With the stated aim of facilitating “overall mutual growth and enhancement in the education standards amongst all schools affiliated with the Board”, all Central Board Of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools are mandatorily going to be organised into clusters of four to six with neighbouring schools from the coming academic year.

“This collaboration will allow not only exposure to best practices, but also the possibility of adaptation or even replication of these practices. It is expected that school leadership would assume greater responsibility towards improving the quality of their school and also extend their support to neighbourhood schools,” reads a circular given by the education board.

The board will create these “Hubs of Learning”, and will identify members for each hub from amongst neighbouring schools in a district.

This will also include CBSE affiliated schools located outside India, which will most probably be grouped with hubs in Delhi.

One school from each hub will be nominated by the board as “Lead Collaborator School” and will support the other schools in implementing safety guidelines laid down by the board. The lead school will be selected based on criteria like board results, pupil-teacher ratio and innovative practices, and will change after a maximum period of two years.

Among the expected collaborative activities are sharing ideas on pedagogical and curriculum plans and transaction strategies; organising co-curricular and extra-curricular activities together; exchanging manpower and infrastructure; sharing e-conent and digital resources; participating in each others’ in-house teacher training programmes; and so on.

The board has directed that the hubs be operational by July and that the schools in each hub meet at least once every month – virtually if real-time meetings are not possible.

(Source: IndianExpress Education)