ANNUAL REPORT 2018-19 THE YEAR OF OTHER 5-6 CONTINUOUS LEARNING 23-24 PROJECTS PUSHING FOR PARTNERSHIPS & 7-9 SYSTEMIC TRANSFORMATION 25-26 COLLABORATIONS SIMPLE 10-12 SCHOOLS 27-28 FINANCIALS YEAR AT GOVERNING BOARD 13-16 A GLANCE 29-30 FUNDING PARTNERS SIMPLE CONTENTS 17-22 VOICES 31-32 VISION - 2030 4 learning, who felt more confident and positive after engaging in continuous parent-teacher THE YEAR OF interactions we organized inside our schools and communities. CONTINUOUS In Delhi, we strengthened our partnership with South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) schools in Bhim Nagri and Arjun Nagar as a part of their ‘School Quality Enhancement Program’ LEARNING (SQEP). In July 2018, we expanded our program into rural Haryana in a government primary school in Aklimpur in partnership with Pathways Schools. This was a unique opportunity for us to test our model in a semi urban landscape and learn how to contextualize our support and intervention for this region. At ‘Paathshala’, we continued our work with the students and communities while initiating interventions for whole school transformation. Paathshala is a rural school transformation intervention in partnership with Mountain Valley Springs India Pvt. Ltd, who share our vision to build pathways to quality education for students studying in this rural area. We also renewed 2018-19 was the year of consolidating our school projects across Delhi-NCR & our partnership with the ‘Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan’ in the state of Uttarakhand and are looking Uttarakhand under Simple Schools, our ‘Whole School Transformation’ to strengthen and expand further in this region in the near future. model. It was also the year we prioritised building a strong organizational culture that nurtures continuous learning and professional growth. 2018-19 has been our year of courage and hope. As we gained more clarity on our vision for ‘Simple Schools’, we also spread our wings far and wide, as we grew bigger and bolder as Our work inside government schools is built on this philosophy of a team and in our mission to transform government schools into centers of excellence. This continuous learning – where each stakeholder is empowered to take the Annual Report is our endeavour to document all our experiences and growth from the past lead in transforming their school communities into centers of excellence, by year, which incidentally also marks our fifth year of existence as a collective that is dedicated identifying their own growth path. and committed to making quality education an equal opportunity for all children in India in the next two decades. In the past year, we saw our students and teachers push themselves harder to strive for better, with a renewed sense of strength they found in the belief Here’s to flying together and soaring higher, with all our students, teachers and school we showed in them. We found our principals transforming into effective communities everywhere! school leaders who worked with us in building a positive school culture. We With Gratitude, discovered that our students’ parents invest more actively in their child’s The SEF Family 5 6 PUSHING FOR To empower SYSTEMIC Through our work inside our children to government schools, we want to build a better build pathways that offer every TRANSFORMATION child the opportunity to learn VISION tomorrow. equally, regardless of their social and economic backgrounds. We believe that if we want to empower our students with future skills, then we must first build those skills amongst our teachers, parents and school leaders. Our ultimate goal is to trigger systemic To transform transformation, and we want this to be a push that comes from the teaching and base of the pyramid. We believe learning practices if we enable the key stakeholders inside 50,000 in the school system, then they government will lead the change they wish to see within their own school MISSION schools in India. communities. 8 WE WILL DIRECTLY BY 2022 WORK WITH SIMPLE SCHOOLS All our projects are rooted in our theory of change of empowering those within the school system to push for systemic transformation. We work inside government schools to transform four key stakeholders of a school community - students, teachers, parents and the school leaders. We work towards building a ‘Whole School Transformation’ model, starting out with one or more key stakeholders, as we strive to build their skills, knowledge and mindset and bring them together to ultimately lead this process of transformation. In the short term, our models focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning in the public education space. In the long term, we use our knowledge and experience of the educational realities from these diverse ecosystems, to work towards a sustainable and community owned educational reform across the country. We do this by partnering with government bodies, administrators, educators, social entrepreneurs and other key stakeholders. We start by understanding the current reality first and then go on to forge a tangible hypothesis to identify and build sustainable solutions within the system that are effective, adaptive and impactful in any given context. 