The Delhi government’s Specialised School of Excellence will now be known as ‘B.R. Ambedkar School of Specialised Excellence’, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday.
The Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal made the announcement this while paying homage to Dr. Ambedkar on his birth anniversary.
There are over 30 such schools with 4,600 seats so far which are affiliated to the Delhi Board of School Education (DBSE) set up by the city government in partnership with International Baccalaureate, a globally renowned school education board.
These schools have four domains of specialisation: science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), humanities, performing and visual arts in addition to high-end 21st century skills. It provides students foundational education in language, mathematics, science, social science as well as ‘specialised education.’
Mr. Kejriwal presided over a function organised at the School of Specialised Excellence in Khichripur where he unveiled a stone plaque dedicating all the 30 Schools of Specialised Excellence to Dr. Ambedkar.
“We always celebrate Babasaheb’s Jayanti with joy and enthusiasm, but today, we have gone a notch ahead. The most spectacular government schools of Delhi are being named after Dr. Ambedkar today. There can’t be a better way to commemorate his legacy,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
“Babasaheb gave the highest importance to education in his life. His community faced discrimination and were considered untouchables. His family had barely anything to survive on. The school he went to made him sit separately outside the class. He wasn’t allowed to drink water from the vessel unless a peon poured it for him from a distance. The same man who faced these sufferings, not just went abroad, but got PhDs from London School of Economics and Columbia University,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
Over the last 75 years since Independence, the Chief Minister said, two systems of education existed in the country: private for the rich and public for the poor. However, the Aam Aadmi Party had changed this in five years after coming to power.
Delhi’s legislators and lawyers send their children to government schools voluntarily, the Chief Minister said, adding that this year 3.75 lakh children had shifted from private to government schools.
“I am extremely happy that the state of politics in the country too has changed because of us. Politicians have been forced to talk about schools instead of abusive politics and hooliganism. A competition of sorts has taken place for the quality of schools in the country,” he said.
“I have seen how Opposition MPs have been trying to find shortcomings in our schools. One MP could find only a cracked tile in one school. One said there’s a wall without whitewash. I didn’t laugh or criticise them. I ordered the repairs to be made immediately. I welcome such politics,” he added.
Schools of Specialised Excellence were set up following a Delhi Cabinet resolution on March 22, 2021, after which 20 schools were established in 2021-22, enrolling nearly 2,300 students, according to the government.
The government said 11 more schools had been added in 2022-23, with the total adding up to 31 spread across Delhi. One of which has been renamed the ‘Shaheed Bhagat Singh Armed Force Preparatory School’.
The Delhi government has partnered with several institutions to develop a curriculum and design new-age assessments in addition to providing skilled trainers in these schools, including IIT Delhi, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, NIFT Delhi and the National School of Drama among others.
Several ‘innovative experiments’ related to learning have been taken up in these schools, which saw close to 61,000 applications for 4,600 seats for the 2022-23 academic year, including digital tablet-based assessments and teaching-learning through Chromebooks, the government said.
