Ladakh Model of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (LMSSA)

People’s movement to overhaul the Government School System

in Ladakh,

Background
Ladakh has had a tradition of education movements starting from the early
1950s, when our leaders launched a movement for school enrolment, bringing
the enrolment rates far above the national average despite all the
disadvantages that Ladakh suffered. In the recent past the Hill Council, in
partnership with Ladakhi NGOs and village communities, launched another
movement in 1994 called Operation New Hope (ONH). Here the issue of
quality was addressed. As a result of the measures taken, i.e. a massive
teachers training drive, formation of Village Education Committees (VECs)
for local ownership and accountability in schools, and publication of locally
adapted textbooks, the Matric exam results, which used to hover around 5%
until 1998, rose to 55% by 2004.

Introduction
While many of the major ills in the government school system were addressed
by the first phase of ONH movement, there is a serious need to further resolve
some of the remaining ills, in order to make government schools a source of
quality education for all — rich and poor, rural and urban. The introduction of
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in 2003 formally institutionalised most of the
initiatives begun by ONH. Yet SSA needed to be locally adapted as the issues
facing Ladakh are so different from the rest of India. Apart from the unique
geography and culture, other social factors are also different. To cite a few
examples, school enrolment in Ladakh has been near 100% for years, except
in certain nomadic communities. On the other hand retention is a serious issue
but again, unlike the rest of the country, here the issue of drop-out is much
more serious among boys than girls. Also, since for the last 10 years Ladakh
has seen ONH, a home-grown education reform movement much like SSA,
this should ideally be used to catapult it to the next stage of reform rather than
clubbing it with the rest of the state to start all over from scratch.

With a school already in every little hamlet and an incredible teacher:pupil

ratio of 1:10, the challenge in education here is not of opening more schools.
The challenge is more of managing these resources creatively to make
education relevant to life in the High Himalayas and to improve scholastic
performance of the students. The educational awareness movement of the past
decade has raised the expectations of the parents so much that many village
schools are facing closure, with parents opting for a very unsustainable and
child-unfriendly option — sending their three-year-olds to distant private
schools in Leh city.

This document tries to explore these major challenges facing our schools
today due to which they are unable to attract children despite the fact that in
Ladakh the government expenditure per child per month is a staggering Rs.
1,500 (comparable to the best private schools in the country). LMSSA is also
an attempt to translate into reality the goals in education sector set in the
‘Vision Document-Ladakh-2025’, adopted by LAHDC, Leh in 2005. The
current document, which aims to serve as a policy framework for the Ladakh
Autonomous Hill Development Council Leh, will be followed by a ‘Plan of
Action’ with details of actual implementation over the next five years.

LMSSA could also be seen as the second phase of LAHDC’s own Operation
New Hope. It aims to be a partnership of government, civil society
organisations and village communities to take the education reform movement
in Ladakh to a new height — where government schools become as good as
any other schools and can realise the vision of the ‘Neighbourhood School’ or
the ‘Common School’ floated by Kothari Commission in 1966. We hope that
in this way, apart from benefiting ourselves, we can also benefit the rest of the
state and the country by becoming a model. A model is most powerful when it
succeeds in a place that is otherwise considered harsh, backward and difficult,
as it can generate the feeling—
“If a place like Ladakh can do it, any place can do it.”

This perhaps, could be Ladakh’s way of repaying the gratitude we owe to the
state and the nation for all the unconditional aid and support we have received
so far.
1. A Holistic Approach to Education
Apart from better exam results, today we need an
education system which strengthens our children and
youth in every way, which enables and empowers
them in the modern world without sacrificing the
depth of traditional knowledge, values and wisdom
inherent in our unique culture. A system that makes
our children not just producers and consumers but
rather stewards of this mother earth and all the living
beings on it. A system that caters not just to the 3 Rs,
but to a balanced development of the ‘3 Hs’ in every
child. A bright Head for knowledge and ideas, skilled Hands for self
reliance, and above all a kind Heart for harmony and peaceful
coexistence in this diverse world.
 2. Locally Relevant Curriculum
Ladakh with its distinct cultural, geographical and environmental situation
needs a curriculum and teaching learning materials that are contextualised so
that children can relate to what is taught and are strengthened rather than
weakened by the process of schooling. We need to carry further the
programme started under ONH to adapt the curriculum and publish localised
text books. But even after that learning should not be restricted to the
classroom, the teachers and the text books alone. For true and meaningful
learning, and not just ‘schooling’, we shall have to design a system whereby
the whole society and the whole village environment becomes a learning
resource, with the teacher as a facilitator; where the school actively facilitates
the passing down of essential knowledge, skills and values from the older
generation to the new.

