Strategies to Improve Student Learning Levels

We have laid the foundation of our plan with a strong vision and data-driven goals. Now, we enter the heart of our school: the classroom. A school building is just bricks and mortar without learning. The ultimate purpose of our School Development Plan is to answer one critical question: “How will we ensure that every child in our school is learning and achieving their potential?”

This section is about moving from planning to pedagogy. We will explore practical, classroom-level strategies to identify and bridge learning gaps, helping our students climb the ladder of learning, from Grade ‘C’ to ‘B’, and from ‘B’ to ‘A’.

Finding the Gaps: Analyzing Your Assessment Results

Before we can help a student improve, we must first understand exactly where they are struggling. Our Formative Assessments (FA) and Summative Assessments (SA) are not just for giving marks; they are powerful diagnostic tools. Think of FAs as regular check-ups during the learning process, and SAs as the final health report at the end of a term. Both give us valuable information.

However, just looking at the total score is not enough. Knowing that a student scored 35 out of 100 in Maths tells us they are struggling, but it doesn’t tell us why. We need to perform a simple item analysis to find the specific learning gaps. Here’s how:

  • Create a Simple Chart: After an exam (like FA-1 or SA-1), take a plain sheet of paper. Write the names of your students down the left side and the question numbers across the top.

  • Mark the Errors: For each student, put a cross (X) under the questions they answered incorrectly.

  • Look for Patterns: Now, look at the columns, not the rows. Do you see a column with many crosses? If most of your students got Question 5 wrong, it doesn’t mean the students are weak; it means there was a problem in how that specific concept was taught or understood.

  • Identify the Concept: What was Question 5 about? Was it two-digit subtraction with borrowing? Was it identifying verbs in a sentence? You have now moved from a vague problem (“students are weak in Maths”) to a specific, solvable problem (“students are struggling with subtraction with borrowing”). This is your identified learning gap.

Training your teachers to do this kind of simple analysis after every assessment will build a culture of responsive teaching, where instruction is continuously adjusted based on real student needs.

Bridging the Gaps: Evidence-Based Remedial Teaching

Once you have identified the specific learning gap, you need a plan to bridge it. Remedial teaching does not mean shouting the same lesson louder. It means teaching the concept differently, using methods that cater to students who may have missed it the first time. Here are some proven, low-cost strategies that work wonders in our classrooms:

  • Peer Tutoring (“Little Teachers”): In every class, some students grasp a concept faster than others. Pair these students with those who are struggling. The “little teacher” reinforces their own learning by explaining it, and the struggling student gets one-on-one help from a friend in a non-threatening way.

  • Multi-sensory Approach: Children learn through all their senses. Don’t just rely on the textbook (visual). Use rhymes and songs to teach tables (auditory). Use stones, sticks, or tamarind seeds for counting and addition (tactile). Have students physically act out a story or a scientific process (kinesthetic). This makes learning concrete and memorable, especially for younger children.

  • Gamification: Turn boring drills into exciting games. Instead of a worksheet of 20 sums, make it a “Maths Challenge” where teams compete to solve problems on the blackboard. Use simple rewards like a star sticker or applause for the winning team. Competition and fun are powerful motivators.

  • Individualized Education Plan (IEP): For a few students who are lagging significantly behind, create a very simple, one-page IEP. This is not a complicated document. It should just have the student’s name, one or two specific learning goals for the month (e.g., “Will be able to read 10 new sight words”), and the specific strategies you will use (e.g., “Daily 10-minute flashcard practice”). This focuses your effort and tracks progress effectively.

Strengthening the Foundation: ‘Pade Bharat – Bade Bharat’ in Action

These remedial strategies are not just good ideas; they are directly aligned with our national mission to achieve Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) for all children by the end of Grade 3. The ‘Padhe Bharat – Bade Bharat’ (PBBB) initiative provides a clear framework for this, and in Andhra Pradesh, programs like SALT (Supporting Andhra’s Learning Transformation) and the 60-day teacher training on FLN are designed to equip us with these very skills.

Here are some PBBB activities you can implement immediately and document in your SDP:

  • For Literacy:

  • Vibrant Reading Corners: Every Class 1 and 2 classroom must have a dedicated, accessible corner with a variety of colourful, age-appropriate books in Telugu and English. These should be displayed attractively, not locked in a cupboard.

  • Print-Rich Environment: Use the classroom walls. Display children’s own drawings and writings, charts with poems and stories, and pictures with captions. This makes print meaningful and inviting.

  • Local Content: Use local stories, folk songs, and rhymes as reading material. Children connect better with content that reflects their own culture and language.

  • For Numeracy:

  • Maths in Daily Life: Connect mathematical concepts to the real world. Use the mid-day meal to teach counting and division. Use the school garden to teach measurement.

  • Activity-Based Learning: Use puzzles, simple board games, and hands-on activities with low-cost materials to make learning Maths a joyful experience, not a fearful one.

