BJS - EDUQIP (Educational Quality Improvement Program) is an integrated umbrella program that assists schools in establishing quality standards in the education they impart. It consists of different modules that have been designed and developed by BJS after thorough research. These modules are suited for schools in rural or urban areas under government administration or privately run.

The nation building process demands that we look beyond the universalization of education and accord due importance to the quality of education in general. This aspect of ensuring educational equity through quality in the entire spectrum of schools and in education from pre-primary to higher education is slowly being acknowledged and efforts are being channelized in this direction. However, considering the magnitude of the problem in terms of the sheer number of schools in India, these efforts still need to go a long way if they are to create a visible impact in the context of education reform in India especially at the school level.

BJS has always had a strong focus on Education having realized its importance as a tool for Social Transformation. Around 94% of the primary education in the country is provided by government run schools. The focus of the government run programs is to cover maximum number of children under the purview of its schemes. While these efforts are extremely important, the component of quality in education is sometimes inadvertently overlooked. To compound the problem, the other private providers of education are either driven by charity or by profit making and do not necessarily concentrate on the quality aspects of the education provided.

This situational analysis laid the foundation of creating a basket of programs aimed at the holistic development of students through improved educational delivery and increased contributions from all stakeholders. This set of programs includes various Assessment and Empowerment and Training modules, making it a comprehensive and holistic basket.

In the Assessment section of EDUQIP, BJS offers a comprehensive Teachers' Effectiveness Measurement and Students' Assessment Programs IV and VIII. In the Training/Empowerment section of the EDUQIP, BJS provides Trustee Empowerment program and Principals' Empowerment Program and VEC/SMC empowerment program. The training section has brought out two Teacher Training Programs. All the individual modules of EDUQIP are currently supported with English, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati versions of all documents and instruments.

As with the design of the EDUQIP program, careful thought has also been given to the implementation of the various modules forming the basket. The first phase of implementation has been successful in around 1000 schools managed by the Federation of Jain Education Institutes (FJEI). In the next phase around 400 schools of Andaman and Nicobar islands have been covered. 563 schools under the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS), an autonomous body under the under the Ministry of Human Resource Development have benefited from the implementation of EDUQIP. In Goa, 1790 schools under Goa Government have been covered and after three years of rigorous implementation and close involvement with all stakeholders, the results of the SSCE board examinations show a 25% increase in the pass percentage over the previous years. In Gujarat, EDUQIP has been implemented in around 2005 schools of the districts of Narmada and Bharuch in Gujarat. In all, BJS has implemented the EDUQIP basket - free of cost - in more than 4000 schools across all Indian states.

Individual programs forming the basket are conceived, designed, implemented and evolved over time and reinforced through implementation feedback till they are fully mature and can be offered as stand-alone programs at a the national level. Mulyavardhan and Accreditation (BJS-SAA) are examples of such programs that were earlier a part of the EDUQIP basket. The next module planned to be rolled out as an independent program is the Teacher Training Program.

Stakeholders across the spectrum have benefited from the programs offered under EDUQIP. It is an excellent example of private-public partnership model and holds the potential of being replicated across the country. Through its continuous and comprehensive involvement with the Government at various levels and across different regions, BJS has gathered an excellent understanding of the mindset and is confident of heralding this change in the Indian Education scenario.

Why Trustee Workshops?

Trustees are one of the stakeholders of an educational institute. To improve the Quality of Education in K-12 private schools in India, they play an eminent role.

Their role is to primarily administer the affairs of the trust, which include the educational institutes. The trustees usually have a background of being successful businessmen, average age 60+, who have become trustees by the virtue of donations and / or contributions made to the Trust.
However, there were few issues that were road blocks to development of the educational institute in this thrust area:

• Their experience in running an educational institute was largely absent.
• They usually adopted the Charity versus Quality role.
• Lack of futuristic perspective.

BJS identified this as the focus issue and believed that if we could change this point of view, a large positive change could be brought about.

