The Union Cabinet approved the STARS project under the new National Education Policy (NEP) to support states in strengthening the school education system.

The Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) project is estimated to cost Rs 5,718 crore. The financial support of the World Bank amounts to $500 million (approximately Rs 3,700 crore).

What is STARS project?

It seeks to support the states in developing, implementing, evaluating and improving interventions with direct linkages to improved education outcomes and school to work transition strategies for improved labour market outcomes.

It will be implemented as a new centrally sponsored scheme under the Department of School Education and Literacy.

The project will cover six states — Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha. The identified states will be supported for various interventions for improving the quality of education.

It has two major components.

At the national level, it aims to:

• Support the education ministry’s efforts to establish a National Assessment Center — PARAKH. Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH) will be set up as a standard-setting body. Among the tasks of such a centre would be to leverage the experiences of states selected for the operation by collecting, curating and sharing these experiences with other states through online portals, social and other media engagement, technical workshops, state visits and conferences.

• Strengthen ministry’s national data systems to capture robust and authentic data on retention, transition and completion rates of students.

• Improve Performance Grading Index (PGI) scores by incentivising states’ governance reform agenda through SIG (State Incentive Grants).

• Strengthen learning assessment systems.

At the state level, it aims to: 

• Strengthen early childhood education and foundational learning.

• Strengthen classroom instruction and remediation through teacher development and school leadership.

• Boost governance and decentralised management for improved service delivery.

• Strengthen vocational education in schools through mainstreaming, career guidance and counselling, internships and coverage of out of school children.

The project includes a Contingency Emergency Response Component (CERC) under the national component which would enable it to be more responsive to any natural, man-made and health disasters. It will help the government respond to situations leading to loss of learning such as school closures/infrastructure damage, inadequate facilities and use technology for facilitating remote learning etc. The CERC component would facilitate the rapid re-categorisation of financing and the utilisation of streamlined financing request procedures.

STARS aims to focus on initiatives of PM e-Vidya, Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission and National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

The overall focus and components of the STARS project are aligned with the objectives of NEP of focusing on quality based learning outcomes. The project envisions improving the overall monitoring and measurement activities in the Indian school education system through interventions in selected states.

It also shifts focus from the provision of inputs and maintaining of outputs to actual outcomes by linking the receipt and disbursement of funds to these outcomes.

Measurable outcomes of the project are:

• Increase in students achieving minimum proficiency in Grade 3 language in selected states. 

• Improvement in secondary school completion rate.

• Improvement in governance index scores.

• Strengthened learning assessment systems.

• Partnerships developed to facilitate cross-learning between states.

• Improvement in state level service delivery such as Strengthening planning and management capacities for decentralised management by training of Block Resource Centres (BRCs) and Cluster Resource Centres (CRCs).

• Strengthened school management by training of head teachers and principals for improved education service delivery.

Besides this project, it is also envisaged to implement a similar project funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) in five states — Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Assam. All states will partner with one other state for sharing their experiences and best practices.

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