Documenting Your Strategy in the SDP

When you describe these strategies in the “Quality Education” section of your SDP, be specific. Don’t just write “We will do remedial teaching.” Instead, write:

“Based on our SA-1 analysis, which showed that 55% of Class 3 students struggle with multiplication, our remedial action plan for the year will include: 1) Implementing peer tutoring sessions for 30 minutes twice a week. 2) Using multi-sensory aids like counting beads and songs to teach multiplication tables. 3) Conducting a weekly ‘Maths Challenge’ game to improve speed and accuracy. These activities are aligned with the state’s FLN mission and the principles of ‘Padhe Bharat – Bade Bharat’.”

This shows you have a clear, evidence-based, and actionable plan to improve learning in your school.

Identifying and Articulating Best Practices

As school heads, you and your teachers are innovators. Every day, you find creative solutions to complex challenges. You might not call them “best practices,” but that’s what they are. A best practice is not necessarily a large, expensive, award-winning program. More often, it is a simple, smart idea that works effectively in your specific school context.49

The “Best Practices” section of your School Development Plan is a wonderful opportunity to move away from a deficit-based mindset (“what we don’t have”) to an asset-based one (“what we do well”). It’s a chance to celebrate your school’s unique strengths and formally recognize the excellent work that is already happening.

What Counts as a “Best Practice”?

A best practice is any method, activity, or initiative that has proven to be successful in improving student learning, teacher morale, parent engagement, or the overall school environment. Let’s think about some examples that are very real for our schools in Andhra Pradesh:

  • Innovative Teaching: A social studies teacher who uses the village map and interviews with elders to teach local history, making the lesson come alive.

  • Community Engagement: An active SMC that successfully mobilized parent volunteers to plant trees and create a beautiful school garden, improving the school environment and providing vegetables for the mid-day meal.

  • Resource Management: A group of primary teachers who have created a shared bank of low-cost/no-cost Teaching-Learning Materials (TLMs) from locally available resources, ensuring every classroom is well-equipped.

  • Student Well-being: A school that starts its day with a 5-minute mindfulness exercise or simple yoga, which has been shown to improve student focus and reduce anxiety.

  • Parent Partnership: A Class 1 teacher who uses a simple WhatsApp group not for complaints, but to share one positive photo or update about the day’s activities, making parents feel connected and positive about the school.

  • Technology Use: A teacher who uses their smartphone/Laptop/School-TV to show short, educational videos from platforms like DIKSHA to explain a difficult scientific concept.

Recognizing these small but significant successes is the first step. The next is to document them in a way that their value is understood by others.

How to Articulate Your Best Practice in the SDP

Documenting a best practice is not about boasting. It is a crucial form of knowledge management. When you formally record what works, you are creating a blueprint for success that can be shared with new teachers and sustained even if a key person is transferred. It builds institutional memory.

A good description of a best practice should be clear, concise, and structured. Use this simple three-part framework for each practice you identify:

  • The Practice (What we do): Describe the activity itself. Be specific and clear.

  • The Purpose (Why we do it): Explain the problem this practice solves or the goal it helps achieve.

  • The Impact (How we know it works): This is the most important part. Provide evidence of its success. This doesn’t have to be a complex statistic. It can be an observation, a piece of data, or feedback from students or parents.

By structuring your description this way, you are not just listing an activity; you are presenting a case study of successful innovation in your school. This demonstrates your capacity for improvement and leadership. It shifts the narrative of your SDP from a plan of deficits to a plan of strengths that can be built upon.

Example Template for the SDP

Here is how you could structure a best practice in your plan document:

Best Practice Title: “Telugu Velugu” – A Community-Led Reading Program

  • Description of the Practice (What we do): “Once a week, we invite educated community members—retired employees, college students, and literate parents—to our school for a ‘Telugu Velugu’ hour. During this time, they sit with small groups of students from Classes 3-5 and read Telugu storybooks with them, helping them with difficult words and discussing the story.”

  • Purpose/Goal Addressed (Why we do it): “This practice was started to address the learning gap in reading fluency and comprehension identified in our school assessments. The goal is to provide personalized reading support to students, foster a love for reading in our mother tongue, and strengthen the school-community bond, as envisioned in NEP 2020.”

  • Evidence of Impact (How we know it works): “Since starting this program six months ago, we have observed a 15% improvement in the reading speeds of participating students in our informal assessments. Furthermore, our school library’s book borrowing rate has doubled, and feedback from both students and community volunteers has been overwhelmingly positive, creating a vibrant learning atmosphere.”

By documenting your successes in this structured way, you are not only taking pride in your work but also creating a valuable resource for your own school and a source of inspiration for others.

Creating a Teacher Professional Development Plan

The National Education Policy 2020 states it clearly: “The teacher must be at the centre of the fundamental reforms in the education system”. We know this is true. The quality of our school is determined by the quality of our teachers. Therefore, investing in their professional growth is the single most important investment we can make for our students’ future.

