Small changes could have an enormous impact on school education

It would be inaccurate to call the three rooms in this school ‘classrooms.’ In most primary schools, dedicated rooms are assigned to classes—Class 1 to Class 5—or shared if there aren’t enough; and so they are called classrooms.

Here, however, the rooms are designated by subject. Perhaps they should be called ‘subject rooms.’

Unlike in other schools, when a class period ends here, students move but the teachers stay. The system is not unheard of. It exists in some countries as standard practice and in a few elite Indian schools.

But to find it in a government primary school, tucked away in what we might call a ‘remote’ area, is astonishing. How did this happen?

The head-teacher has been with the school since it opened 18 years ago. A local, he studied in a village primary school before moving to a town for middle and secondary education. Years after founding this school, he found himself reflecting on his own student days.

What stayed with him was the monotony of sitting in the same room, year after year. Through his middle school years, his class remained in one room—only the sign outside changed from ‘Class 6’ to ‘Class 7’ to ‘Class 8.’

That memory sparked an idea: Why not have students move between rooms for each period? Not for any grand educational theory, but because he remembered how dull it was staying in one place all day. He suspected the children would enjoy the little chaos of moving.

And so he re-arranged the school. Hindi, Maths and English each got a dedicated room. For Environmental Studies, lacking a fourth room, he fashioned a makeshift space in the courtyard, shaded by thick foliage.

The children loved it. The movement brought excitement, a break from the stillness that defines most classrooms. As the months passed, something unexpected emerged. The teachers began treating these rooms differently.

These were no longer just spaces they occupied, they were ‘their’ subject rooms. Slowly, the rooms transformed. Posters went up, teaching aids accumulated, corners filled with games and materials tailored to each subject.

What was once a storage problem—where materials were either unused or left to decay—became the enabler of thriving, subject-specific resource centres. All because the teachers now felt a sense of ownership.

When I visited years later, it was clear that these changes were just one part of a broader culture of not standing still but trying to improve—pedagogical practices, teaching-learning material, handling of children, relationships with the local community and more.

The results reflected this culture of steady improvement. The Class 3 children I met had the language and math capacities expected at their age, including in English. In a country struggling with foundational literacy and numeracy, this achievement in a ‘remote’ rural area would be notable.

But what stood out even more was their confidence, a sense of fun and joy without the faintest sign of any sort of discrimination or prejudice. When I asked the head-teacher how they had achieved all this, he had no grand theories.

He simply said he tried to do his job a little better each day, and his team worked with him with total dedication.

When I pressed him further, with “Did no one try to stop you when you restructured the school so fundamentally?”, his response was a matter of fact “Kaun aata hai yahaan jo rokega yaa poochhegaa (no one comes here, so who is there to stop or question)?”

The local village community is fully with him, having observed the school’s consistent improvement over the years.

This school is yet another example of the reality and possibilities of our school education. Learnings? First, our schools are plagued by resource constraints, have little support and serve communities in poverty, which presents an entirely different order of educational challenge.

Second, a group of dedicated and thoughtful teachers can achieve a lot. Third, a head-teacher can play a significant role in setting a culture that energizes teachers and engages students to make it a truly functional school.

Fourth, even hard resource constraints and multiple challenges can’t contain the spirit of those who are committed. Fifth, and most importantly, we have lots and lots of people with such spirit—certainly teachers in our schools, but also in many other spheres.

These are people who are dissatisfied with the state-of-affairs in the country and want to see India improve.

Our policies are often—though not always—supportive and encouraging of this spirit. But too often, their implementation is not. They get mired in a sclerotic and hierarchical culture that treats teachers as the cause of our education system’s problems and not key allies in changing and improving it.

This attitude must be transformed if we want to change Indian education to achieve the outcomes we aspire for.

Big changes happen through small changes—not through sweeping reforms or dramatic interventions, but via actions taken by people ready to take responsibility and act in small but consistent ways.

Over time, these changes accumulate to deliver something extraordinary. Those who create these apparent miracles are our real heroes, though they are rarely aware of it. Perhaps that’s why they succeed.