BJS Approach

Training the trustees, people who have expressed capacity and capability in their respective business, was challenging by itself. However, participative workshops, films, interactive sessions led the way. BJS appointed its senior office bearers, social entrepreneurs from its network to deliver this program. Special training was imparted by renowned trainers of the country to the team, who in-turn met with Trusts individually.

The trustees are made aware on subjects like Changing Scenario of Education in India and globally – Challenges & Opportunities, Making Trusts more Functional & Effective, Assisting Educational Institutions to become Centers of Excellence. This was followed by 3 sessions of rigorous interaction at different intervals to cover issues stated above. This ended with Action Plans from the trusts to achieve results as defined in their workshops.

Why EoP?

The Principal / Headmaster is the leader of the school whose job is staggering particularly in context of school reforms.

The role of today’s principal is evolving from that of the last few decades. The new Principal has to multi-task between roles as a teacher, psychologist, administrator, diplomat, social worker, philosopher, coach, etc. to be able to work with all the stakeholders seamlessly.
He/ she has to demonstrate Leadership in all of these roles to be an effective principal.On one hand the government usually appoints senior teachers as headmaster / principal of the schools. When appointed as Principal, there may be sporadic training programs / workshops, not necessarily. Other than personal experience of Teaching, there is a lot of learning they need to undertake to fit into the role of a Principal.

BJS realized that if the Principals are better equipped to play the required role, with a clear focus, the Principal would take more informed decisions and move the school towards improving the Quality of Education. BJS identified these as a key focus area and thus designed its Principal Empowerment Program.

BJS Approach

The coverage of the program spreads across 5 domains that a principal should be empowered with. These include the Educational Domain, Personal Domain, Strategic Domain, Organisational Domain and Inter-personal domain.

The Principal Empowerment Program will be a Centre-Centric program for a group size of 20-25 principals. BJS's master trainers for Principals Empowerment Program will deliver this training at the various locations. The target audience may be Master Trainers (select principals / government appointed master trainers), who in-turn train the Principals or BJS training the principals directly.

Today’s parents, students, society are demanding better quality education for their children. This may be the situation in any part of the country, be it urban, rural or tribal. The first co-relation everyone sets is that facilities matter, however, the quality of the teachers has to be good.

Relevant research led us to couple of ideas to define the quality of teachers. The ideas, when expanded resulted in an approach that has been tried, tested and practiced by global players was Measuring Teachers Effectiveness. When BJS mapped this idea to the Indian scenario, we realized it was a neglected area and there was a large scope for BJS to work in this space.

Notwithstanding this fact the importance of a teacher's role in the child's learning span and his success is undoubted. Just as an employee's performance depends on motivation, training and rewards, so are the triggers of 'Teacher performance enhancement'. However, all the above methods rely on a single and the most critical event 'EVALUATION'.

The concept was further built and the program was developed, keeping the local scenario in mind. Pilots were conducted and the results were intriguing. This motivated us to expand the program to a larger audience.

BJS Approach

The objective of the Measuring Teachers Effectiveness Program (MTEP) is to generate a systematic mechanism to measure teacher effectiveness and analyse the evaluation so as to provide suggestive training modules for improvement.

Program Highlights

An expert committee was formed comprising of Educationists (Principals, Teachers), HR & management Consultants, Systems experts, Heads of Educational associations contributing to the MTEP Program and Policy.

The coverage spread across measuring 43 parameters (6 x 6 major thrust areas, 6 overalls + 1 overall) for assessment. The evaluation is done based on evaluations from Self, Peer and Principal. The program has flexibility to include the Student and Parent evaluation too.

Different weightages are assigned to different evaluators. The reports include charts of every parameter, thrust area wise followed by suggestions and recommendations. Individual teacher reports and combined school reports are generated for decision making at school level and government levels.

Teacher, being a key link in the education system is correctly our focus as an enabler to 'Improvement of Quality in Education', as a part of the BJS-EDUQIP Basket.

The current Teachers Training by various government agencies is tilted towards in-service training clearly focusing on Subject Training. Select teachers get an opportunity to also become master trainers and deliver training.

