Completed Research

Teacher Mentorship in India: Improving Pedagogy in Government Schools

University of Oxford

This case study will investigate how nongovernmental agencies work with the Indian government to implement education reform programs aimed at improving the quality of education services for public school children. The project is focused on the K-12 Government education system in Haryana, India, which is responsible for education of 2,200,000+ students across 15,000 schools and employment of over 100,000 teachers. Saksham Haryana – a state-wide education transformation program – was launched in July 2017 to transform school education across elementary schools in Haryana. The University of Oxford Reach student team will work with an India-based partner, Samagra, to investigate the innovative initiative of teacher mentorship.

Hard to Reach

The K-12 government education system in Haryana, India.

Key Takeaways

Mentors play a host of functions, making them critical in program implementation and furthering the state’s educational goals. The recommendations to strengthen mentorship in Haryana’s educational ecosystem  include:

  1. Having a deeper understanding of the roles that mentors play in and out of the classroom is required to maximize their impact on teaching pedagogy. 
  2. Training should be mandatory for all mentors. 
  3. Because mentors need adequate time and resources to deliver on mentorship activities, their capacity must be considered when adding new tasks. 
  4. Because of the importance of the mentor-mentee relationship, continued visits by the same mentor over longer periods may strengthen mentorship results. 
  5. Governments should consider regularizing mentors in order to improve the program. 
  6. Teachers’ capacity should refocus on teaching. 

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Dr. Akshay Mangla, Dr. Maya Tudor, and the Reach Alliance team for their guidance throughout this process. We are grateful for the partnership of the Samagra team, particularly Aditya Chopra, Deepshikha Chhetri, Simran Bagga, and Soumya Gupta.