Administrative Reforms for Department of primary education Government of Karnataka.

By

Sateesh Hegde IIM Bangalore, Student - PGPPM hedge.sateesh@gmail.com;, +91 94480 91428

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Following are the specific suggestions made based on applying Business Process Management techniques so as to improve the efficiency of the primary education system. 1) In the present system, teachers have to travel to BEO office to know about their increments, salary hike, probationary declaration etc. A website can be created so that teachers can login with the help of a unique code number and check their status of service, salary, increments, PF balance and their position in the promotion etc. This will increase the satisfaction of the teachers and brings transparency in the system. 2) In the present system of education, no one in the ladder is measured. No performance appraisal or no metrics of measurement. Teachers are cross checked by inspection. (I can tell ton stories about school inspection saga since my family comprises of eight primary teachers including my parents). But there are no defined measurements or frame works to measure the performance of a teachers. In the metrics of each employee, education department must keep in mind that through these measures, department is guiding the employees to achieve its objectives. The objective of the primary education is overall personality development of the school children. Hence we should capture quality factors (which are other than marks) and quantity parameters. I feel, following Quality measures (parameters) can be defined on 1-10 scale to measure the performance of the teachers. A)

Teacher factors.

1) Cleanliness, physical fitness and appearance of the teachers. 2) Accent and knowledge level about the subject. 3) Innovative practices adopted.( Say used local materials to explain the students about water conservation methods ). 4) Relationship/behavior with students, colleagues, SDMC members, BEO, Local leaders etc.

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5) Delivery of lessons including style, method, convincing capacity, subject depth, use of resources, creativity etc. 6) Two way communications or one way? How many questions or discussions happened in the class. B) Student factors. 7) Cleanliness, fitness and appearance of the students. 8) Subject knowledge of the students. 9) Creativity and assimilating ability of the students. 10) Group participation abilities. 11) General knowledge of students. 12) Behavior/expression and participation of the students in the class. 13) Extracurricular activities. 14) Whether student asked questions. C) School factors. 15) Cleanliness and appearance of the school. 16) Infrastructure facilities, toilet facility, drinking water facilities etc. 17) Quality and quantity of mid day meal. 18) Perfection of record keeping. 19) Number of community participation held and decisions implemented.

Quantitative factors.
1) Students drop out- Numbers monthly or half yearly.

2) Passing percentage. 3) Number of students scores above 90%, 80% etc. 4) Number migrated to nearby English medium/ private schools. There must be a customer (students, parents) satisfaction survey for every year where an independent agency can collect the opinions of all stake holders like students, parents, community members, co teachers etc. Data must be collected

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on behavior, teaching quality, enthusiasm, self learning, IT literacy and usage, commitment, etc. Simultaneously, BEOs and DDPIs should also be measured with performance metrics which ensure percolation of organization objectives to the ground level. BEO can be measured by following parameters. (Measured in 1-10 scales, each parameter is given with 10 points, Total points are calculated for measuring performance). A) Quantitative measures. 1) Number of students passed during the year. 2) Number of drop outs. 3) Number of students who failed in the board examination. (In some states board examination system does not prevail). 4) Number of students who cleared competitive exams like Murarji school exams/ scholarship exams. 5) Number of students in the bock who participated in regional /national level games. 6) Number of students who participated in district level or national level in debate, dance, essay competition, math Olympiad, science events etc. 7) Number of schools where ICT is properly functioning, midday meal scheme is properly functioning.

Qualitative measures.
1) BEO or DDPI must be measured by a survey of teachers. This survey can be done by an outside agency and collect data like behavior, corruption, transparency, administration abilities, commitment etc. 2) Being leaders of the education department, BEOs and DDPIs must be aware of the subjects which are taught in the schools and they must be innovative. Hence, innovative works done in last three months must be captured in the performance metrics.

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3) Time taken to taken to complete a task. With the help of the metrics we can capture the quality and quantity of the education output. To have a proper diagnostic control system, performance and salary (fixed + incentive) should be linked. Any employee who is below the grade points will not get incentives or get punishment.

