Embedding a whole child development approach to education in Telangana, India

• In Event: Education systems strengthening: Lessons learned from programming in Colombia, Haiti, India, and Indonesia

Proposal

Telangana is a state in India where the majority of students in government schools are from Scheduled Caste (SC, 16.9%), the Backward Caste (BC, 49%), and Scheduled Tribal communities (ST, 10.9%) (Telangana State Planning Board, 2022). The Telangana Social/ Tribal Welfare Residential Education Institution Societies (TSWREIS/ TTWREIS or the “Society”) which cater to Grades 5 – 12 students from SC, ST and BC communities have emerged as a progressive government response to ensuring children from these underprivileged backgrounds have equitable access to high quality, holistic educational opportunities. The University started working with the Society in December 2020 to support Society’s vision with a project designed to build, operate, and replicate a whole child development (WCD) model for education in India through holistic systems engagement.

The University focused on creating strong buy-in at all levels right from the start through a WCD working group which consisted of the Society leadership, school principals, teachers, and alumni. Together with the working group, the University co-created a contextualized, multi-dimensional Whole Child Development (WCD) framework for the Society which includes Safety and Protection, Health and Wellness, and Work Readiness in addition to the more traditional focus on Social and Emotional Learning and Academic Skills. Our extensive collaboration and consensus-building with the Society also resulted in the Society leadership applying and integrating the WCD framework into their decision-making, the training of their staff, and the programming that benefits their students. In addition to co-creating the WCD framework, the University also carried out a system mapping exercise with the working group to understand the Society’s current ecosystem. Visualizing the current ecosystem along with the WCD framework helped the Society and the University to work together to identify redundancies, gaps and priorities in terms of needs of the ecosystem for the learners to thrive. In response to the Society’s identified priorities and gaps, the University piloted the Safe and Inclusive Schools Initiative (SISI) which consisted of Comprehensive set of training, resources, and activities designed to cultivate a school culture where every learner thrives, along with a teacher training component with teacher wellbeing tools and SEL integration in lesson plans in 16 schools in SY 2022-23.

In the current academic year, the program is being implemented in 62 schools where 62 teachers have been trained as full time WCD trainers. The trainers train the teachers and principals in their respective schools on the SISI activities including SEL integration, and support them with implementation. The program will be scaled to cover all 400 Society schools in the next 4 years. In this presentation, we will discuss how our engagement:
-Creates a knowledge translation ecosystem which can ensure that activities are relevant to key decisions
-Links program learning to action
-Builds in advocacy support from the onset to ensure project continuity and sustainability and
-Strives to create a positive and inclusive school culture and how we are measuring the outcomes.

Authors

• Rubina Philip, Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child

• Shwetha J Parvathy, University of Notre Dame