How Gyan Shala Developed Clarity for Scale in the APS Sector through a Theory of Change
Government and affordable private schools often have similar missions – to provide access to affordable education for children. Nonetheless, the systems that keep these two types of schools running differ substantially. Gyan Shala had deployed its model successfully in government-owned schools. The model had been designed to ensure that all teachers (including community-hired teachers), regardless of educational background, training, or motivation, can help children achieve high learning outcomes. The model's curriculum approach has Gyan Shala develop daily lesson plans that they distribute to schools with worksheets for students. They support these with biannual training, monthly guides and in-class support for teachers.
Post 2021, Gyan Shala started introducing their model to affordable private schools, which catered to a similar demography. Over the last 20 years, the Gyan Shala model has undergone numerous independent evaluations which have shown a positive impact on learning outcomes in government schools in India. Despite previous success, scaling to private schools remained a challenge. Their success with public schools did not provide enough understanding of what they needed to operate with private schools. The organisation needed to understand what components they would adapt from the government schools programme and bring to private schools that would help them achieve set outcomes. Initial component tests were uncoordinated and did not provide reliable results.
A theory of change arms you with the tools needed to gain clarity around the impact you want to make in a field and organise what you need to achieve those outcomes. Gyan Shala worked with the Impact at Scale Labs to develop a theory of change to scale their model to affordable private schools in India. The resulting theory of change helped them adapt their solution. They also set the foundation for their monitoring and evaluation framework and business model review. This article gives an overview of the process they used to develop their Theory of Change.
The Process
Lead consultant Dr Julie Belanger of Better Purpose and the Impact at Scale Labs coaches facilitated the development of Gyan Shala's theory of change. To scale into the private sector, Gyan Shala sought to understand the pain points of the new target audience, their structure, hierarchy of command in private organisations, involvement of parents and students in decision-making, and reassess their assumptions about affordable private schools. They followed the steps below:
STEP 1: Define the goal
The first approach focused on the end goal. Gyan Shala documented the outcomes they wished to attain with the APS model. This was first conducted in their contextual analysis template supplied by the Labs. They answered questions such as what would change because of their intervention and what their end goal was in the APS sector. This defined their intentions and prepared them for the second stage of understanding the APS market.
STEP 2: Understand the program
Secondly, they dug deeper into their assumptions about the problems of the APS sector. For this, Gyan Shala used the problem tree tool to reflect on the root causes of identified problems in the APS sector, the nature of the problems and the effects of the problems. This is helpful as a complex problem can be broken into more manageable chunks. They explored the problem tree through the lenses of the individual, the school and the system. They asked important questions such as
- What challenges do teachers experience in low-fee private schools?
- What other individual dimensions contribute to the problem?
- What system-wide dimensions affect the instruction of low-fee private school teachers?
- How does the problem affect pupils, teachers, and society?
Through the problem tree exercise, Gyan Shala reflected on the private school model and the components needed for success. It also helped get to the root causes of why low-fee private school teachers are not well prepared, and what the consequences of this are
STEP 3: Draft the Theory of Change
With a more coherent understanding of their core problems and effects, Gyan Shala consulted the Lab's team and Better Purpose to develop their theory of change for the APS sector. They received a series of workshops and templates to guide them through this process.
As Gyan Shala had been testing random programme components, this was an opportunity to bring it all together and ask provocative questions about what should form the core of their activities based on their intended outcomes. For example, they faced some challenges in the recent pilot they conducted, such as changing the teachers' mindsets. They explored the root cause of this problem in the problem tree. Subsequently, when designing their Theory of Change, several activities were dedicated to improving and supervising teacher mindset and capacity, as they recognize this as one of the important levers required to achieve scale outcomes in the APS sector.
Gyan Shala brought together learnings like this to fill out the TOC template. The result of this exercise is seen below:
Outcome
Gyan Shala's Theory of change for the APS sector helped them;
Examine and correct their assumptions about the APS sector based on their success in government schools. For example, in Indian government schools, teachers have very little autonomy. In contrast, there was some resistance from private school teachers toward changing their practice. Due to the high attrition, trustees and school leaders are very sensitive to teacher perspectives as staff retention is a key priority. Gyan Shala has responded by including components like supervision, in-class demonstrations, and face-to-face sessions to try to increase adoption and buy-in from teachers.
Define their inputs, outputs, outcomes and what needs to be measured.
Understand which programmatic components, from their public school model, they would adapt to private schools. For example, Gyan Shala chose to retain two components from their learning quality improvement quality program while seeking alternatives for the two other components due to potential issues of delivering at scale.
Define the roles of their supervisors as a key programme component through their coaching and support to teachers during supervision visits.
Determine specific areas they needed advisory support e.g. exploring advisory support from FSG who had experience in sales and distribution in the APS market.
Next Steps
Gyan Shala has focused on developing a MEL framework based on the theory of change. They continue to work with Julie to:
- Focus on diving deeper into specific outcomes
- Strengthen M&E processes & indicators
- Strengthen documentation and data collection approaches
- Improve M&E capacity (skills and resources)
Related Tools in Scale Toolkit
The development of TOC with the help of Better Purpose has helped Gyan Shala articulate the problem statement, identify the key enabling and derailing factors as also prioritise its key activities and mechanisms of change to achieve the desired outputs, outcomes and long-term goals very effectively. With the support of Better Purpose and an intensive workshop conducted by GSF, Gyan Shala has been able to devise its MEL Strategy, and will be putting the same in place to improve its response to the challenges faced in the APS school project.