NEP in Maharashtra: Panchet’s model cluster school highlights gains—and gaps

NEP in Maharashtra: Panchet’s model cluster school highlights gains—and gaps Premium

Every morning in Panchet's Zilla Parishad Cluster School, Headmistress Shabana Javed Khan watches the same scene unfold: tiny figures emerging from a shiny yellow school bus, entering the gate of the school and moving towards their classrooms. Now they have separate painted classrooms, covered textbooks, benches, chalkless smartboards and their own terrace garden where they grow chillies and pumpkins. “The students are very talented beyond their studies, but were never exposed to opportunities…some students are joining school for the first time”, said Ms. Khan.

The Zilla Parishad Panchet Cluster School is a merger of five to six schools in neighboring hamlets. It is an example from Maharashtra of a widely implemented and much debated initiative of government school mergers.

Panchet, a scenic village on the banks of the Mutha river near Pune in Maharashtra, has a population of 700-1000 people. Although the village floods every monsoon, it has seen a comparatively stable establishment of a model school.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 advocates merging small government schools into clusters to improve resource sharing and management. This policy aims to overcome the challenges of running economically suboptimal and operationally complex schools, particularly those with low enrollment or single digit enrollment. This approach faces criticism and legal challenges across India because of its impact on accessibility standards laid out by the Right to Education (RTE) Act.

Under the Central Act and the State's rules, primary schools must be located within one kilometre of a habitation, and upper-primary schools within three kilometres, with free and compulsory education guaranteed for every child aged six to 14. To uphold these norms, the State is required to map every habitat, even the most disaggregated ones, especially in rural and tribal belts.

While Panchet's Zilla Parishad Cluster School stands out in Pune district as a model of how well a merger can work, many other schools continue to struggle with single-digit enrollment and distorted pupil–teacher ratios. At Panchet, 85 of its 156 students travel from hamlets as far as 25–30 km, majority from Scheduled Tribe background, supported by two school buses.

The school has separate classrooms for Classes one to seven, smartboards, furniture, office, corridors, drinking water facilities, functioning toilets, a community hall, a morning assembly space, solar panels, midday meals, terrace garden and trained teachers. Panchet runs with six staff members, mostly women: out of which one is a midday-meal cook, Sangeeta Birhamane.

Ms. Birhamane handles everyday cooking, while staples such as rice, wheat flour, various dals, soya chunks and masalas are supplied by the State. The midday-meal menu is fixed weekly, and the school follows the State guidelines on nutritional combinations for the students.

On paper, all the goals that merger schools were supposed to achieve such as better infrastructure, libraries, labs, playgrounds, improved utilisation of resources, stronger foundational learning, better access for marginalised communities backed by transport support or a ₹600 compensation for distant students is fulfilled.

A closer look, however, reveals that much of this infrastructure is not the result of the State's merger policy alone, but has been significantly funded and developed through CSR contributions from three different organisations. In Panchet, a large share of the school's resources like textbooks, uniforms, bags, shoes, classroom furniture, smartboards, the school buses and even their drivers are supplied by corporate contributors rather than the government.

Workers from the Bharatiya Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS), an NGO in Maharashtra, argue that the State's merger push, especially in areas where government support remains thin, ultimately creates conditions that favour private players. In several parts of Maharashtra, the BGVS has protested against the merger policy, citing a spike in dropouts and poor retention during the transition. In some parts of Maharashtra, the merger has halted too.

In Panchet's ‘model,' the question of retention repeatedly comes up: how many children actually moved to the new cluster school, and how many disappeared from the system? Conversations with parents and teachers revealed a more complex picture. In some villages, parents refused to send their children to the newly assigned school, either because of distance, transport issues or reluctance to leave the familiar environment.

As a result, a few of the old schools continue to operate, with three to five students and a teacher posted just to keep the school running. Meanwhile, the buildings of schools that have been fully merged now stand unused, slowly slipping into disrepair.

The classrooms in these schools bring together children of widely varying learning levels, some can read but cannot write, some can copy letters but cannot comprehend what they hear. In such settings, achieving the foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) benchmarks becomes a challenge. That too, with a single teacher for all subjects.

Mr. Kamdi, a teacher from Shirkoli, 70 kilometres from Panchet, says he has been appointed to teach three students, of Classes three, five and seven, all seated in a single room with him. His days revolve around teaching them basic FLN skills, Marathi poems, writing practice and basic Mathematics. Following the formal curriculum, he says, is nearly impossible because each child is at a completely different learning level.

Speaking about the study material provided by the government, Mr. Kamdi explained that although the State board prescribes a set curriculum and topics for each grade, it becomes difficult to follow in a single-teacher classroom. To at least meet basic FLN benchmarks, schools like his rely on what he calls a “trial system,” where children learn from one another. Mr. Kamdi said, “often I use a trial system….I teach a poem or a maths sum to the older child in Class seven, and then he teaches it to the younger ones in Class five.”

When asked about basic infrastructure like electricity, water, toilets, and classrooms, Mr. Kamdi described conditions in Shirkoli as “barely functional.” The area often faces power cuts lasting two to three months, especially during the monsoon. The school has two rooms, but only one is usable for teaching; the other doubles as the midday-meal kitchen. Mr. Kamdi mentioned that he also cleans the classrooms and washrooms himself.

