 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today are the times when the education sector is in crisis in India. While the HRD ministry is trying to siphonise education, there are states like Maharashtra where the Mughals have been completely deleted from history. Rajasthan is trying to build a wrong narrative about histories and wars. We have with us Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi and Education Minister who has a dream of building a new education system in India. He calls it Delhi's education dream. So sir, what is central to your dream in this system? I don't have an education dream. I have a dream for my society, my country. And I see education is the only platform from which it can be fulfilled. So I never think what kind of education I am looking for in my country. I always look for what kind of society, what kind of evolution, what kind of country I want. And I see education is the only way to shape that country. So then I come to education. Governance can't change the country. Governance can only govern the country the way it is. It can facilitate for fields like health, education system. So when I talk about education, my only thing is that I want a country where the society is just, where society is getting equal opportunities to be wise enough, equal opportunity to be skilled enough. And here we come for education. When we say education is the solution, the solution can never be good education for 20% people and bad education or rotten education system for 80% of the people. So in Delhi, my focus has been to fix that problem. Every child living in Delhi should have access to quality education. Every means, when I say every, it means every, the last child for whom the system thinks that, okay, this is from that society, this is the first generation learner or maybe sometimes people say this is from the specially available category, no. I am saying every child means every child. Okay, so everyone getting quality education is the prime focus of your career. So best of the best, I am working on it. I am giving solutions to this. And my solution to quality education or when you say dream Delhi education is threefold. One is quality infrastructure for government schools, which I am glad to say that I am not saying everything is solved, but we have started delivering on that front. We have built schools which are many times better than the best private schools. Not all, but many of them have become and we are evolving with that. Then second is teachers training. I am providing quality teacher training for my school teachers, government school teachers. I am sending them to Cambridge, I am sending them to Finland, Singapore, Germany, Russia. Everywhere, wherever we hear of good education systems or practices, we send them. The basic principle of this second component is if I want my students to get quality education, world class education, I have to provide world class understanding to my teachers. For world class education, I need well exposure to my teachers that I am giving. So one is infrastructure, second is quality training for teachers and third is the main content that is teaching, learning and learning abilities, evaluation. That is very dangerous. That is the core of the education. We see in many countries education is activity oriented. We see in many countries education has fixed the targets. Here in India we do not. Education is not empowered enough or maybe capable enough to spark a dream in one's mind. In that line, you said 10,000 classrooms, 400 libraries and tablets for teachers. Many say it's again the way our talks about it. It's more of a wave and propaganda and nothing is happening on the ground. What do you have to say about it? You see, when I became the minister, I went to, I am the one who goes to school, one or two schools every day. You also saw that I attended, I went to three schools yesterday. So I have visited almost all the schools, maybe almost all the schools in Delhi. When I went to first of the school, I found that was a problem area in northeast. I found 174 students living in one classroom, which was constructed to have 50 only. So even God becomes a teacher, he can't teach it. So I said forget about content, quality, gives infrastructure first. So in first year of my tenure, I worked on infrastructure only. Though I started initiatives on training and content also, my focus was infrastructure. We parked lot of money, 25% of the budget is parked for education only. So most of the money, whatever cushion money we were having is being used for infrastructure. So now that has taken off well. It's happening now. Then we focused on quality teacher training. As I said, we are sending them abroad, we are sending them at national expose. That's not part of that. We have to have facilities for education, we have to have facilities for teacher trainings and then talk about education. We can talk about education without having classrooms, without having teacher's trainings. Now we can talk and now we are touching that focus. What are you teaching? Why are you teaching? What are you learning? Why are you learning? Are the basic questions of education? What's your plan? What is your outcome plan from it? Normally define this output and outcome. Output is you read Kabir and you understand the meanings of the word that Kabir has used in his poems. And then you rewrite that in your exam and you pass that exam. This is the output. But do you understand what Kabir means? Have you observed anything into your own life? Have you learned to live what Kabir says the way? Have you started living that? That's the outcome. Education is, whenever we call successful education, is successful on output only. It's not successful on outcome. I want to make education successful on outcome. It will take time but that's the only goal of education. I mean how serious was Delhi government when they said they will take over private schools because you are against DPS, Amiti and all these big players around there. We are serious about it and whatever we do we do with our own understanding. We know what we are doing. You see, I have nothing against private schools. Many of the schools are delivering very good education at a time when government schools have almost failed and they have been doing this for the last many years. So I am grateful to them. But my grudges against them is that I have been asking them for last two years two things. Make your admission system transparent, make your fee system transparent. Whatever you want to charge from the kid, I don't mind charge it. But charge only what you are spending. Don't charge extra. Don't charge to spread your empire of education system or your brand. Charge them whatever you are paying, whatever you are spending on education in your own school. Charge that. You can charge for your French teachers. You are getting from France. You can charge that from a student. It's up to the parents. They want to use that school or not for their child, for their children. It's up to the parents. But if you are spending less and charging more and siphoning of the money, then I am behind you. I won't let you do that. That's happening in these cases. When Congress was ruling, there was a lot of corruption. And Congress ruled, I mean even BJP also, they always support this privatization of schools. And they always support this business of schools. I don't support. Indian education system is based on trust. Even if private, you don't have a company which runs