On the other hand importance has to be given to the special needs of the
minorities within Ladakh, just as Ladakh seeks special attention from the state
and the country. In this regard the nomadic people in Changthang region need
special attention towards making education relevant to their lifestyle and
livelihoods, while linguistic minorities like the Brogpa (Dard) population also
need attention, at least in early primary education. While SSA’s extra
emphasis on enrolling the girl child may be out of place in Ladakh, the issue
of inclusion of children with special needs (disabled) seems to be a bigger
need.

3. Teacher Training
In-service Training: An apex educational resource centre
Trained and passionate teachers are the soul of any education system worth
the name. Since accessibility to a state level resource centre is very difficult
due to our remoteness, and since cultural and geographical conditions are very
different here, Ladakh needs to have an apex educational resource centre
within our reach, for high quality training of trainers for both Leh and Kargil.
The District Institute of Education & Training (DIET) is of course the ideal
place for this. But the DIET so far has itself been ailing and starved of
manpower and other resources, and needs to be properly functionalised. If
this is difficult within the present set-up of SSA, then separate resources could
be mobilised by the Hill Council along with the NGOs to hire the best key
resource persons on contract, from within Ladakh and throughout the country.
This centre would train and support trainers who would then act as resource
persons at zonal and cluster levels. Apart from this, the apex team could also
continue developing training and teaching/learning materials, and localisation
of curriculum and publication of text-books.
Pre-service training
While the above Educational Resource Centre could ensure quality in-service
training under the SSA programme, it would also be important to arrange
facilities for good quality pre-service training programmes offering D.Ed and
B.Ed degrees, whether through the DIET or through private/NGO institutions.
However for this to work, the government will have to make such
qualifications a basic criterion at the time of recruitment. There is no reason
whatsoever in this day and age for the government to recruit untrained
teachers with a mere class XII or a plain BA degree and then sponsor them
with full salary for in-service D.Ed and B.Ed degrees. This scheme, perhaps
launched when qualified teachers were scarce, has outlived its utility and
should be closed as in most states.

4. Climate Responsive School Buildings

One of the reasons both teachers and parents lack enthusiasm about
government schools is that the school buildings are old, cold, dark and
dilapidated. For our village schools to be as good as private schools, apart
from the software, the hardware, i.e. building etc., will have to be inspiring
and comfortable. Most of our schools were built in the sixties with
inappropriate technologies and materials. This explains why in most schools
classrooms are left empty while classes are held outside in the sun, even in
December. Today many Ladakhi NGOs have shown and are using affordable
solar heating technologies that can allow schools to run through the winter
without any heating bills. This can let the children have vacations in summer
months, enabling them to participate in and learn from village life, all the
farming and other life skills. This would make our schools very progressive
— offering modern academic education without sacrificing traditional
wisdom and skills.

In this massive reconstruction activity we are lucky that the Indian Army’s
Sadbhavana outreach and other donors have already expressed interest in
joining hands with the Hill Council.

5. Innovative Management of Human Resources

Separate cadres for primary, post-primary and pre-
primary
It has been observed that at present no distinction is made among the teachers
from primary to high school. This makes management of their training and
transfers a major challenge. A teacher trained in primary school subjects and
methodologies is often transferred to a middle or high school where they are
required to teach higher classes and vice versa, thus wasting their training and
at the same time leaving them unprepared for handling these classes.
Therefore in consultation with the state government, primary and post-
primary teachers should be separated into two different cadres and all their
training and transfers managed separately.

Multi-grade system at primary level

Most village primary schools in Ladakh have around 5 to 15 students
scattered over five grades, with two or three frustrated teachers trying to treat
them like five separate classes as in any other mono-grade situation. This is
very ineffective and the pupil-teacher ratio is most unsustainable. A look at
other parts of the world like Australia, New Zealand and Sweden, where
similar situations exists in the remote sheep and reindeer herding populations,
shows that they treat such schools as a special multi-grade case and handle
them accordingly. Under this system a single teacher is trained to handle up to
30 students of different grades simultaneously and single-handedly. Such a
programme has also been carried out successfully in India by the Rishi Valley
Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER) in Andhra Pradesh. Their
programme is today replicated by many state governments in roughly 40,000
schools.

In view of our topographical and demographical conditions it would be ideal

if Ladakhi villages adopted this system. This would also free up at least 300
primary teachers who could then be re-trained to provide the much needed
pre-primary facility in government schools. A beginning should be made with
one experimental block.