BJS identifies a teacher as a Professional. It is not enough to know your subject alone. A teacher has multifarious roles to play, both inside and outside the classroom. The role includes core domain knowledge of teaching and learning, theories, types, styles, methods etc. This has to be supported by the teacher wearing a hat of an educator, mentor, guide, care-taker etc.

This need led us to design a robust Teachers Training program, which will supplement and compliment the current training provided by the government, to be able to cater to every child that learns in his/her class. The unique and inclusive focus of the two-day TTP Module 1, developed by BJS, is contained in the dictum, “Teach in the way the child learns” (Dunn). The TTP begins with “Why am I a teacher: Strengths and Areas of Improvement” and ends with the teachers doing a simple SWOT Analysis and preparing an Action Plan, restricted to learning styles and teaching methods; communication and presentation skills; creativity in teaching.

Similarly, the two-day TTP Module 2, which follows TTP-1, (“Teach in the way the child learns”) is entitled, “The importance of caring in learning”. It is captured in the epigram (Student telling the teacher), “I do not care how much you know, until I know how much you care”.

Since the core of TTP-2 is focused on child psychology, the trainers encouraged teachers to become aware of and reflect upon their own childhood, adolescent and adult experiences in order to draw our suitable lessons while dealing with the behaviour, emotions and thoughts of students in the class-room.
Class-size during training is restricted to 20. Handouts and Core Documents are used during the training and Takeaway Material (the flip-charts in book form), may be given after the training. A certificate of participation may be given to each teacher attending TTP-1.

The TTP must be preceded by an intensive training workshop for the trainers of the teachers, which includes conducting mock-sessions.

This TTP-1 has been tried and tested since 2005 with teachers from:

The training has been conducted at WERC, Pune, and in the various states. The language of training is English, Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi.

BJS now has an in-house team of trainers, including master-trainers. We have also developed our systems of logistics, administration and management, to conduct and support large teacher training programs in a variety of field situations.

Teacher, being a key link in the education system is correctly our focus as an enabler to 'Improvement of Quality in Education', as a part of the BJS-EDUQIP Basket.

The current Teachers Training by various government agencies is tilted towards in-service training clearly focusing on Subject Training. Select teachers get an opportunity to also become master trainers and deliver training.

BJS identifies a teacher as a Professional. It is not enough to know your subject alone. A teacher has multifarious roles to play, both inside and outside the classroom. The role includes core domain knowledge of teaching and learning, theories, types, styles, methods etc. This has to be supported by the teacher wearing a hat of an educator, mentor, guide, care-taker etc.

This need led us to design a robust Teachers Training program, which will supplement and compliment the current training provided by the government, to be able to cater to every child that learns in his/her class. The unique and inclusive focus of the two-day TTP Module 1, developed by BJS, is contained in the dictum, “Teach in the way the child learns” (Dunn). The TTP begins with “Why am I a teacher: Strengths and Areas of Improvement” and ends with the teachers doing a simple SWOT Analysis and preparing an Action Plan, restricted to learning styles and teaching methods; communication and presentation skills; creativity in teaching.

Similarly, the two-day TTP Module 2, which follows TTP-1, (“Teach in the way the child learns”) is entitled, “The importance of caring in learning”. It is captured in the epigram (Student telling the teacher), “I do not care how much you know, until I know how much you care”.

Since the core of TTP-2 is focused on child psychology, the trainers encouraged teachers to become aware of and reflect upon their own childhood, adolescent and adult experiences in order to draw our suitable lessons while dealing with the behaviour, emotions and thoughts of students in the class-room.
Class-size during training is restricted to 20. Handouts and Core Documents are used during the training and Takeaway Material (the flip-charts in book form), may be given after the training. A certificate of participation may be given to each teacher attending TTP-1.

The TTP must be preceded by an intensive training workshop for the trainers of the teachers, which includes conducting mock-sessions.

This TTP-1 has been tried and tested since 2005 with teachers from:

The training has been conducted at WERC, Pune, and in the various states. The language of training is English, Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi.