schools in India. You have trust, which means it's a charity job. So you have to understand that spirit. So when I issued, when I decided to issue notices to these 449 private schools, all of them are sitting on the money that they charge during Congress regime. They have to remember that this is our regime now. They have to remember this money have to be refunded. Now, since court is directing, nobody can save you. So I'm happy that many of the schools are actually working at grassroots and they are refunding the money. They have started refunding that money. I'm getting lots of feedback from across the society. Your mega-PTMs is a lot of buzz. It's creating a lot of buzz. It's looked as a reform. What is in it for you? If we look at modernization, politicians typically have a percentage in getting computers, getting tablets, getting something. So mega-PTMs, I don't see any personal gain for you in that. What is it for you? I'm a part of the society and I see lots of personal gain in it. My society improves a lot when I do this. I belong to a society and these students, these teachers are from the same society. They evolve. When society evolve, it's personal gain for me. Let me underline that. However, as an education reformist, I can say that there was hardly any dialogue between government teachers and parents of the government schools. There was a deadlock. When I used to go to public, they used to say, Teacher is very stupid. He doesn't know how to teach. He doesn't know how to teach. He can see the output in front of him. The child doesn't know how to read his textbook. So partly they were right. When I used to go to teachers, they used to say, Sir, parents, don't ask them. They don't have a place to stay at home. They have a place to fight at home. How can a child study? How long will they study? So I thought both of them need to talk actually with each other. They should start respecting each other. So I initiated this two years back. In first meeting, this was... I'll show you one example when I went to one of the classrooms like I was going yesterday also. I usually go and sit in the classroom, listen what's the conversation going on. Many times talk to try... I mean, try to talk to teacher or parent. So one conversation which I heard in first of mega-PTM that was organized in Delhi two years back. One and a half year back. This lady was... This lady teacher was listening to her parent carefully. I observed. She realized that I was there. So she stood up and started crying. This is a young lady teacher. I said, what happened, my child? She said, Sir, you opened our eyes today. Why? Because Sir, the parent I was talking to I used to think that they are not like. They don't take care of their children. They have given birth to children and left us. And now we have to teach them. She said in these many words. She said, Sir, but today... She doesn't take care of education at all. She is a very illiterate family. I don't know why she is teaching them. But now when I met him and I discussed with this father for five minutes I found out how wrong I was. I was such an stupid. She used this word. My what happened? She said, this man wakes up at 5 in the morning. He takes a cloth from my house. He cleans people's cars. He earns money from there. And then at 8 in the morning he goes out to sell vegetables. How can I expect this person to be more careful to his kids? It's me who have to be. It's my duty. I'm getting salary for that. I started. I also felt it was very touching moment for me also that this is the output. So I'm happy that this is happening. On the other hand yesterday also I have shown a video of a very I think class 10 maybe class 12th kid where this girl was telling me I asked them that what was the benefit of parent teacher meeting that you noticed in your own life. And this girl stood up in an assembly and she said, look sir my parents used to think that okay I'm a girl and I'll just do some study and some home. I mean I'll assist my mother in kitchen and all because I have to get married. I'll serve for that. But now when in a PTM my teacher told me that I'm a bright strength my mother has started thinking that I should pay more attention on my studies. Now she doesn't force me to work for home issues and all. She has noticed that the teacher has noticed that. So these are very few instances but I believe almost 10 lakh I mean I'm having 12 lakh 12 lakh parents but 90 percent 85 percent 26 percent somewhere come. So almost 10 to 11 lakh parents coming to school or maybe if they are coming with mother and father both so maybe 20 lakh people or 15 lakh people coming in a day to school meeting teachers it's a wonderful event and it's touching the cord of touching the nerves of the society. The success you had in IITs and even the board exams the government school outperformed the private schools how was that possible? It was possible because of teachers training I believe because last year I went a lot of my attention on focus on this teacher's training and that's why 372 students got through this IIT triple J JW exam. Then lot of students are cracking other examinations also they have got good results in good percentage and now they have got secured very good spaces in Delhi University good colleges. So this is happening because of teachers training transforming the education system. On one hand you are talking of Delhi's education dream and if you look at other way central government or as mentioned few states of BGP rule thing and they are on completely different tangent they want to rewrite history and change the education system for their own benefits where do you think education in our country have to be scientific it should be free from any ism right ism left ism center ism it should not be victim of any ism it's a crime to evolve education through any ism whether right ism or left ism or whatever it should be scientific I am big fan of Dr. Kalam here he has given us a dream for that let's have our education two fold one is to live with this skill that's certificate one enough you have completely education this is your certificate go and live second is to go for further learning go for higher education go for research and all this so that's second certificate and that also have to be scientific that's why I said in the beginning if you are learning Gita in Sanskrit or in any other thing you should know what Gita means and any person who has done PhD in Gita any person who have done PhD in Ramayana Ramcharitmanas should be equipped enough to show this in his own life rather than preaching others on it right now whoever has done any study on Gita or Ramayana or Quran or something is capable enough for preaching for others but they are not following it in their own life education should make sure that whatever is being taught first of all the person who is studying have to follow it in its own life then only we can achieve that and that is my ism you can say so do you think what all plans do you have now will be finished before your term finishes many of them many of them because I have this is my third year and I have started evolution in my examination system this year right now we are going to start next week only this SA1 for my schools and we have transformed the examination system though everything must have not been changed but there are significant changes if you compare them vis-a-vis last year papers this year examination paper are going to be different definitely outcome oriented not output oriented