Two years of AAP govt in Punjab: Putting state back on learning curve

After Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated the first ‘School of Eminence’ in Amritsar in September last year, the Bhagwant Mann government went all out to showcase it as an important milestone in the ‘sikhiya kranti’ (education revolution) promised by the party in the border state.

The school, complete with smart classrooms, modern infrastructure and labs, and playgrounds having facilities for various sports, compares with the best of private schools in facilities in the city. It is one of 118 government schools to be transformed into state-of-the-art Schools of Eminence (SoEs) in the state for classes 9 to 12.

While 14 schools have been inaugurated, the work for makeover of another 13 is expected to be completed by July. School education minister Harjot Singh Bains said these schools with focused attention on quality teaching-learning have received excellent response.

“For 20,000 seats in SoEs, more than 1.5 lakh students have applied, and in some schools, there are more than 2,000 applications for 120 seats. This is for the first time such a massive response has been received,” he said.

In the 2024-25 budget, the state has also announced plans to transform 100 government senior secondary schools in rural areas into ‘Schools of Brilliance’ to elevate education quality for classes 6 to 12 and 100 primary schools into ‘Schools of Happiness’ with focus on providing well-ventilated classrooms, dedicated play areas, resource rooms and activity corners.

“The Schools of Happiness is my dream project. These will be based on experiential learning. We are also focusing in a big way on improvement in the infrastructure of other schools with 1,200 km of boundary walls in 8,000 schools, 13,000 classrooms, toilets, furniture, Wi-Fi and deployment of security guards and sweepers,” said the minister.

Then, there is a programme for the training of government school teachers abroad. These initiatives on education, especially the flagship ‘School of Eminence’ scheme, are in line with the AAP’s theme song of the Delhi model of education in the run-up to the 2022 assembly elections which caught the fancy of people of the state even though Punjab had topped the national performance grading index released by the Union ministry of education.

The AAP government’s focus on better schools, teacher training and teaching-learning methods are steps in the right direction for putting the schools back on a learning curve, but there are concerns about the pace and scales of these changes.

Democratic Teachers’ Front president Vikram Dev Singh said their (AAP’s) promise was to provide top-quality education to all children in Punjab, but their plans indicate the transformation of select schools into schools of eminence, brilliance and happiness. “In two years, only about a dozen SoEs are complete where extra funds and facilities are being provided but the same are not available to students of other schools. There are 19,000 government schools in Punjab. Why not provide the same good quality education and facilities to every child?” he said, calling the current approach “discriminatory”.

Balkar Singh Valtoha, a retired teacher from Tarn Taran, said that the education department needs to pay more attention to primary schools which do not have proper classrooms, benches and infrastructure and the shortage of school heads and teachers in border districts. However, an education department official said the government has allocated ₹16,987 crore, which is 11.5% of total expenditure, for the education sector with special programmes on the quality of education, skill up-gradation of teachers and principals and school infrastructure.