BJS now has an in-house team of trainers, including master-trainers. We have also developed our systems of logistics, administration and management, to conduct and support large teacher training programs in a variety of field situations.

Today's children have to face the challenges of the rapid pace of technology, information explosion, media and general environment. Therefore, their intelligence and abilities are being tested to the utmost. It has become increasingly difficult for parents to gauge the emotional, social, physical and intellectual growth of their children at this juncture. Acknowledging the potential talents and aptitude of a child are imperative at this stage and age. If not done at the right time, it could hamper the future of the child and prove detrimental to the child’s progress and development.

BJS Approach

The SAP IV Test is a multi-dimensional test specifically designed and developed for the students of standard IV. This test is divided in four groups: Emotional & Social Ability, Mental Ability, Health Awareness, Co-curricular Ability, which is further sub-divided in four sub-parameters.

The test is a simple achievable test of three hours, for which the students require no preparation. The format is multiple-choice; in other words, simply worded questions are followed by four choices, from which the child has to select one right answer according to his/her understanding.

The test is divided in four groups which is further sub-divided into four sub-parameters as follows:

Emotional & Social Ability

Mental Ability Health Awareness Co-curricular Ability
Emotional Intelligence Speed & Accuracy Attitude to fitness Listening
Social Intelligence Observation Personal Hygiene Reading
Habits & Behaviour Similarity Height Word Sequencing
General Awareness Non Verbal Reasoning Weight Speaking

Individual reports and schools reports are generated and distributed, which enables parents and teachers to gauge the child’s potential abilities, become aware of the child’s overall growth, plan nurturing the student’s skills and abilities to minimize their weaknesses.

Students possess unique skills and qualities. In order to identify, improvise and develop these skills, mapping these skills to potential is important to make an informed career decision. These skills should be identified and nurtured in time especially at a school age so that they can have a definitive road map ahead. Different tool can be used to identify this hidden potential. One such tool is the psychometric testing.

BJS during its field surveys interacted with higher grade students (Std. VIII to Std. X) of various schools in its network to conduct needs analysis. At various interaction sessions, students generated a lot of curiosity in getting more information on career guidance, however, not being able to map their interests with their potential. There was little exposure on avenues and what skill sets one needs to have for the avenues. Some survey reflected that Career Guidance was usually for Std. X students. However, it was quite late for the child to put in corrective measures for a subject that he likes and the time to develop the required skill set.

Thus, BJS took upon developing the Student Assessment Program for Std. VIII students. SAP VIII is a scientific assessment of the potential and aptitude of children aiming at conducting an in-depth assessment of the potential of the child, to make the parents and teachers aware of their ward’s strength and weaknesses and facilitate the parents and teachers to help and guide the child in his efforts to strengthen his natural talents.

The students are assessed on the following parameters:

The children need no prior preparation for these tests. OMR technology has been used for scalability and accuracy of the test answers. Computer generated results are drawn to reduce any manual errors.

Individual student reports and combined school reports are generated to give details of the aptitude, child’s interest area, lacunae in the aspiring fields, facilitate to enhance the abilities and skills in the potential areas and by giving guidance to select the career.

The Federation of Jain Educational Institutes (FJEI), an umbrella organization for institutes run by Jain Trusts. FJEI was born of a thought of establishing an organization, which would act as a guiding force to all the educational institutes run by the Jain community. There are about 2500 educational institutes run by Jain Trusts with a wide geographic spread across India, the beneficiary, however, is the society at large irrespective of caste creed or community. To enable all these institutes to keep pace with the times and to collectively face the challenges emerging in the 21st century, Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana (BJS) has undertaken an unparalleled movement by forming the FEDERATION of JAIN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTES, FJEI.

BJS-EDUQIP in FJEI Schools

The first National Conference of the Federation of Jain Educational Institutes was held in January 2003 at Jain Hills, Jalgaon, where the idea of coming together on a common platform was mooted and ratified by the trustees. BJS volunteers spread across the country to create a large database of the institutes and an online network was created.

