More than a decade ago, I met the CEO of a district panchayat who asked whether we could help improve mathematics teaching in the district’s schools.
Excited by the opportunity, I outlined a plan: training thousands of teachers, building their understanding of mathematics and pedagogy, providing teaching-learning materials, establishing resource groups, and developing organisational systems for coaching and assessment. It would take about five years to build the necessary capacity across the system.
He was unimpressed. The programme, he said, needed to begin in classrooms within a month and be completed within a year. He could not wait five years for improvement in mathematics teaching.
I declined. We did not have the capacity to produce that miracle, I admitted.
Ten years later, the district had conducted occasional ad hoc trainings for mathematics teachers. There was little evidence of improvement in student learning, and teachers appeared not to have developed significant new skills. Ironically, the original five-year strategy would have been completed twice over by then. While its impact on student learning and teacher capacity can only be hypothesized, it would have been based on a strategic vision of how change happens and what resources are necessary to foster it.
This episode reflects a deeper problem: the public education system in India suffers from a crisis of capacity. Teachers, supervisors and officials at many levels need stronger understanding of pedagogy, better teaching-learning tools and clearer assessment frameworks. Yet these rarely develop because educational initiatives are often launched without careful strategic thinking.
Strategic thinking in education is not complicated, but it does require discipline.
First, any initiative must rest on a credible theory of change. What leads us to believe that a particular action will produce the desired improvement? Too often programmes are launched based on personal preferences, anecdotal evidence or incomplete analysis, with poorly articulated goals.
Second, initiatives must be grounded in a real understanding of context. Even effective ideas cannot succeed unless they connect with what learners already know, need and want to learn and are equipped for learning. Organisational environments also strongly influence whether new ideas are embraced or quietly ignored by the learners in the system. Unfortunately, new initiatives are rarely designed based on such understanding.
Third, meaningful reform requires coalition-building. Education systems involve many stakeholders—teachers, unions, parents, communities and civil society organisations—with legitimate interests to protect. Plans designed without their participation often face resistance or silent sabotage. Collaborative design may be messy and time-consuming, but it greatly increases the likelihood that change will endure.
Fourth, programmes need a detailed implementation process. Motivation, supportive monitoring, adequate physical conditions and ongoing coaching all influence whether new learning is adopted in practice. Simply issuing official orders rarely produces change. Unfortunately, identifying motivational drivers of learners rarely figures on the radar of either planners or executives.
Finally, initiatives must include thoughtful programme assessment. Educational change unfolds over long periods, making it essential to articulate a coherent set of criteria for assessing progress carefully, test assumptions periodically and make mid-course corrections if necessary. Such learning also helps systems conceive and execute future reforms more successfully.
India is one of the youngest countries in the world today. In a few decades, it will become one of the oldest simply through passage of time. The much-discussed demographic dividend can only be realised if today’s children receive meaningful, high-quality education.
That requires strategic thinking now.
