Punjab Education Collective recognised among Top 5 Collective Action Initiatives
Bengaluru : The Punjab Education Collective working collaboratively to recast the Punjab state into a land of hope, courage and possibilities through systemic education transformation, has been recognized by Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a sister organization of the World Economic Forum, among the top 5 collective action initiatives in the world at the award ceremony today.
The Punjab Education Collective, brings together the Punjab State Education Department (Sarkaar), Mantra4Change, Samarthya, Sanjhi Sikhiya and ShikshaLokam (Samaaj) and philanthropic organizations like Ford Foundation, A.T.E. Chandra Foundation, Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives, United Way Delhi and market players like Deloitte and McKinsey (Bazaar). The Collective is working to enable every single stakeholder in the education ecosystem of the state, working across 19000 schools, to make meaningful decisions and undertake sustainable efforts, to continuously enhance student learning outcomes. The Collective’s multidisciplinary, co-creation approach – designing, orchestrating, and evangelizing change, has made it the winner of the first such Collective Social Innovation Award instituted by the Schwab Foundation.
The key outcomes of the Collective’s work have been reflected in the Performance Grading Index (instituted by Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, India) ranking where the Punjab state moved from an overall ranking of 13 in 2019 to number 1 in 2020 and in 2021. The state’s ranking in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 (again conducted by the Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, India) moved to the first position. The Collective’s work since 2019, has helped the state develop clarity and build shared understanding of the roles and contributions of different stakeholders and has since then influenced policy decisions and budget allocations for a slew of activities from infrastructure and teacher education to action research and exposure visits.
Khushboo Awasthi, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer – ShikshaLokam, said, “Bringing change in the state’s education system at scale, with speed and sustainably meant co-creation and collaboration. The Collective has always strived to together understand the key educational challenges in the state, ideate, innovate and design approaches and solutions that will work at scale and then implement these solutions leveraging open technology. Our journey began in 2019 where we decided to work together to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences in order to drive exponential change using Societal Thinking. This recognition is extremely encouraging and will accelerate our collective efforts and more importantly I hope it creates a call to action for others in the ecosystem to join hands, drive collective action and metamorphose into a social movement. A call to action to other actors to join hands to enhance student outcomes across the country.”
Simranpreet Singh Oberoi, Co-Founder, Sanjhi Sikhiya, said, “It is a great honour for our collective to have received such global recognition. My hope is that it will further encourage many more to form collectives to address a cause they deeply care about. We got on to this journey with a long-term commitment to the children of Punjab. We wanted it to be a movement which is collectively owned, collectively funded, and includes the voice of all those impacted. This approach not just ensures the sustainability of solutions, it also makes them more contextual and hence widely acceptable.”