9 10 Engaging Parents to be Invested and Empowered School Partners 5 YEARS Transforming Transforming WHOLE SCHOOL Learning Outcomes School Culture by TRANSFORMATION through a Cohort of Strengthening the Instructional Leaders School Leadership 11 THE CURRENT SYSTEM THE SUSTAINABLE SYSTEM 12 We worked across 12 2018-19 AT A GLANCE PARENTS AS communities to strengthen HOLISTIC LEARNING EXPERIENCE the parent-child relationship PARTNERS OF CHANGE ensuring parents take 100% of students were ownership of their child’s exposed to co-curricular learning STRENGTHENING activities like dance, music, INSTRUCTIONAL computers, and sports to ensure holistic learning LEADERSHIP NEW SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 4 Government Schools across 3 States 30 teachers received FOCUS ON consistent support to build their classroom CONCEPTUAL vision, culture, and LEARNING & Provided in-classroom support and instructional practice leadership opportunities to strengthen to ensure they provide STUDENT foundational learning and build 21st-century quality learning in their LEADERSHIP skills in 950 students classrooms to their students. 13 14 The Great Teacher Roadmap is a 5-point self reflective scale that allows educators to TEACHER evaluate themselves and also chart out clear next steps for their own growth. STUDENT ASSESSMENT DEVELOPMENT BEGINNING OF YEAR END OF YEAR The National ASER Data* shows that only 27.2% SEF Grade 3 Classrooms National ASER average students can read a Grade 1.8 1.7 2.6 1.4 2 story in Grade 3 and PLANNING EXECUTION only 28.1% students can 76.7% perform subtraction. MATH Compared to that, the 1.2 BUILDING CONTINUOUS 1.8 learning outcomes from 2.3 REL ATIONS 2.3 28.1% LEARNING our classrooms was The Great significantly higher where Teacher more than 75% students Roadmap 70% could successfully subtract VISION TEAMWORK 1.8 A T eacher 2.1 and more than 70% Grade 2.8 SETTING 2.0 Evaluation T ool ENGLISH 3 students could read a Designed by SEF 27.2% Grade 2 text fluently. 1 YEA R * The ASER Assessments were 66.7% conducted by a third party organisation called The Education HINDI Alliance. ASER is a tool designed Conducted Facilitated personal Observed classrooms Helped with necessary by the ASER Centre in Delhi. Read workshops learning experiences and gave feedback tools and resources 27.2% more about ASER on - http://www. asercentre.org 15 16 TRANSFORMATION STORIES SIMPLE VOICES FROM OUR SCHOOLS Name: Ram Sagar (Student) School: Bhim Nagri Last year, Ram Sagar was constantly strugging inside the classroom. He was distracted and violent with other students, never wanted to focus on Name: Sunita ma’am school work and was struggling to read and write basic sentences despite (Teacher) being in the 4th grade. School: Bhim Nagri We had tried everything from conversations to consequences and nothing seemed to work. This was about the time we had started an organic farming initiative in our school with SowGood. We were skeptical about Sunita Ma’am seeks her inspiration from Mother his participation and sure enough, we got the same familiar feedback Teresa. She believes that for her students she about his constant disturbances in the farming classes. needs to be more than just a teacher. She strives to make her classroom more interactive But slowly, something about working on the field and spending time and enjoyable for her children. Over the past with plants started to change him. Through the year, he became the first year, she has been committed to improving student to always submit his farming homework, plan for the classes and her planning, seeks feedback proactively and share his reflections on how much plants give us. He is so connected and looks for exposure opportunities she can bring focused, always ahead in class and even takes the lead to help others, to her class. ensuring the others are tending to the soil gently and patiently. This has to be one of our favourite photos of Ramsagar - when he had planted On entering Sunita Ma’am’s classroom you watermelon seeds at home so he could harvest them by the summertime. can see her actively using activities from morning huddles, storytelling, and interactive He says when he grows up he wants to make inventions that will help the worksheets to make her classes more powerful farmers of India thrive. At Bhim Nagri, we want to continue to nurture Ram and engaging for the children. Sagar’s dream. 17 Name: Anita Pandey (Principal) Name: Manoj (Parent) School: Bhim Nagri School: Bhim Nagri “The SEF staff through their commitment has blended well with the school and staff and the children. The all-round development in mental ability, cultural values, education standard and self- confidence of every child of Nursery, class 1, and class 2 is distinctly noticed and appreciated.