‘Performing and Visual Arts’ Ambedkar Schools of Specialized Excellence (ASoSE): Mainstreaming Arts as education in the formal school set up

Performing and Visual Arts ASoSE(s) represents India’s first bold endeavour to reimagine secondary education that currently offers students only 3 pathways. This innovative public school model offers learning in ‘Music’, ‘Visual Arts’ and ‘Filmmaking Acting and Media Studies’ for low-income students with creative aptitude/interests. They empower students with artistic interests to unlock aspirational higher-ed and career pathways in the creative field of their choice alongside pursuing academic studies.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Until September 2021, in India, an underprivileged child with artistic interests had negligible opportunities to explore and hone their creative talent due to limited means and constrained access. The potential of these young artists remained untapped while the traditional school-education trajectory forced them to fit into boxes of Science, Humanities or Commerce. On the other hand, India’s Media and Entertainment Industry which is rapidly accelerating towards a $10-15Bn market (by 2030) grappled with the need for talented artists and creative professionals - a golden under-capitalized opportunity. This was until the Delhi Government innovated a first-of-its-kind pioneering public school-model - ‘Performing and Visual Arts’ Dr. BR Ambedkar Schools of Specialized Excellence (PVA ASoSE) affiliated to the state’s newly established Delhi Board of School Education.

Performing and Visual Arts ASoSE(s) were set up with a vision to become a launch pad that empowers underprivileged students with artistic interests to unlock aspirational higher-ed and career pathways. The school nurtures young artists through an immersive four-year journey (Grade 9-12) of experiential learning in their chosen creative fields while also incorporating foundational academic subjects. The unique proposition of the school is not only that it pioneers industry-oriented and in-depth progressive learning of creative arts within schools, but that students’ chosen creative subjects are curricular, assessed, and hold at-par weightage in their exams as other academic subjects.

The launch of these schools took place in September 2021 with grade 9 admissions into 2 pilot schools and 2 more were added in 2022. Students in these schools choose one amongst 3 creative fields - Music; Visual Arts; Filmmaking, Acting and Media Studies, each of which has been carefully selected based on career/higher-ed opportunities and areas of student interest. For any selected creative field, 2 curricular subjects called ‘specialized subjects’ are taught to the students for 1-hr each every day while the rest of the school day incorporates ‘foundational subjects’ (grade-relevant academic subjects). For each creative-field, a top-tier Indian higher-ed institute has been on-boarded as the government’s ‘Knowledge Partner’ to develop industry-relevant curriculum and assessments. Through the network of these Knowledge Partners, the Delhi Board of School Education has identified professionals with experience of having worked in the respective industry to teach ‘specialized subjects’. This not only ensures high standards of pedagogy rooted in real industry-experience of teachers but also gives students a career role-model to look up to and learn from.

Student’s learning trajectory in the chosen creative-arts field includes in-class experiential learning, out-of-school exposure through field visits, career awareness building guest sessions led by imminent industry professionals and most interesting of all - independent projects. Each of these activities have been knit together in a structured manner to ensure holistic development of the student. For instance, Visual Art students learnt the art of mural making in their schools, conducted a visit to art-exhibitions where they observed state-of-art murals and then finally created a mural-artwork for Michael and Susan Dell Foundation’s India office as their independent project. Similarly, Music students learnt to play their chosen instrument during classes, interacted with the famous singer - Monica Dogra in their schools and performed at Alliance Francaise Delhi. Each of these are real anecdotes from 4 pilot Performing and Visual Art ASoSE(s) that truly demonstrate the well-rounded and in-depth learning that students experience at these schools.

Two forward looking critical priorities for the schools are - expansion of its footprint to more public-schools in Delhi and upscaling state-of-art pioneering infrastructure facilities within schools. Students in the PVA SoSE(s) belong to humble backgrounds and therefore lack access to equipment such as music instruments, high quality art-supplies or camera phones/cameras - each of which is critical to enable a practical learning experience in respective subjects. While schools are already equipped with foundational learning equipment, a key priority is to build professional labs/studios in which students can gain professional exposure within schools, bridging the access gap. Second, the Delhi government envisions to expand school footprint with the goal of enabling more children pan-Delhi to experience this model of education. The Delhi government, with the launch of PVA ASoSEs, is thus leading a disruptive shift from conventional teaching to student-aptitude led learning

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

PVA SoSEs pioneers an innovative school-model that has brought Music, Visual Art from ‘miscellaneous’ to ‘formal, career-oriented and curricular’ studies while introducing new areas like ‘Filmmaking and Media Studies’. The uniqueness of this endeavour manifests in the school’s curriculum, assessments, and pedagogy. The curriculum eradicates typical rote-learning methods by introducing ‘inquiry-based learning’ where students’ curiosity leads teaching. Assessments mirror this pedagogy, in that, they shift from conventional Indian methods of written paper checking to assessments using a diverse set of tools such as projects, tech exercises, research work, etc. Pedagogy enables experiential learning through independent projects and practical learning led by teachers who are industry professionals and bring real-world experiences into classrooms

What is the current status of your innovation?

