Want Delhi government schools to be world’s best: CM Arvind Kejriwal

NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said he wants the city’s government schools should be the best in the world so that students from abroad come here for education.

Addressing teachers who had been to foreign countries for training, Kejriwal told them that he will keep sending them abroad and they have the support of the people of Delhi and the country. “Some people consider it expenditure, but it is investment. I feel that you can construct four bridges less and four roads less, but we should provide best exposure and training to our teachers. They will groom students who will build roads and bridges in the future," he said.

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Lamenting that some people are trying to defame them, he alleged that there is a tendency to bring down those who do good work. “There are people who see our good work and feel jealous. They want to defame us. But I am not interested in party politics. If some BJP person or Congress person wants to improve the education system somewhere in the country, I will loan Manish Sisodia to them for a few days. We want to improve the education system of the entire country," Kejriwal added.

He said the objective of his government is to give the teachers the better learning experience. “We have to compete with international schools. There was a time when we wanted that government schools should be better than private schools. This has happened. Now we want that our schools become the world's best. We imagine about being the best," he said. Noting that there is still scope for improvement, the chief minister said the endeavour is to provide exposure to teachers to the best practices in the world.

“There is a saying 'miles to go before I sleep'. There is lots to achieve. Our critics also accept that there is a huge change coming in Delhi's education system. This has happened because of Delhi's two crore people," he said. Kejriwal said before 2015, schools were in an extremely bad state and hailing the teachers for the change.

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“Schools used to function in tents. All those schools functioning under tents have now become talent schools. Earlier, there were no desks, leakages from roof happened, and there was no security schools but we have done a lot in terms of infrastructure," he added. Not only has the infrastructure become better, but even the atmosphere has changed with students praising teachers and a sea change coming in the results too, he said. Kejriwal said government school students have cleared JEE without coaching.

“I also cleared engineering exams but had taken coaching for it," he said. The Delhi government and the Lt Governor office have been engaged in a war of words over the issue of teachers’ training in Finland. Kejriwal had earlier said Delhi LG V K Saxena twice returned a file containing the proposal, asking if a cost-benefit analysis of the programme had been done.

The Raj Niwas, in a series of tweets, then clarified that the Lt Governor had only advised the Delhi government to evaluate the proposal in totality and assess the effectiveness of such foreign training programmes undertaken in the past. Saxena advised the government to identify similar training programmes in Indian institutions, it had said. The government has again sent the proposal to the LG.