Michael and Susan Dell Foundation funds landmark quality improvement program in schools in Haryana

Surina Rajan, Principal Secretary, Department of School Education, Government of Haryana, and Debasish Mitter, Country Director, India of the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, announced a partnership to support Haryana's landmark state-wide school Quality Improvement Programme (QIP).

By signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), both parties affirmed their commitment to make Haryana a leading State in quality education for its students. The QIP will impact 1.6 million children in grades 1 to 8 of approximately 12,000 government primary and middle schools across Haryana.

The QIP was announced earlier this year by the honourable chief minister of Haryana, as part of the Mukhya Mantri Siksha Diksha Yojna (MMSDY). The programme is being closely monitored by Surina Rajan, Principal Secretary, Department of School Education, Government of Haryana and the district officials responsible for providing education services for over 15,000 schools and 80,000 teachers serving 2.7 million children in the state of Haryana. Over the last few years, Haryana has improved significantly in terms of accessibility and equity in education, however, there is scope for improvement on the quality aspect.

The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, a global charitable foundation focused on improving the lives of impoverished children in the United States, South Africa and India, has invested over 745 crores ($120 million) in India since 2006.

Through this collaboration, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation will provide funding over a three year period to Boston Consulting Group, to provide the support for effective implementation and scale-up of this ground-breaking project.

Surina Rajan, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Education, State Government Haryana, said, "The Quality Improvement Programme is a systemic transformation initiative to impact learning levels of children in Haryana, through creation of an educational management model. This is an unprecedented approach that engages multiple stakeholder, fosters innovation and builds organizational capacity - which can be replicated across the country."

Debasish Mitter, Country Director, India, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation said, "We are honoured to work closely with the State Government of Haryana on such an ambitious journey to build a cohesive system across all Haryana government schools, with student learning levels being the central focus. We applaud the strong leadership of Mrs. Surina Rajan, Principal Secretary of Education, and her leaders and the state of Haryana for taking a very bold step of comprehensively addressing problems from a systemic to a classroom level. We believe this comprehensive project across the entire education system will address all areas that ultimately shape the quality of teacher-student classroom transactions."

The QIP strategy, aims to transform Government school education in Haryana, with special focus on improving student level learning outcomes. As part of the project, various initiatives have been designed to be rolled out over the next three to five years with participation with dedicated teams from across the Department of School Education.

Ten interventions have been recommended to bring about state-wide education transformation including measuring and tracking progress, focusing the education system towards academic quality, leadership training, communication and cultural transformation, pedagogical changes and teacher training, and management information systems.