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Context and Vision

At the Foundation, we see Education Management as leading our efforts at working on systemic aspects of structures, processes and policies, and people aspects in such a way that it helps the education system move towards the vision it has set out for itself. Building the capability of people who are part of the education system, and creating a motivating environment for them are integral to achieving the vision.

Approach

Almost all our work in Education Management has taken place in Karnataka and in collaboration with the Deparment of Education, Government of Karnataka. This collaboration was formalized into a unit – Policy Planning Unit – which is a part of Deparment of Education. PPU is staffed by people from Government of Karnataka and Azim Premji Foundation. The Unit was set up in March 2003 and is currently located in the office of Commissioner of Public Instructions.

The stated objective of PPU is “contributing to developing education policy and planning at macro - and micro level”. Its mandate was to “Strengthen academic and management policies and practices in institution building of academic, administrative & community institutions for effective service delivery towards achieving quality universal school education in Karnataka”.

Education Management looks at the education system in terms of various kinds of institutions it consists of, namely, Administrative (including policy), Academic, School and Community institutions:

  • Administrative Institutions
    These institutions are engaged in education policy, management practices, planning and innovation, evaluation of ongoing programs and schemes, budgeting, monitoring, fund-flow, estimating fund requirements etc.
  • Academic Institutions
    Typically, at the state level, academic institutions are DSERT, DIET, BRC and CRC. They are engaged areas such as teaching learning processes, classroom management, development of appropriate teaching learning material, assessment of learning outcomes of each child, preparation of training modules for teacher training, imparting teacher training, understanding of child psychology issues etc.
  • School Institutions
    The final delivery unit of quality education is the school. School has to be viewed as a comprehensive unit that consists of (a) infrastructure (b) quality of access (c) school leadership (d) the teaching learning unit that involves the teacher, the child the classroom, the pedagogy deployed and the culture that exists (e) the parents and the community in general.
  • Community Institutions
    Community Institutions are usually organized as local governing bodies/SDMCS and are engaged in school level educational activities and facilitate mobilization and institutionalization of community participation towards supporting school education.

Initiatives

The work under Education Management so far can be classified as follows:

Evaluation Studies

Numerous evaluation studies have been carried out, namely:

Many of these studies have helped the Department in its decision making process.

The PRAMATA Project

The World Bank had provided a grant of 485,000 USD to improve the Public Expenditure Management in Education in Karnataka. The specific objectives of the IDA grant were:

  • Enable a Medium Term Fiscal Planning (MTFP) framework which would guide the financial expenditure.
  • Strengthen the Annual Budgeting process within the MTFP framework.
  • Support decentralization of spending
  • Strengthen performance measurement and monitoring of outcomes.

The grant was implemented through the Policy Planning Unit. Azim Premji Foundation played role of the procurement agency.

Context Analysis

The initial observations of Policy Planning Unit identified the following issues:

  • Limited understanding of MTFP and its importance
  • Plans are often made in ad-hoc centralized manner given the large scale of operation.
  • Emphasis is more on activity than outcomes
  • Monitoring is largely quantitative or monetary.

Our analysis suggested that these issues were symptoms of a deeper and more fundamental problem within the department. The problem was analyzed in to 3 aspects - structure, process and people.

Conceptualization of IDF grant

Our context analysis suggested that, in order to improve the public expenditure management, there was a need for deeper understanding and transformation at two levels:

  • At the system level - relating to Structures and Processes.
  • At the individual level - relating to capacity building of people in the system.
Unless these two aspects were worked on, any intervention for strengthening expenditure management would be superficial and not sustaining. Hence we conceptualized the IDA grant into two components – System and Individual Transformation. The former to be addressed through an organisational study and latter through training programs in technology and management

Organization Study

The Policy Planning Unit initiated and completed an Organization Study of the Education Department along with Government Reforms and Institutional Development (GRID) function of PriceWaterhouseCoopers – a consulting firm. The objectives of the study were:

  • To study the existing Processes and Organization Structures in the Elementary Education Delivery System
  • Recommend the required processes based on the objectives of the elementary education articulated by the Government of Karnataka and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan from time to time
  • Recommend revised organization structures for effective functioning and achievement of these objectives.
  • Spell out Policy implications, if any of these recommendations

The study began in August 2005 and the AS-IS (study of current structures and processes) and the TO BE (recommended changes) reports were received from PWC in February 2006 and October 2006 respectively. Some of the recommendations are already being implemented, such as the strengthening of the cluster resource centres (creation of the Cluster Education Office).

