Private, municipal schools in Mumbai work together to create better teaching practices

As part of the School Partnership Programme, each BMC school principal will be paired with a private school head/educationist. Till February 2019, schools will work on certain priorities set to better teaching practices.

In a unique initiative, 73 public school principals under the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and almost the same number of experts from private schools will work hand in hand to better each other’s schools over the next few months.

A core team of seven members will assist both set of school heads in specific areas like technology and special education. (Getty Images)

The initiative, called the School Partnership Programme is being led by the School Leaders Network (SLN), a national body working with school principals and trustees. As part of the programme, several BMC school heads and principals and managers of prominent private schools will discuss better teaching practices.

“This is the first major attempt at public-private collaboration and is completely free of cost. With this, BMC schools will get to learn about some of the new teaching practices while private schools can learn how public schools overcome hurdles to sustain and better themselves. We have roped in not just private school principals but also prominent educationists, retired teachers among others who can share their experiences with the BMC schools,” said Francis Joseph, co-founder, SLN.

Rohan Bhat, chairperson, Children’s Academy said. “Apart from sharing teaching practices, we are also open to allowing students from public schools to attend our schools to learn various subject.”

“Students and teachers from public schools have a lot of skills and expertise but due to poor reach, our efforts are not channelised or acknowledged as much as that of private schools,” said Rukmaji Pandhare, principal, Tilak Nagar Mumbai Public School. “With this initiative, we can learn how to bring in more sophistication in the way we conduct the whole teaching-learning process.”

A core team of seven members will assist both set of school heads in specific areas like technology and special education.

Here’s how the system would work:

* A set of common priorities have been set for the teaching learning process which both sets of schools would focus on bettering

* Both these leaders would meet at least thrice every month after school hours to evaluate the work done and set targets for the upcoming days

* Going beyond this, private and public schools can collaborate at a larger level and hold activities together, share classrooms and work in multiple ways to help build each other’s schools