In 2004, a second FJEI National Conference was held at Jain International Residential School, Bangalore. BJS-EDUQIP Basket was formally launched and a scheme of Fast Track Implementation was introduced on invitation basis. Accordingly, the program implementation was started and is continuing well. The program was deeply appreciated by Trustees, Teachers, Students and Parents.

During April to June 2006, a Summer Bonanza implementation was conducted to widen the scope of implementation. Approx. 250 schools participated where programs like Accreditation, Teachers Training, Technology and Awareness programs were delivered.

From 2008 onwards special Summer Batches of Teachers Training are being organized at our Wagholi Centre.

Accomplishments

Post Tsunami, BJS, through its Disaster Management activities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands re-constructed 11 schools, 4 Primary Health Centres and 30 Primary Health Sub-Centres on the Islands from January 2005. While reviewing the work of BJS the then Lt. Governor reviewed the Educational Programs offered by BJS in the rest of the country and was truly impressed. He made an appeal to implement programs that would improve the Quality of Education in Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

Responding to the invitation from the Lt. Governor, BJS suggested BJS-EDUQIP to improve the educational quality in the A&N schools. BJS showcased the program basket to the officials of the education department, principal, teachers and a specially appointed expert committee under the directions of Central Planning Commission in April 2005. The expert committee recommended BJS-EDUQIP to be implemented and; an MoU was signed in accordance in July 2005.

A state-of-the-art office was set-up at Port Blair for monitoring and implementation of the BJS-EDUQIP Project for 402 schools in different parts of the islands. These schools are affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

A total of 50 professionals from across the country were deputed at Port Blair for a period of 3 years to implement the project.

Over the three years (2005 to 2008), the BJS-EDUQIP Project at a glance:

BJS has presented a consolidated report of the 3 years period BJS worked in A&N Islands to the Andaman and Nicobar Education Department. BJS presented its observations, detailed analysis of the results with suggestions and recommendations for necessary action.

A team of BJS experts visited Port Blair for formally handing over of BJS-EDUQIP to Directorate of Education, Andaman & Nicobar Administration and provide necessary training to 72 selected teachers from 8th to 10 April 2008.

Andaman and Nicobar CBSE 2006 Results: Critical Analysis Report

Along with the BJS-EDUQIP project being implemented in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, BJS also published the Andaman and Nicobar CBSE 2006 Results: Critical Analysis Report. The analysis was scientific and based on statistical formulations.

The report presented the processing of the basic results data, used specially developed algorithms to create an index for a school and for each subject. This helped the schools in direct comparison between performance of schools on:

This also helped school managements to identify areas of academic strengths and weaknesses to prepare their strategies for improvement.

Summary analysis of A&N Class X CBSE results

Since 2007, the secondary schools have started showing improvement in the CBSE results as follows:

The State of Goa, where the Govt. had a progressive outlook in the field of education, was an ideal arena for BJS EDUQIP. Mr. Uddipta Ray, former Education Secretary -Andaman and Nicobar Islands, who was the current Education Secretary for Goa recommended BJS-EDUQIP to the more than 1700 schools - both govt. & private, aided & unaided, located in rural & urban areas. In addition to Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, the state Govt. had number of schemes, for improvement of quality in the field of education in their schools.

A presentation on EDUQIP project was made to the Secretary Education, Director Education & to the Senior Govt. Officials in the month of January 2007. After processing the case on file, a formal 'Approval in Principle' for implementation of the project was issued by the Govt. in the month of Feb 2007. An MOU was signed with the govt. of Goa on 18th April 2007.

BJS established an office in Porvarim in the SIE Building, with the trained core staff from BJS office. They were supplemented by 25 qualified people from Goa. GOA Education Department designated and allocated 22 resource persons for the BJS-EDUQIP

The Implementation status of the programs as on 31.10.2010 in Goa is as:

After initial hesitation, the Archdiocesan Board of Education (ABE), Goa invited BJS to implement BJS-EDUQIP in their schools. The ABE is a national network of schools with a reputation for delivering quality education.

BJS has shared 2 reports with the Education Department of Goa, presenting a detailed analysis of the results. BJS has also proposed an EDUQIP Cell be set-up to monitor Quality Improvement initiatives after the 3-year span.

