Project Sath – An initiative for the Growth of the Educational Sector

Project SATH is expanded as ‘Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital-Education’, this program was launched in the year 2017 in order to identify and build the main three ‘role models’ for the States in the school education sector. After an elaborate selection process, the states which are selected for the Sath Program are Jharkhand, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh. This program was initiated by the Government of India for the betterment of the educational sector. 

We are going to learn about this program in this content, which will strengthen our understanding and answer our question – ‘What is Sath Program?’. We will discuss its growth and further improvement in this sector. 

Sath Program Full Form

SATH program full form stands for the phrase - 'Sustainable Action for Transforming Human capital’. This program was launched by NITI Aayog with the state government to start the process of transforming the sectors related to education and health. 

What Was the First Phase of the Sath Program?

The first phase of the SATH program ended in March 2020. Significant efforts were made in the process of learning, enhancing the programs (remediation process), the governance reforms, teacher training programs, recruitment process, assessment and accountability sectors, school consolidation process, IT-enabled the monitoring of the schools, and coaching of the academic coordinators (which are abbreviated as BRCs/CRCs), among such other functions.

NITI Aayog and Sath Program

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NITI Aayog has launched this SATH program on the 10th of June, in the year 2017 this is done along with the state government in order to initiate the process of transforming the educational and health sectors of our country. Sath Program will furnish all the technical support to the state governments in the two sectors – the educational and health sectors. 

What is the Aim of the Sath Program?

The main aim of this program was to identify and uniformly build three future goals or 'role models' of the states for the health systems.

The three-way partnership was initiated between NITI, State Governments, and a knowledge partner was also engaged for each of the sectors which was a part of the Sustainable Action for Transforming Human capital, an initiative of the NITI Aayog.

The NITI Aayog will work in close collaboration with the state machinery which will design a good roadmap of the intervention, and also develop a program governance structure, that will help to set up and monitor the tracking mechanisms, hand-hold the state institutions which will pass through the execution stage and will provide strong support on the wide range of institutional measures which will, in turn, achieve the end objectives of this program.

In fact, NITI Aayog is continuously working in order to foster cooperative federalism by ranking the states according to the health, water, education via the agricultural indices.

Which States are Selected in the Sath Program?

The government initiated a plan for a transformative change in the Health and Educational sectors. Thus, NITI Aayog has selected three main states under this program:

• Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and Karnataka were included in this program to improve healthcare delivery and the major outcomes were expected from these states.

• Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand were selected in the educational sector for the process of better learning.

The chosen states are committed to the deadline time as directed by the government. 

Growth Metrics 

Metrics like MMR (expanded as measles, mumps, and rubella) and IMR (expanded as infant mortality rate), this incidence of malaria and others are also considered for determining the potentiality which throws impact on the density of the doctors and the nurses, all such other compliances are also done to the IPHS (expanded as Indian Public Health Standards) norms which are some of the metrics that are being used to determine the likelihood of success.

This is expected that the focused attention and the support from the premier think tank will also lead to another marked transformation which will provide a unique growth potential model for other States which will replicate and adapt the growth.

The program is to be implemented by the Aayog with McKinsey and the other Company as well as the IPE Global consortium, they were selected through the competitive bidding process.

From this above, it thus gets clear that the SATH program is definitely a major push in the competitive market and cooperative federalism also works in this field. This growth is channeled in the NITI Aayog with the partnership of the three States which helps to transform the Health and Educational sectors of the selected states.

Achievements Achieved by the Sath Program

1. Learning gets enhanced via this program and remedial teaching with good workbook support is also done with approximately 2.3 crore students who have the same implementation.  

2. Academic monitoring is also done of these schools and students which are streamlined, coming down to nearly 1.5 lakh inspections which are being carried out each month.

3. Comprehensive rewards and other recognition programs are also organized, which includes external certifications, of such initiation.

4. Assessment reforms are also done, this includes spot testing and learning all other tracking formats, which are newly introduced.

5. In this program, multiple rounds of teacher training are also undertaken.

6. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, approximately 30% of the students are shifted from the lower-level foundation literacy, numeracy learning cohorts to the highest learning level designed for the grades 3–8 in two years of the ‘Dakshta Unnayan’ which is the learning enhancement program of the Sath program.

7. In the state of Odisha, the average improvement of the children is 10–15% as observed in their learning outcomes due to the ‘Ujjwal-Utthan’ which is a learning enhancement program for the students.

8. In the state of Jharkhand,12% improvement was measured across the state. This was recorded through the ‘Gyan Setu’ learning enhancement program as implemented in the state.

9. For the Covid-19 pandemic, SATH-E is being adapted which is a ‘Digi-SATH’ app that helps to provide unended support via the digital mediums.

10. Via the Digi-SATH initiative application, Madhya Pradesh started a new online campaign of ‘Hamara Ghar Hamara Vidyalaya’ and the ‘Digi-LEP’ (or the ‘Digital Learning Enhancement Programme’), in Odisha’s ‘Shiksha Sanjog’ and ‘Shiksha Sampark’, is started and in Jharkhand ‘Hamara Doordarshan Hamara Vidyalaya’ all of them are contributing the online education and teaching training for the teachers.

Merging of the Schools

In the year 2017, Odisha is acknowledged among the three states, including Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, which is selected by the NITI Aayog for the implementation of the project.

This initiative is aimed to transform elementary and secondary school education which is dedicated through the goal-driven exercise and to create the role model states for the educational purpose. This initiative is supposed to reach its apex or climax point at the end of the 2020 academic year.

The critical interventions are also included here. Interventions like school mergers, remediation programs, training, monitoring the teacher and faculty. Recruitment or rationalization of the teaching staff, institutional reorganization at the district and at the state level with proper utilization of the Management Information System (abbreviated as MIS) are in the execution mode starting from January 2018.

The merger of schools is done to consolidate the resources like teachers, libraries, laboratories, and play equipment. MIS helps in assisting the school manager in determining the aims of the school, for formulating the strategic plans laid, for distributing the resources, and for evaluating the staff performance which will boost up the organizational growth.

Progress checks of projects are also monitored through the National Steering Group (abbreviated as NSG) and Central Project Monitoring Unit (CPMU) at the national level and State Project Monitoring Unit (SPMU) at the State level.

Did You Know?

• The government of Odisha has identified around 8,000 schools in 15 different districts which are being merged with other schools this is done due to the low enrolment (less than 20 students) of the students. The merger is also being carried out under NITI Aayog’s Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital in Education (SATH-E) project, this has been termed for the Consolidation and for the Rationalisation of the schools.

• Why is the SATH program challenging and an ambitious initiative?
  SATH is quite challenging. It is an ambitious initiative by the government as the baseline of the indicators used, the parameters of education, and the health in the States are in the public domain. This also defines a totally new dimension for cooperative federalism, where the NITI Aayog and the knowledge partner are actively aiding the implementations of their own recommendations. From the day of signing of this MoU, all the stakeholders will be under the pressure which will initiate the reforms or the processes for showing the improvement in the educational and in the learning outcomes.

“SATH-E aspires to be a ‘saathi’, to the educational system with the student and the teacher at its center”, as said by Shri Amitabh Kant, here he underscores the significance of the project SATH-E. “The aim is to make the entire governmental school education system responsive, aspirational and transformational for every child” He further says. Thus, we see the program initiated by the Government of India is a very thoughtful process that helps in the growth of the country at large.