What Actually Changes Schools: Lessons from the Schools That Have Improved

What Actually Changes Government Schools: The Evidence From India’s Own Success Stories

A contributing voice from school practice | Specialist in curriculum, pedagogy, and school leadership

Across India, some government schools have genuinely, measurably improved, and the clearest documented case is closer than most people realise: Delhi’s public school system, serving 1.5 million students, saw its Class 12 pass rate reach 98% by 2019-20 — above both the national average (89%) and Delhi’s own private schools (92%) — following a sustained, decade-long reform effort with specific, identifiable mechanisms behind it, not a single policy change.

Key facts

• Delhi’s education budget grew nearly tenfold following reforms beginning in 2015, sustained at roughly 27% annual growth — among the highest of any Indian state — rather than a one-time allocation.
• By 2019-20, Delhi government schools’ Class 12 pass rate reached 98%, compared with the national average of 89% and Delhi’s own private schools at 92%; Class 10 results, while still below the national average, closed from 21 percentage points behind in 2017 to 9.8 points behind by 2019-20.
• A specific remedial mechanism — the “Chunauti” programme, launched in 2016 — regrouped students in Grades 6-8 by their actual reading and maths ability rather than by grade level alone, pairing this with a four-month targeted campaign; Class 9 pass rates rose from 52% in 2015-16 to 57% in 2017-18 as a direct, measured result.
• Visible improvement produced a real behavioural shift: an estimated 2.5 lakh children moved from private schools into Delhi government schools, reversing a long-running enrollment trend toward private education.
• The reform’s outcomes were not uniform — Class 9 results, in particular, showed persistently weak performance even after the same level of investment applied elsewhere, a genuine limitation worth stating rather than smoothing over.
• Separately, a rigorous IDinsight/World Bank-funded randomised controlled trial evaluating STIR Education’s purely motivational, teacher-focused model — tested across 180 Delhi-area private schools and 270 government schools in Uttar Pradesh — isolated teacher motivation and agency specifically as a mechanism distinct from broader systemic reform, offering causal (not just observational) evidence for one piece of what changes classroom practice.

The mechanisms are specific enough to name, and not all of them require Delhi’s budget

A tenfold budget increase is not replicable by an individual school. Regrouping Grade 6-8 students by their actual reading level, rather than by the grade printed on their roll number, is — and it’s the specific mechanism with the clearest, most direct evidence behind it in this entire case.

This distinction is the most useful thing a headmaster can take from Delhi’s experience. Some of what changed the system — sustained, decade-long budget growth; systemic infrastructure renewal — genuinely requires resources and political continuity beyond any single school’s control. But Chunauti’s core insight, ability-based regrouping for remedial instruction, is a diagnostic and instructional choice a school can make internally, and it’s the mechanism most directly tied to a measured outcome (the five-point jump in Class 9 pass rates) in the entire case study. The mentor-teacher coaching model — experienced teachers supporting colleagues directly, rather than only top-down inspection — is similarly replicable at much smaller scale.

Five principles drawn from what actually happened, not from generic school-improvement theory

1. Diagnose actual learning level, not grade placement, before designing a response. Chunauti’s specific mechanism — regrouping students by demonstrated reading and maths ability rather than assumed grade-level competence — is the single most concretely evidenced intervention in this case, tied directly to a measured Class 9 pass-rate improvement.
2. Build peer-based mentor-teacher relationships, not just top-down inspection. Delhi’s reform specifically included experienced teachers coaching colleagues directly — a relationship-based mechanism distinct from, and complementing, the administrative reforms happening simultaneously.
3. Sustain investment and effort over years, not a single announced initiative. The nearly tenfold budget growth was sustained at roughly 27% annually over multiple years — a single large allocation without that sustained pattern would not explain the same outcomes.
4. Recognise that visible improvement builds its own community trust. The 2.5 lakh students who moved from private back into Delhi government schools weren’t recruited by a marketing campaign — they followed families’ direct observation of genuine change, a community-trust mechanism that compounds on itself once real improvement is visible.
5. Start with what’s replicable at your own scale — ability-based regrouping for remedial instruction — regardless of your school’s budget. A school does not need Delhi’s decade of sustained funding to apply the same diagnostic logic Chunauti used: identify students’ actual skill level and group instruction accordingly, rather than assuming grade placement reflects ability.

Frequently asked questions

Did Delhi’s school reform actually work, or is the improvement overstated? The measured outcomes are real and specific — a 98% Class 12 pass rate above both the national average and Delhi’s own private schools, a documented private-to-government enrollment shift of 2.5 lakh students — but the improvement was uneven: Class 9 results remained persistently weak despite the same investment, which is worth knowing rather than treating the reform as uniformly successful across every grade.

What was the single most replicable mechanism from Delhi’s experience, for a school without similar resources? Ability-based regrouping for remedial instruction — the Chunauti programme’s core method of grouping students by actual demonstrated skill level rather than grade placement — is the mechanism most directly tied to a measured outcome and the one least dependent on Delhi’s scale of budget investment.

Is there rigorous, causal evidence — not just observational data — that specific school-improvement mechanisms work in Indian contexts? Yes: a randomised controlled trial evaluating a purely motivational, teacher-focused model (STIR Education, evaluated by IDinsight with World Bank funding) across both private schools in Delhi and government schools in Uttar Pradesh isolated teacher motivation and agency specifically as a causal mechanism, separate from infrastructure or curriculum reform.

Did every grade level and outcome measure improve in Delhi, or were results mixed? Genuinely mixed — Class 12 results were the strongest, Class 10 improved but remained below the national average, and Class 9 outcomes stayed persistently weak despite the same reforms being applied — a specific limitation worth naming rather than treating the case as an unqualified success story.

What to do:

1. Identify which specific grade or subject in your school most resembles Delhi’s Grade 6-8 gap — students placed by grade level whose actual skill is meaningfully behind — and consider whether ability-based regrouping for remedial instruction is feasible this term.
2. Speak with one colleague or headmaster who has tried ability-based grouping or peer mentor-teaching, and ask specifically what made it work or fail in their context.
3. Read coverage of Delhi’s Chunauti and Mission Buniyad programmes, or the STIR Education randomised evaluation, and share one specific mechanism — not just the headline outcome — with your headmaster this week.
4. Propose one concrete, small-scale version of ability-based regrouping or peer mentor-teaching within your school’s existing capacity, rather than a broader initiative requiring new budget.
5. Set a review date four weeks out to check whether the specific change produced any measurable difference, and write it down today.

Sources: ThePrint, “Here’s the syllabus Kejriwal govt followed to change the fate of Delhi’s public schools”; Education Next, “Inside the ‘Delhi Education Revolution'”; Asia News Network, “Revitalising Delhi’s school system: A triumphant journey”; The Bastion, “The 4 Pillars of Delhi’s School Education Reforms”; Economic Survey of Delhi, 2022-23, Chapter 15; World Bank Data Catalog, STIR Education impact evaluation (IDinsight, 2015-2017).