Gangtok: The Government of Sikkim has launched Mero School, Mero Abhiyaan, a statewide initiative aimed at identifying, recognising, and scaling grassroots innovations emerging from government schools, with a focus on teacher-led and locally developed solutions.
Launched on Republic Day, the programme has been introduced by the Education Department to strengthen school education through bottom-up reforms, moving away from conventional top-down approaches.
Explaining the vision behind the initiative, Principal Secretary, Education Department, Sandeep Tambe said that solutions to school-related challenges are often expected to come from higher offices, even though teachers are the ones dealing with these issues on a daily basis. “Traditionally, we look for solutions to school-related problems in a top-down manner, but it is the teacher who faces these challenges every day in the classroom,” he said.
Tambe said teachers regularly confront challenges such as declining enrolment, learning gaps, difficulty in teaching and speaking English, and problems in helping students understand mathematics concepts. He noted that many teachers already innovate to address these issues, but such solutions usually remain confined to their local context.
“Teachers are already innovating to address issues like enrolment decline, learning gaps and language or numeracy difficulties, but most of these solutions remain confined to the local context,” he said.
He said the objective of Mero School, Mero Abhiyaan is to identify such innovations, recognise them and scale them up so that more schools across the state can benefit. “Through this initiative, we want to identify and recognise these grassroots innovations and scale them up so that more schools can benefit,” Tambe said, adding that the programme also aims to restore pride in the teaching profession by acknowledging teachers as problem-solvers and change-makers within the system.
Emphasising that innovation does not depend solely on infrastructure or resources, Tambe said schools located in remote and difficult areas may have greater potential for innovation. “Innovation does not depend on resources alone. In many cases, schools in remote and challenging areas have greater potential for innovation because necessity drives creative problem-solving,” he said, adding that the initiative does not favour well-equipped schools and that proposals will be evaluated with due consideration to local context.
According to the operational guidelines, the initiative will initially focus exclusively on school-based innovations that are already implemented and field-tested. These may relate to teaching-learning practices, inclusion, school functioning or administrative efficiency. All employees of the Directorate of School Education, Government of Sikkim, are eligible to apply either individually or in teams, provided there is a clearly identifiable lead innovator, while conceptual or unimplemented ideas will not be considered.
The guidelines provide for a transparent, multi-stage selection process beginning with online submission through an official Google Form, followed by district-level screening, field verification by committees comprising representatives from the District Education Office, SCERT and DIET, and final selection through presentations before a state-level committee chaired by the Secretary, School Education. Innovations will be evaluated on relevance, creativity, impact, scalability and sustainability, with impact carrying the highest weightage.
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Selected innovators will be conferred the State Teachers’ Award (Innovation) during the State-Level Teachers’ Day celebration on September 5 every year. Further recognition includes documentation of innovations in an official state compendium, engagement of innovators as resource persons in teacher training and mentoring programmes, and departmental support for replicating successful practices across schools.
SCERT and DIET will play a key role in documentation, impact assessment and facilitating the scale-up of successful innovations. While the long-term outcomes of the initiative will become clearer over time, Tambe said the government remains optimistic. “We will have to wait and watch how the initiative unfolds, but we are hopeful it will help build a strong culture of innovation and ownership in government schools,” he said.
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