Creating a Teacher Professional Development (TPD) plan in your SDP is not just about listing training programs. It’s about strategically building the capacity of your team to meet your school’s specific goals. Let’s break down how to do this in a simple, evidence-based way.

How to Know What Your Teachers Need (Training Needs Analysis)

A good training plan doesn’t come from guesswork. It comes from evidence. Before you decide on the “what” of the training, you must first understand the “why.” This process is called a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). It ensures that the training you plan is relevant and will have a real impact. Here are three simple ways to conduct a TNA in your school:

  • Start with Student Data: Your students’ performance is the most direct indicator of teaching needs. Look at the learning gap analysis we discussed earlier. If your assessment data consistently shows that students in multiple classes are struggling with fractions, it’s a clear sign that your Maths teachers need targeted training on the pedagogy of teaching fractions.

  • Ask Your Teachers (Teacher Self-Assessment): Your teachers often know their own strengths and weaknesses best. Create a simple, anonymous survey (using paper or a free tool like Google Forms). Ask them to rate their confidence level (e.g., from 1 to 5) in key areas relevant to NEP 2020:

  • “Using technology (DIKSHA, smart boards) in my classroom.”

  • “Creating and using competency-based assessment questions.”

  • “Managing a classroom with diverse learning needs (inclusive education).”

  • “Implementing activity-based and experiential learning.” The areas with the lowest average confidence scores are your priority for training.

  • Observe and Reflect (Classroom Observation): As the school head, you have a unique vantage point. During your academic rounds, what common patterns do you observe? Do you see a heavy reliance on the lecture-and-chalk method? Is student engagement low? Are teachers struggling with classroom management? These observations are valuable data points for your TNA.

Filling the “Teachers Training Requirements” Table with Justification

Now that you have your evidence, you can fill the training table in your SDP with confidence and strong justification. This justification is key to getting your training proposals approved and funded.

Example Entry in the SDP:

Training NeededNumber of TeachersJustification (Based on TNA)Pedagogy for Foundational Numeracy (FLN)4 (All teachers of Classes 1 & 2)“Our school’s SA-1 analysis revealed that 60% of students in Classes 1-3 are below grade-level in basic numeracy. This training is critical to implement the state’s FLN mission and achieve our SDP goal of improving foundational skills.“Competency-Based Assessment Design6 (All Maths & Science teachers)“A self-assessment survey showed that 80% of our senior teachers feel under-confident in creating higher-order thinking and competency-based questions as required by the new NEP-aligned assessment reforms. This training is essential to improve the quality of our internal assessments.”

Demystifying the 50-Hour CPD Mandate

NEP 2020 mandates that every teacher must participate in at least 50 hours of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) every year. This might sound daunting, but the policy also provides great flexibility. It’s a shift from the old model of one long training every few years to a more continuous, teacher-driven approach.

The 50 hours are not meant to be from a single source. They can be accumulated through a portfolio of different activities. As a school head, your role is to help your teachers plan and access a diverse mix of opportunities. Here is a sample plan for a teacher, using models from KVS and CBSE as a guide:

  • State/District-led Offline Training (approx. 24-36 hours): This includes the mandatory residential and non-residential trainings organized by Samagra Shiksha, DIETs, or SCERT on priority areas like FLN or new textbooks. A 6-day residential training, for instance, can count for 36 hours (6 hours per day).

  • Online Self-Paced Courses (approx. 10-15 hours): Encourage teachers to take high-quality online courses on platforms like DIKSHA and NISHTHA. There are excellent modules on Inclusive Education, ICT Skills, Health and Wellness, etc. The certificate for these courses mentions the number of hours.

  • School/Cluster-based Professional Learning (approx. 5-10 hours): This is where you, as a school leader, have the most agency. You can design and facilitate in-house CPD that is directly linked to your SDP goals. These activities are highly valuable and can be certified by you as the Head of School. Examples include:

  • Organizing a peer observation program where teachers observe each other’s classes and give constructive feedback.

  • Conducting a small-scale Action Research project to solve a classroom problem.

  • Having a teacher who attended a state-level training conduct a workshop to share their learnings with colleagues.

  • Encouraging teachers to write a reflective journal or a blog post about a new teaching strategy they tried.

By planning CPD this way, you ensure it is not a disconnected compliance activity. It becomes a strategic tool, directly fueling your school’s journey towards its improvement goals. When a teacher attends a workshop on “low-cost science experiments,” it’s not just to complete their 50 hours; it’s to directly support the SDP goal of improving student engagement in science. This is how you build a true learning culture—for students and teachers alike.

Read the Other Modules Here:

Series Start: School Development Plan Guide

Training Module 1: Laying the Foundation: Vision, Goals, and Data

Training Module 2: The Heart of the Plan: Quality Education and Teacher Development

Training Module 3: Execution and Management: From Plan to Action