Pune: From giving students a role in running their school through a children’s parliament to bringing parents and the community into school development, 100 schools across Maharashtra have documented how local leadership can bring about change in classrooms and beyond. Their stories have now found a place on a national education platform, giving other schools an opportunity to learn from their experiences.The School Leadership Academy, functioning through the Maharashtra Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (MIEPA), has published 100 school leadership success stories for 2025-26. The stories have been compiled in a digital flipbook, ‘Shikshan Manthan’, and are available on the official portal of the National Centre for School Leadership (NCSL), National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi.State commissioner of education, Sachindra Pratap Singh, said, “The collection covers schools from rural, tribal, remote and urban areas and captures a wide range of initiatives from improving basic literacy and numeracy and introducing skill-based learning to promoting inclusion, environmental awareness, technology use, sports, arts and community participation.”For teachers and headmasters, the exercise is not merely about showcasing achievements. It is also about recording small changes that often remain confined to individual schools and making them available to others facing similar challenges.Sangli zilla parishad teacher Ajay Mahadev Kale, whose school’s initiative has been featured in the collection, said giving students responsibility was at the heart of the effort.“We gave students an opportunity to take responsibility through a children’s parliament. They participated in decision-making and contributed to the development of the school. For children, it was not just an activity but an opportunity to understand responsibility and leadership in real life,” Kale said.“Having this work documented in ‘Shikshan Manthan’ and featured on the NCSL-NIEPA national platform is certainly a matter of pride. But more importantly, bringing such experiments from different schools together creates an opportunity for teachers to learn from one another,” he said.Teachers involved in school leadership initiatives said the most effective changes were often those that did not require large financial investments. Better coordination among teachers, involving parents, giving students greater responsibility and using locally available resources could significantly improve the school environment.“Leadership in a school cannot remain limited to the headmaster. When teachers, students and parents feel that they are part of the school’s progress, even a small initiative can have a larger impact,” said Manisha Jadhav, a teacher from Pune district, involved in one of the documented initiatives.Another teacher, Vivek Bhamner, said documenting such work also helped schools reflect on their own practices. “Many teachers are doing innovative work without calling it an innovation. When such work is recorded and shared, it gives another school an idea that can be adapted to its own circumstances,” the teacher said.The MIEPA and School Leadership Academy have been conducting training, workshops and capacity-building programmes aimed at strengthening school leadership. The success stories have emerged from this broader process of encouraging schools to identify challenges, develop local solutions and record their outcomes.The 100 stories are categorised thematically on the NCSL-NIEPA portal. While the circumstances of each school may be different, the common thread running through the collection is the focus on improving students’ overall development.
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