Capacity Building

While the organization study was expected to provide specific inputs with respect to the capacity building in the area of planning, monitoring, HR and finance, the skills in the area of technology are fundamental for any planning and monitoring, and hence capacity building in use of IT was started parallel to the organization study. The Policy Planning Unit has implemented IT training to the department officials along with CMC, an IT company. The objectives of the training are:

  • To create awareness about basics of Computer and Information Technology.
  • To create a better understanding of the role of technology in education.
  • To enable the administrators to use computers efficiently for their assignments.
  • To enable the administrators to use Internet and e-Mail.
IT Training is carried out at four levels:

  • Level-1 training will be carried out in 12 Educational districts and cover officers comprising the ‘Operational Management’ team of the Department (officers upto the cadre of BEO). Level 1 training provides basic skills in computers and Microsoft Office and email
  • Level-2 training will be carried out for those people who are selected based on the performance of Level-1 training. Level-2 training consists of Level-2A which is the ‘advanced user’ course and Level-2B, which is a ‘hardware course’. The objective of Level 2 is to provide at district level, a group of ‘experts’ who can provide support to the others.
  • Level-3 will be a MIS awareness course for senior people in the department. This focuses on the decision support requirements of the ‘Senior Management’ team
  • Level-4 training is a web-site related training program for select officers in the department. This is to help Department in creating and maintaining web sites.

As mentioned earlier use of IT is not merely acquiring a technical skill but represent a culture of work itself, hence training needs to be intensive and sustained to ensure that technology becomes a implicit part of work. E-mail and use of office productivity tools such as word, excel, power point is the emphasis of the IT training. The training commenced in March 2005 and has covered almost all senior and middle management officers in department. The training has now been further extended to cover junior officers and clerical staff as well. More than 4500 officers have received more than 18000 person days of training.

Management Development

Administration processes in Government have lagged behind in development in both concept and practice. Perhaps this is to do with the preference for conservatism within Government as well as due to lack of adequate investment or focus on this area. Given huge requirements of resources for meeting Government goals, internal capacity building has always been a low priority. While many business entities spend significant part of their revenues on internal capacity building and on maintenance, it is far lower in Governments.

The Management Development Program was designed and implemented by the Policy Planning Unit through the following institutions:

  • College of Leadership and Human Resource Development
  • Indian Institute of Science - Department of Management Studies
  • Canara Bank School of Management Studies in Bangalore University

See the detailed note on Management Development Program. ...............(to be added)

Data Analysis & Management

The concept of e-governance for the education department was initiated by PPU, as part of the larger thrust towards efficiency through technology solutions. The E-Governance unit was formed in order to have an in-house resource team spearheading technology solutions in the department. It is the central coordination agency for the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) that collects all education-related data from the school, village, taluka, block, district, and state.

In addition, Karnataka School Quality Assessment Organization (KSQAO) collects data on competency assessments of children since early 2006. Analysis of data into child-specific reports for different subjects at the school-level, and a consolidation of reports at the block, cluster, district and state levels was an enormous task, given the massive amount of data (from nearly 20 lakh students). There was recognition by PPU members that the need to build internal capacities for data handling and analysis was critical given that the KSQAO was meant to be a periodic assessment. Due to time pressures, the expertise of I-flex Solutions, a private technology firm, was sought to design the databases for KSQAO data integrate data warehousing and analysis system, with multiple databases including the EMIS to generate reports at the school-level. With their help, PPU was able to complete the required analysis and generate reports in time for their joint release with the KSQE launch.

The Karnataka Schools for Quality Education (KSQE) is designed as a strategic response to the KSQAO set up by the department. While the KSQAO results would provide data on the competency levels of students and quality of education, there was a need to use these insights to design strategies and interventions to enhance competency levels.

Understanding Community Participation towards Quality Education – Namma Shaale Project

Community mobilization to participate in school governance to enhance quality has been one of the key interventions of the KSQE. To this effect, EM has involved the Karnataka State Trainers’ Collective (KSTC) to devise a project to create within the community and among the school staff, a culture of participation and joint decision-making in matters of school governance. The project focuses on building of perspectives and communication web between all concerned stakeholders, namely parents (who are non-SDMC members), SDMC members, Grama Panchayat members, Anganwadi workers, Block Resource Persons, Cluster Resource Persons, local youth groups, SHG members and other local community members, school staff and government officials.

The project has been formulated based on a state-wide study conducted by KSTC to gather perceptions of different stakeholders on quality education and responsibility of different stakeholders to ensure quality education in government primary schools in Karnataka.

Foundation has identified and initiated work by selecting four clusters from four different regions and districts - one from Yadgir educational district (Northeast Karnataka region), one from Mysore district (Old Mysore region), one from Davangere district (Bayalseeme and Malnad region), and one from Uttara Kannada district (Coastal-Bombay region). All schools in these four clusters, numbering 84, are covered under the project.

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