3) Linking practitioners and class room.

There are so many different subjects are explained in the class room. Present system is like Sage on the stage. Teachers goes on explaining and students listen. Rather than this style if we reinvent the process of subject delivery with an addition of visit to the field or visit of the concerned specialized person to the class room will help the students a lot. Best example is that say, teacher is explaining about Traffic signals. Traffic police man from the nearby place is best person who can explain better and answer better for the queries of the children. Say teacher has to explain about simple hygiene factors and about diseases, then a doctor from nearby PHC center is a best person who can explain the things in a more realistic manner. Resource persons can be given with a gift by education department so as to motivate more people to participate in the program. Old students are also better persons who can be roped easily and can be better resource persons. Separate fund can be reserved for bringing resource persons to the class room.

4) Transparent Transfer Policy.

Even though governments ( Example- Karnataka) say that they are following transparent counseling process for transfer of teachers, there are complaints that department officials hide the names of the most demanded schools . It is better to exhibit the names of the schools wherein posts are vacant. It will be better if department displays the other details like infrastructure facilities in the school, commuting time, distance from main town, transport services etc. These information will help the teachers to take informed decision.
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5) Education call centers.

There must be a center at DDPI office/BEO office which has a toll free number and helps to teachers in accomplishing different tasks. For example this help line can help the teachers to fill the data of census details in a particular form or in a webpage. This line can also used to lodge complaints against late coming teachers/ drunken teachers. Other types of complaints like sexual harassment, fraud in the mid day meal etc can be received. 6) Survey of School Infrastructure. Many of the states (Ex- Karnataka) are not having details of school infrastructures. Schools are given with huge amount of money and SDMC members and head masters are given with the responsibility of the infrastructure development. But the accountability is not addressed in the framework and there are instances of corruption. Hence with the help of GIS software the school infrastructures can be digitalized and stored on GIS software. Initially it takes some effort to digitalize the data, but once data capturing is finished, a simple mobile camera can capture the photo of the infrastructure development and this photo can sit on GIS software. Any person ( say centralized in state capital) in central office can check the infrastructure development on the finger tips.

7) Intervention in ICT model - Disseminate the best practice.

In Karnataka, ICT initiatives are scaling up to primary schools also. Karnataka is following BOOT model (Build, Operate, Own, and Transfer) in ICT implementation in schools. But I found that in this model teachers are not using the ICT resources in their teaching and it IT teaching rather than IT enabled teaching. Hence, a small change in the teaching method can bring integrated approach in the system. Best ways without any cost is identifying the educational leaders in the system and disseminate the practice. For
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example, one teacher is very good in IT and he uses e mail to give the home work and students have to down load by opening their mail ids. This will help the students to create the mail ids and they can learn the modern days communication method. This practice can be explained in a function at block level and honor the creativity of the teacher in a meeting. This practice will prompt the other teachers to follow the same steps. Other way is to giving written instructions to the teachers about how to use (integrating) computers in teaching. For example, Africa continent can be explained with the help of Goolge.

8) Training- From top- down approach to bottom up approach.

It is my personal experience that when I visited DSERT (Karnataka), the training modules are designed without asking the opinion of the users. Teachers are not at all asked for their opinion while designing the training needs and even the instructors who are going to implement are not asked for their opinion. To dig deep into the matter, final beneficiaries (students) are also not involved in the process of decision making. Best example is ICT initiatives (in Karnataka). The basic question is why only excel or MS words for students?. Kids usually love painting, colors, animals etc (my finding during my dissertation research). Why cannot we create modules wherein games, painting, colors combination which teach the subjects to the students. Why should creativity of the students be limited to MS Office?. Students and teachers must be involved in the process of decision making so that objective of the process will trickle down to the grass root. Results of the training should be quantified and should be measured. A survey of the students must be done wherein data contains variables reflecting the results of training. For example if a teacher is trained in English grammar, a survey of seventh standard students with respect to usage of tenses will reflect whether training percolated to bottom line or not. 9)

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