NITI Aayog has proposed setting up of state and district task forces to improve the quality of schools at scale across India, saying this requires coordinated action beyond the education department alone.
Further, it has suggested the need to elevate teacher deployment, professional capacity and career progression for them to further enhance quality of school education.
These suggestions are part of the 13 recommendations mooted by the Aayog in its report on ‘School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement’.
“Learning outcomes are shaped by factors spanning health, nutrition, social protection, infrastructure, skills, technology, community engagement, and local economic contexts,” the Aayog said in the report.
To operationalise this vision in a structured and accountable manner, states may institutionalise state and district task forces on school quality as permanent coordination and problem-solving platforms, it said.
According to the report, these task forces, to be headed by chief secretary and district magistrate at state and district level, should function as strategic convergence mechanisms with the core mandate to align policies, pool financial, technical and human resources, unblock implementation bottlenecks, and accelerate school quality improvements across both government and private schools.
The task force would be responsible for providing strategic direction for school quality reforms aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, approve cross-departmental convergence plans, review state-level learning, retention, and equity indicators on a periodic basis and resolve inter-departmental policy and implementation bottlenecks.
Of the 13 recommendations, eight are systemic recommendations focused on school restructuring, infrastructure strengthening, governance and capacity building, expanding digital and broadcast-based learning, and promoting equity and inclusion, among others.
The remaining five academic recommendations lay out pathways to improve pedagogy, assessment and foundational learning, holistic education and student wellbeing, vocational education and skill integration, strengthening ECCE, and integrating AI for pedagogical innovation.
The report outlines 33 implementation pathways across short (0-2 years), medium (2-5 years), and long-term (over five years) horizons, with clearly defined roles at the central, state, and local levels along with over 125 measurable performance success indicators to track progress.
