Sprint 0 - Background and Overview

Sprint Objective – To appreciate the current context in which the problem exists: Social challenges, historical developments, future aspirations, uncertainties, constraints, opportunities and risks

This is the beginning of the sprint journey. We need to immerse ourselves in the current context and gain a shared understanding through intense deliberations. The obvious may need to be restated, the not-so-obvious uncovered. Subsequently, we chart our journey together and prepare for the adventure over the coming months. This is the opportunity to invoke our beginner’s mind and explore possibilities together. It may not be easy, but sure would be fun.

We begin by zooming in and appreciating the journey of your organisation.

• What have been big milestones and shifts in your journey so far?

• What is your big aspiration as you look into the 5 years ahead?

• What drives you to do what you do? What gives you energy?

• What barriers do you face? What drains your energy?

• What is your organisational and leadership structure?

Now, let’s zoom out and unpack the various societal forces at play. We will analyse these critical forces from different lenses (social, political, economic, environmental, demographic, technological and legal) to put together all the pieces of the uncertainties, constraints, opportunities and risks present in your context.

As we prepare for the sprint, please assemble relevant information for our discussion through these various lenses. Please feel free to share pre-reads over email, as appropriate.

Social: What social attitudes and norms contribute to the prevalence of the problem? What shifts in social attitudes and norms could enhance the effectiveness of interventions against the problem? What social uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Political: What current government ideologies, policies and priorities offer openings for change? Which of these act as barriers to solving the problem? Are there any upcoming possibilities of government instability? What political uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Economic: What economic conditions (in your geography or globally) mitigate or aggravate the problem for affected communities? What such economic conditions influence resource availability, capacity, funding to solve the problem? What economic uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Environmental: What kind of environmental risks (potential or existing) aggravate the problem and / or lead to adjacent problems? What are future environmental trends / projections in your geography What environmental uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Demographic: What aspects of demography (population size or mix) affect the problem you’re solving in your geography? What are future demographic trends / projections in your geography? What demographic uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Technological: What technological developments can be leveraged to solve the problem, faster? What technological developments may put some communities at risk / widen pre-existing gaps? What technological uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Legal: What laws, policies or regulations can be leveraged to solve the problem? Which of these are barriers to institutionalising change? What are the gaps in implementation and how do they affect the problem you are trying to solve? What legal uncertainties do you foresee over the next 5 years?

Reimagining Education Leadership

To better appreciate the sprint journey, we will follow the story of how ShikshaLokam has been developing 4.5 million education system leaders in India. As we go along, we will see how their vision was shaped and the experiments, successes and setbacks that ensued. For this sprint, we will illustrate the societal context in which ShikshaLokam started their journey.

In 2016-17, India faced the largest education challenge in the world – How to improve education outcomes for more than 250 million children across 1.5 million schools that were served by 8.9 million teachers? Guided by the Right to Education Act (2009) the government focused mainly on access, enrollment and infrastructure. In schools, teachers and administrators navigated high professional pressure and low social prestige. Their promotion was often based on seniority, not leadership capability. Moreover, about 60% of all public schools under the Department of Education were primary schools (grade 1-5), and did not even have formal school principals. While a few institutions such as National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration and its state counterparts State Institutes of Educational Management and Training were tasked with building the capacity of school leaders, their efforts were limited due to budget and capacity constraints.

Though the Government of India had launched a national teacher training platform, DIKSHA, digital education ecosystems were nascent and rural India had limited access to the Internet and smartphones. In this landscape, philanthropic and CSR funding for education was directed to initiatives that showed immediate results such as infrastructure, remedial learning, digital classrooms rather than longer-term systemic undertakings such as leadership development.

ShikshaLokam was created to enhance education leadership in India. It was steered by a small team that had already been trying to drive school improvement and had found that despite the same programme and similar resource constraints, some schools were able to improve more than others. What had made a difference was leadership. They saw leadership development as a lever to improve education outcomes. Thus, they envisioned setting up an institute, National Institute for Leadership in Education (NILE), which could develop 10,000 school principals and education officials. However, anxieties around if this pathway would yield sustainable impact at societal scale within a reasonable time remained… More in the next sprint!

Now to Prepare for Our Sprint Together… To help us come well-informed, please share any resources relevant to learning more about your current strategy and context, as well as, organisation chart, annual reports, background research and strategy documents, as appropriate. We are happy to enter into a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), if that helps share anything that is confidential.