Rohini Sindhuri's hard work mantra worked wonders

A warning to conduct a quality assessment among teachers and personalised communication to every school by then DC Rohini Sindhuri has worked wonders for Hassan district. With teachers taking it up as a challenge, Hassan has come up trumps.

It is for the first time that Hassan is placed on top, with a pass percentage at 89.33. Quality-wise too, it is placed in the top slot as analysed by the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board.

When Rohini took charge as the deputy commissioner in 2016-17, she was shocked to see that the district was at number 31 in the SSLC results. This, despite having good infrastructure and manpower. It was then, she took it upon herself to change the fate of education here.

"I conducted a review of the situation. I was wondering why a developed district had such results. It was time to put several measures in place and fix loopholes," she told DH.

When the state proposed to upgrade the syllabus, Sindhuri planned to conduct examinations for teachers, to assess whether they were up to the mark. Just a week before the exam, due to the intervention of a few MLCs, it was cancelled. However, Sindhuri believes that it proved to be an advantage.

"The teachers started preparing for the exams. Whether or not they took the exams, they prepared themselves to face one, in two months. This meant they were up to date with the new syllabus," she said.

This was not it. To get the district score better, the groundwork had to be done. "We gathered data from individual schools and categorised students based on their scores in class nine and the preparatory exams. By August, the identification of weak students was complete."

While the department gave her the figures, Sindhuri chose to have radio programmes with students and parents to do a reality check on what was happening on the ground.

"I wrote letters to principals across the districts. I sought that they treat students like their own children. I struck an emotional chord and it worked well. To motivate principals of schools which performed well, I would identify them individually in the meetings," she said.

Sindhuri said the district then came up from position 31 to seven last year and to the top this year.