In the recent results of 2010, Goa Board chairman Mervyn D'Souza, explaining the drastic increase in pass percentage, said, "The Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana has signed a memorandum of understanding with the state government to assess the quality of education and facilities in a majority of the government and government-aided schools in Goa. The schools were told of their weaknesses and they worked on them which helped them improve their performance."

The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas are run by the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti which is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Secondary & Higher Education, Govt. of India.

Review of the former Home Minister of BJS-EDUQIP in the A & N Islands led to a series of meetings with the top officials at the ministry of HRD, Kendriya Vidyalaya and Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS).

BJS presented a showcasing of BJS-EDUQIP to the apex body of NVS at New Delhi. This was followed by detailed evaluation and analysis of the working demos of some of the key programs. NVS then decided to adopt the BJS-EDUQIP for all the schools in NVS and; an MoU was signed in June 2007.

As the geographic spread of NVS was wide-spread (1 school in every district of India – except Tamil Nadu), it was decided to adopt a different strategy for implementing the NVS project. NVS designated and deputed more than 90 experienced staff as program resource persons (PRO’s) to be associated with and work for the BJS-EDUQIP. These PRO’s were trained extensively for program delivery. The week long training was conducted at Pune, Lucknow and Shillong for the Accreditation Program.

The Teacher’s Training Program adopted a different strategy for implementation. BJS conducted 14 Master Training programs in the 8 NVS regions training 415 trainers (one trainer per school). These trainers will in-turn train the 10,000+ teachers of the schools. The response has been very positive.

The Implementation status of the programs as on 31.10.2010 in Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) is as:

After the results were shared, NVS participated in a workshop at the BJS HQ, where the officials could co-relate with the outcome and committed to take necessary action to improve the quality of education in the Navodaya Schools. They further emphasized that the association of BJS with NVS should not be limited to that of the MoU, but of a permanent partner.

An invitation from the Chief Minister, a personal presentation to him on BJS-EDUQIP, followed by a series of presentations to the current and past Education Ministers, group of Ministers, bureaucrats specially invited, pilot some programs, review results were a few steps taken to show case BJS-EDUQIP in the state of Gujarat.

An MoU signed in January 2009 to implement the BJS-EDUQIP program in the 42,000 schools of Gujarat, beginning with the 2 districts of Bharuch and Narmada as a pilot project.

The project was planned with strategic guidance from senior officials at Education Department and local co-operation and coordination with the District Education Departments.

A team of 40 persons were appointed to implement the BJS-EDUQIP programs in the two districts. An office set up in each district, this time at a primary school was amongst a few alterations to the project. The Implementation status of the programs as on 31.10.2010 in Gujarat is as

Gujarat Implementation Status

The Education Department of Gujarat and BJS shall review the work done after 2 years for suitable next steps.

A project with a difference, this was the first time BJS-EDUQIP was showcased for a municipal corporation as a group of schools. A project that we were excited to implement to give and learn – learn to work with different governance models, grass root decision making, actual implementation of policies etc.

An MoU was signed in January 2009 to create an example that may lead the way to a new format of implementation.

It was a great pleasure to implement the programs that received full cooperation from all stakeholders at every level. The NMMC appointed 19 program resource officers to implement the programs in all the schools along with BJS team. This program was administered from the BJS HO due to its close proximity to the BJS Head Office.

The Implementation status of the programs as on 31.10.2010 in Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) is as:

Implementation Status

The results have been shared with the senior officials at the Education Department for suitable next steps.

A home ground, a city that is welcoming new developments, extremely enthusiastic when it comes to reforms, was the much obvious choice for both BJS and JMC to implement the BJS-EDUQIP programs in the 55 schools run by the Jalgaon Municipal Corporation.

BJS was given a fully furnished and equipped office in the SSA building, a team of 20 program resource officers to implement the BJS-EDUQIP project along with our national team of experts for select programs.Till date we have implemented:

Implementation Status

The results have been shared with the senior officials at the Education Department for suitable next steps.