Special Central Assistance, Rs. 53 lakhs from Aspirational Districts Fund and Rs. 10 lakhs from District Innovation Fund. In addition, transport facility from within a range of 5 Km is also being run for children to attend the school. The expenditure of Rs. 80,000 per month is being met out of District Mineral Foundation Trust (DMFT) Fund. Additionally, the plan is to construct some more classes and laboratories and acquire learning aid support. The plan is to augment by providing amenities for sports and for extra-curricular activities.

The above progress relates to hardware and infrastructure. True results on enhanced educational performance will arise from a combination of improved amenities and significantly augmented input in pedagogy and teaching quality. The District administration has hence entered into a partnership with Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI), an affiliate of the Tata Trusts. CInI is expected to provide support in monitoring the progress in teaching and also offer inputs for regular teacher training. These two things together will show much improvement in the learning outcomes. The District Administration has entered into another partnership with Pratham for after-class learning for students with special needs. The financial support for this is to be taken from District Mineral Foundation Fund.

Going forward it is proposed to provide further augmentation to the amenities of the Model School. These include:

• Science Park in School
• Skateboarding
• Robotics lab
• Atal tinkering lab
• Interactive Digital Logic Laboratory
• Open Gym & Centralized Kitchen

As of 2019, 35 teachers work in the school: 12 in Primary, 18 in secondary, and 5 in high school. Recruitment of more teachers has already been done with partnership from the State education department. This will increase the number of teachers substantially in coming days. In addition, a plan for better student teacher ratio has also been prepared to ensure that the school has adequate number of teachers for various subjects, keeping Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) norms in mind. The funding to fill the gap in subject expert teachers found through this process is being taken up from the District Mineral Fund by hiring required subject specific teachers.

The whole transformation of school amenities towards a Model School have been led by the Dy. Commissioner. The Vision of District Collector Khunti (Mr. Suraj Kumar (IAS)) is to create at least one school of excellence at each panchayat level in Khunti on the same line of this particular Model School. These schools in each panchayat will have to be created by resorting to convergence of various schemes in education. The focus will be towards regular monitoring from education department, Infrastructure support from District Administration, Innovative schemes from state, CSR Partnership for Infrastructure and learning support etc. The larger vision is towards holistic development, better exposure and cooperation among teachers and students in each school.

Source : District Administration