Shaala Siddhi - What is ShaalaSiddhi?

For providing quality education to all children in the Indian education system, there is a need for improving the performance of the schools and establishing effective schools.

For a comprehensive evaluation of the schools to improve the quality of school education in India, the National Programme on School Standards and Evaluation (NPSSE), also known as Shaala Siddhi, was initiated by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), with the support of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.

What is Shaala Siddhi?

The NPSSE (Shaala Siddhi) is an initiative for evaluating schools and improving school education quality, which includes both the elementary and secondary levels. It seeks to support the continuous evaluation of every school for its development and improvement.

The Shaala Siddhi programme aims to reach 1.62 million schools in the country. It intends for developing a common understanding across stakeholders of the what, how and why of school evaluation. As a part of Shaala Siddhi endeavour, the School Standards and Evaluation Framework (SSEF) is developed as an instrument for evaluating school performance.

The SSEF will help the schools for evaluating their performances against well-defined criteria in a strategic and focused manner. The SSEF has flexibility that makes it highly suitable for adaptation, contextualisation and translation in state-specific languages. It is designed as a strategic instrument for both external and self-evaluation.

The ‘School Evaluation Dashboard e-Samiksha’ is developed as part of the SSEF to facilitate each school for providing a consolidated evaluation report, including prioritising areas for improvement. Each school needs to log into the School Evaluation Dashboard and provide their evaluation details. The evaluation details of the schools will be consolidated at a block, cluster, district, state, and national level to identify common areas of intervention to improve school performance and school-specific needs. 

National Programme On School Standards And Evaluation (NPSSE)

The means of NPSSE is ‘School Evaluation’ as the goal of NPSSE is ‘School Improvement’. It aims at evaluating the individual school and its performance continuously and holistically, which leads to the improvement in an incremental manner. 

The primary objectives of ShaalaSiddhi are as follows:

• Developing a technically sound conceptual framework, instrument, methodology, and process of school evaluation that suits the diversity of Indian schools. 
• Creating an institutional mechanism and developing a critical mass of human resources for the contextualisation and adaptation of the school evaluation practices and framework across the states. 
• Developing schools’ capacity and system-level functionaries to institutionalise school evaluation with an aim to improve the schools continuously and sustainably. 
• For facilitating the system to analyse school evaluation reports and be responsive to school-specific needs across systemic levels for initiating appropriate policy interventions.

School Standards And Evaluation Framework (SSEF)

The School Standards and Evaluation Framework (SSEF) is developed as a comprehensive instrument for evaluating schools, keeping in mind the diversity of schools and children in the country. It aims to facilitate the schools to evaluate their performance in a strategic and focused manner and enable them to make a professional judgment. 

The SSEF not only facilitates the evaluation process of the schools but also provides pathways for improvements and changes. Every school can evaluate its present performance level and obtain concrete directions for undertaking the next level of improvement. 

The SSEF contains seven ‘Key Domains’ as the essential criteria to evaluate the performance of schools. The seven key domains are as follows:

• Enabling resources of schools.
• Teaching-Learning and assessment.
• Learners’ progress attainment.
• Managing teacher performance.
• School leadership and management.
• Inclusion, health and safety.
• Productive community participation.

Self Evaluation By The Schools

The self-evaluation by the schools is considered as the nucleus of the evaluation process. The Shaala Siddhi aids the schools to evaluate their critical performance areas. The school as a whole should involve itself in the self-evaluation process. The schools have to follow certain guidelines for making an accurate professional judgment. The guidelines for the self-evaluation process are as follows: 

• Building preparedness.
• Capturing stakeholder voices.
• Collecting evidence.
• Classroom observation.
• School observations.
• Identifying and recording the status of school functioning.
• Review of documents.
• Formulation of the Action for Continuous Improvement Plan (ACIP).
• Identifying strengths and opportunities for improvement.
• Integration of ACIP with School Development Plan.

Uploading School Evaluation Report On The Portal

The schools need to upload their evaluation reports on the ‘School Evaluation Dashboard’. The dashboard can be accessed through the website of ShaalaSiddhi. The process of uploading the evaluation report for first-time users are as follows:

• Click on the ‘New User’ button under the ‘Login’ tab on the homepage if it’s a first time user. 
• This will direct the user to the ‘School Evaluation Dashboard’ page.
• The user needs to fill in the ‘New User Details’ such as levels (The first-time user should select the ‘School Level User’), UDISE code, First and last name and the email or mobile number.
• Next, enter the password.
• On successful creation of the password, the user will be directed to the home page.
• The schools need to click on the icon on the screen’s left-hand side and fill up the dashboard and submit it.

Once the account is created, the schools can log in directly to the ‘Shaala Siddhi’ website and fill up the dashboard and submit the evaluation report.