As of September 2022, the innovation was conceptualized and PVA SoSEs was launched in 4 pilot schools. Over the past year, two rounds of admissions (September 2021, upon launch) and (March 2022, upon the beginning of the new academic session) were taken in Grade 9. In the upcoming academic session, we will welcome the first Grade 11 batch (currently in Grade 10). This will be a key pivot point of the program as Grade 11-12 involves deeper specialization, higher order curriculum, and greater project-led pedagogy. Key focus areas are to
complete curriculum planning along with Knowledge Partners and build industry partnerships with professionals/corporates to create capstone project and internship opportunities. Also, to up-scale school infrastructure to develop professional labs to support higher order curriculum transactions and help students practice in-school, bridging the access gap. Finally, also to increase career-awareness building sessions and initiate preparation for higher-ed entrance exams.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

Knowledge Partners - Music: Global Music Institute affiliated with Berklee School of Music, Visual Art: Srishti Manipal Institute, Filmmaking, Acting and Media Studies: Whistling Woods International
Expert Advisors - A diverse set of expert professionals and academia from across the world have been engaged (primarily pro-bono) over the past year
Project Management Unit - PMU ASoSE: Boston Consulting Group, PMU DBSE: ACER: Australian Council for Research

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Beneficiaries of these schools are Delhi students belonging to low-income families. In the pilot year, through 4 schools, we are impacting ~500 students and their parents (>30% y-o-y scale-up). The conceptualization, launch, and operationalization of these pioneering schools have been made possible by a number of critical stakeholders:

Willing and motivated political leadership
Government officials, teachers and administrative leadership
Knowledge partners and project management units

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

While early impact results in the pilot year are evolving, qualitative evidence of impact is consistently visible:

~2000 students applied for 300 seats offered in the admissions cycle 2022-2 (1:6 selection ratio) demonstrating high student traction
~30% of these applications were from private school students, reversing the typical student migration trend
Leading top-tier private higher-ed institutes such as WWI, SMI were interested to partner and become part of this revolutionary shift
98% of students reported receiving greater exposure, improved learning, more career-awareness and higher engagement with schools
Students are already securing opportunities to do formal projects/performances
Music students performed at the 10-yr anniversary of the Global Music Institute
Visual Art students created a mural-art at Michael and Susan Dell Foundation’s office
As part of the responses received from Parent- teacher interactions highlighted that parents of >90% students said that their child was happy

Challenges and Failures

Awareness building: It was extremely challenging for parents, teachers, and school-heads to internalize ‘Performing and Visual Art’ as curricular subjects that are formally taught and assessed with the goal of enabling students to pursue the field via formal higher-ed/career pathways
School operations: To operationalize ‘Music’ that offers 6 different instrument choices, ‘Visual Arts’ and ‘Filmmaking, Acting and Media Studies’ in each school in addition to foundational subjects in a manner that efficiently employs teacher and space resources was a unique complexity to solve for
Stakeholder management: The project involved multiple stakeholders - 3 Knowledge Partner teams, 4 Schools, DBSE stakeholders, and 40+ external teachers, translating to complexity in ensuring stakeholder alignment and smooth operations
Teacher Management: ~10 external and ~4 internal teachers are onboarded in each school, leading to complexity in managing co-working dynamics within the school system

Conditions for Success

The most important enablers of success for this program have been:

Strong school management: A cohesive school-management team led by a strong leader (school head) is essential to ensuring that the curriculum is translated effectively into class
Best-in-class Knowledge Partners: An experienced knowledge partner is critical to developing a high-quality curriculum, and assessments, and to anchoring teacher training, student exposure, etc. which is core to the success of the program
Streamlined operations: A well-managed team on-ground (comprising members of knowledge partner teams) is necessary to drive operations of the three creative fields across schools
High-quality teachers: The quality of teachers determines the teaching-learning that student is exposed to and is therefore one of the most critical enablers of success

Replication

As the school model, curriculum, and assessment frameworks have been developed by the Delhi Board of School Education, it is rather seamless to expand the school footprint. Any school in Delhi that is affiliated with the Delhi Board of School Education (public or private) may adopt this model. The Delhi public school footprint is expected to expand to 8-10 schools over the next 2-3 years. Even though we are just at year 1 of the program launch with 4-pilot schools, there is strong traction from state education departments across India who have, over the past year), visited the schools and interacted with DBSE to understand the school model. The SoSE model has also been presented by the Delhi Department of Education in international forums where it attracted a lot of attention. We believe that in years to come as PVA SoSE students begin to graduate, not only with more public and private schools start to affiliate with this model, but other states will also start to adopt it actively.

Lessons Learned

While there may have been many learnings in the journey of setting up PVA schools, three most critical ones are:

Strong end-user centricity: Each aspect of a program must be designed, planned and executed keeping the end-user needs, limitations, and motivations at the core. The end-user may be a student, parent, teacher, school-head, knowledge partner or government stakeholder depending upon context. Regular loops of feedback via school visits or calls are very helpful to improve program success.
Strategic communication: During admissions, we observed some students apply to PVA SoSEs without truly understanding the proposition and goals of the school but rather to simply explore the process, a learning to drive more strategic and targeted outreach to potential applicants
Robust team building: The success of any program is impossible unless the team behind it is highly competent and led by a strong leader. This implies onboarding suitably qualified professionals

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