6. A Kindergarten in Every School

In Ladakh the main reason why many parents choose distant private school
over the neighbourhood government school is not so much because the private
schools are better in quality but because most government schools take
students only in class one, at the age of six. In today’s well-exposed world,
even village parents are not willing to wait till the children turn six. Therefore
if government schools are to survive in this fast changing world they must
have an effective pre-primary component. And one way this can be done
without any extra cost or manpower is to use the nearly 300 freed-up teachers
as stated above along with the worker and helper of an overhauled version of
the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Scheme), to provide a high quality
pre-primary facility right within the village.

7. Public Engagement and Ownership

In a democracy it is of utmost importance that the whole community is aware
and excited about education, for it to attract the all important interest, attention
and imagination of political leaders and bureaucrats. A massive drive needs to
be carried out to further the recent tradition of community participation and
ownership of government schools. While each village in Leh District has an
active Village Education Committee (VEC) linked to the Halka Panchayat
through the Panchayat Education Committee (PEC), we now need to link
these upwards through Block Education Committees (BEC) and a District
Education Committee (DEC). Along with vertical integration of these bodies
for empowerment, at the village level itself the concept of VEC needs to go
deeper. In the last reform phase their role evolved from teacher-care and
school-repair towards demand for quality education. In future they need to
become partners in planning and execution of a holistic education of their
children. While the teachers teach the regular subjects, parents and
community can bring into school a wealth of traditional knowledge and
wisdom by organising weekly workshops with village resource persons like
musicians, storytellers, weavers, carpenters and other crafts-persons. Some
villages have already started this through the Mother’s wing of the VEC.
Ladakh’s tradition of participation of women and even students in the VECs
needs to be further strengthened.

8. School as a Community Learning Centre

Schools have all the potential for becoming a learning resource centre for the
whole community. They need to be equipped accordingly with a good library,
village level museums of different kinds, and facilities for learning cultural
activities like music, art and theatre. Through theatre and music children could
get involved in health awareness and literacy campaigns and develop a spirit
of volunteering for public cause. Thus children could help adults gain total
literacy and village elders could help children with traditional wisdom and
skills. For a dynamic learning centre of this kind it would be good to always
build the village Community Hall in the school compound. They could serve
as a village resource centre and be equipped with all the statistics and
information about the village.

9. Resource Mobilisation
All the above measures will require sizable financial resources, but with the
already prevailing enthusiasm among the people and political leadership it is
not impossible to raise this. While funds under SSA and other programmes
should be used in a synergetic way, special packages, if really required, can be
requested from both the State and the Centre for this important sector in this
remote and disadvantaged region. On the other hand the public enthusiasm for
a change in Ladakh’s educational state is so strong that a massive resource
mobilisation drive can also be organised among the Ladakhi urban and rural
population through the VECs. During a similar drive in the late nineties,
SECMOL with the help of a seed contribution from His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, managed to help the VECs raise roughly ten lakh rupees within a year.
Similar but larger scale campaigns could be launched now for the Ladakh
model of SSA. For example, it might be possible for the Hill Council to float a
voluntary “education tax/contribution” on all tourism-related businesses in
Ladakh, which the business establishments could pass on to the clients.
The above collection of local financial resources could then be used as a
leverage point to raise further grants from national and international donors,
who are always happy to see a matching local contribution.

Ultimate Vision
The ultimate vision of the programme would be to jump-start the government
educational machinery to a level of quality where the educated and the
influential of the society can also entrust their children to state schools.
Together with the quality enrichment programme within the schools, a parallel
campaign would try to build public opinion to make it a moral obligation for
all elected representatives and all teachers/officials to send their own children
to the schools they run, by the year 2010. This would be the ultimate
expression of confidence in our own conviction, and once this happens there
might be enough stake and accountability within the system to make this
change irreversible. It may sound far-fetched for the rest of the country but in
Ladakh, after ten years of reforms, this process has already started and there
are instances of people including some leaders bringing their children back
from private schools into an improved local government school. Elsewhere in
the world whether it is Sweden, Denmark or even a monarchy like Bhutan, the
top national leaders including the prime minister and the royal family send
their children to the same government schools where the children of common
citizens go.

This would be the model we could be presenting to the rest of the country and
the developing world. That economic segregation of children into rich private
schools and poor government schools will lead to conflict rather than
progress. When 95% of India’s children are forced into schools that are
among the world’s worst, it is unlikely that there will be peace of mind in
future, for the 5% who go to schools that are among the world’s best. Apart
from general social unrest, an unskilled labour force will mean that India’s
capitalists will also not be able to compete with, say, their Asian counterparts.

A Befitting Launch
Finally a programme of this scale and ambition should have a befitting launch,
to raise public awareness and enthusiasm at local and national level and to
instil a sense of confidence and pride in the programme. Therefore, we are
most fortunate to see its launch by the President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam
on 28th July 2006. This is most appropriate, both because of Dr Kalam’s love
for children and his vision of India as a developed nation by the year 2020.