Infrastructure management, he added, is a challenge even in comparatively better-off Panchet. Mr. Atul, now transferred, ex-Senior teacher at Zilla Parishad Panchet Cluster School, said that Headmistress Ms. Khan often has to clean the classrooms herself. “We have so many photographs of Madam doing ‘jhadu-pocha' because there's no one else,” he said. “If we appoint someone, we have to pay them from our own pockets.”

Ms. Khan and Mr. Atul are the two senior-most teachers with experience of 26 and 23 years each. Ms. Khan holds a Masters degree in History and Mr. Atul is a Ph.D. holder.

A typical day at school for Mr. Kamdi looks more like a struggle, where he lives in a house on rent with his wife, drives almost 20 kilometers everyday, then parks his bike at a place then continues walking to the school for almost two kilometers. His three students also walk to the school, mostly for one to two kilometres as there is no transport nor a terrain to drive a vehicle.

Shirkoli does not fall within the Panchet school's catchment area, which is why its three students, and more like them, could not be merged into the Panchet cluster model. Yet teachers believe that if these children were shifted to a larger, better-resourced school, they would be exposed to far greater learning and social opportunities.

Mr. Kamdi described the stark difference he sees between students in isolated hamlets like Shirkoli and those in Panchet. Children in Panchet, he said, “pick up faster in front of large groups, make friends easily, and are far more confident, intellectually and physically active.” By contrast, students in many tiny schools with fewer than five or ten children often struggle with basic personality development.

Mr. Atul recalled an incident from his previous posting that illustrated this gap. During a lesson, the word ‘gulab jamun' came up, and several students had never heard of it. “I brought the sweet gulab jamun to class the next day and the children were shocked that something like this even existed.”

Mr. Kamdi mentioned that he is one of the few people who visits the village every day, and as a result, many villagers request him to bring their daily necessities like medicines, vegetables, or groceries.

When it comes to the midday meal, both Panchet and Shirkoli have an appointed cook for the children but the scale and reality differ sharply. In Panchet, the cook prepares meals for nearly 200 students, following the State's fixed daily menu. In Shirkoli, however, cooking for just three children changes everything.

Mr. Kamdi said the students rarely get chapatis; instead, the cook usually makes rice and a simple accompaniment for five people. She buys tomatoes, onions and potatoes with her own money, while staples such as ginger–garlic powder, rice, wheat flour and dal are supplied by the state.

Mr. Kamdi has been teaching for a year and a half and is still in his three-year probation period, during which he earns ₹16,000 a month. He admitted that managing household expenses on this salary is difficult, especially since his wife is not employed. Once his probation ends, he will receive a salary hike.

However, the conversation also revealed deeper concerns within the system. Ms. Khan and Mr. Atul pointed out that even after probation, their salaries remain nearly the same as those of teachers who are underqualified or have only a diploma. Earlier, the requirement for government school teachers for Classes one to four was a D.T.Ed (Diploma in Teacher Education), but the rules have now changed: candidates must clear the State TET exam (Teacher Eligibility Test) to teach Classes one to eight. Mr. Atul added that the passing rate for the TET is barely 3%, making qualified teachers scarce and increasing disparities within the system.

Mr. Atul recalled another incident about one of his primary students, a very bright girl who completed Class 7 and was supposed to shift to the secondary school, but the secondary school was far from her village, and her parents were reluctant to send her. Mr. Atul arranged for her to continue studying at the primary school itself and provided all her study material. She later went on to become a constable in the Mumbai Police. “I want all my students to join the Mumbai Police and earn a rank. That is my only satisfaction… sometimes I cannot sleep thinking about the conditions these children live in,” he said.

All three teachers said their work is far from a routine, salary-based job. It is emotionally overwhelming and, in many ways, a service to society. With salaries of around ₹ 50,000 to 60,000 per month, government school teachers do not receive promotions or any hierarchical position; only seniority brings respect.

The State allots an annual maintenance grant of just ₹ 6,000 to the Shikroli government school, and any expenses beyond that are often paid from the teachers' own pockets.

Teachers are also responsible for election duties, population revision work, UDISE surveys, online student data entry, and daily online attendance - tasks that become more difficult given that many areas, including parts of Panchet, have little or no mobile network.

Ms. Khan and Mr. Atul travel 20 to 25 kilometers back home every day and often upload the online data only after reaching home. Alongside these administrative duties, they also teach students and manage the school. In single-teacher schools like Shikroli, if the teacher takes even a single day off, classes come to a complete halt. This leaves little to no room for leave - teachers must reach school even in harsh weather, either through the government-provided vehicle or by arranging their own transport.

Mr. Atul added that the school is open to contributions from locals and outsiders, whether monetary support, basic items like groceries or biscuits, mentorship or teaching.

The cook's salary is calculated on the basis of the number of students she cooks for, which is just $2 per child. In Panchet, the cook prepares food for 200 students, while in Shikroli, she prepares meals for only about five, despite being officially registered for ten months of work. She also buys vegetables out of her own pocket every day. In Panchet, the cook even purchases a personal gas cylinder for ₹1,200 to 1,500 to cook the school meals. While speaking to us in the local language, she appeared visibly frustrated about her expenses and salary.

When asked whether the cook could also take up cleaning duties in the school, Ms. Khan explained that she would then have to pay her separately from her personal salary, as the State does not provide or increase wages for additional work.

Ms. Khan added that, as per guidelines, one staff member must taste the midday meal before it is served to students to ensure safety, not quality, a practice she described as humiliating as a teacher.

Published - November 18, 2025 09:35 pm IST

Pune / Maharashtra / school / education

Source: The Hindu
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