Mulyavardhan

Mulyavardhan is a school-based value education programme. It encourages school processes to be guided by the values enshrined in the constitution of India – equality, liberty, justice and fraternity. These values aren’t ‘taught’ by teachers; instead, they are ‘caught’ by students from the school’s ethos, processes and practices.

This path-breaking value-education programme was initiated in Pune by the non-profit Shantilal Muttha Foundation. It aims to enable schools to provide a value-based education to nurture caring, responsible and democratic citizens. It is now impacting students in over 40,000 schools in Maharashtra and 780 schools in Goa.

The present Mulyavardhan framework and learning material was developed after five years of trial implementation in government primary schools, and evolved through recommendations from evaluation studies by national and international institutes.

Mulyavardhan’s structured learning activities are age-specific and appropriate to class and school-levels of learning. They align with curriculum outcomes, include behavioural exercises, and facilitate discussions on what is learned.

The key highlights of the Mulyavardhan initiative include:

• Engagement with all key stakeholders including students, teachers, school management committees, parents and anyone else who is directly or indirectly connected with the child.
• Embrace of child-centric and activity-based approach to ensure experiential learning and value-based quality education
• Facilitation of the nurture of democratic values/attitudes and related competencies among students

Working in tandem with government departments at both district and state levels, this initiative aims to empower all stakeholders to achieve the complete transformation of the education system by building the capacity of the teachers to become resource persons to train and mentor other teachers, thus ensuring sustainability.

Mulyavardhan’s capacity building workshops focus on empowering:

• Cluster-level teachers to become resource teachers (government master trainers)
• Teachers to conduct grade-level Mulyavardhan classroom activities
• School heads and teachers to conduct school-wide activities
• Teachers to integrate Mulyavardhan pedagogy and content within all subjects

This initiative has transformed classrooms from teacher-centred learning environments to child-centric ones. The annual evaluation study reports that Mulyavardhan schools have attained a 25% higher score in overall performance towards nurturing constitutional values in schools. The target schools have also attained a 10% higher score in providing child-centric learning environments, and in demonstrating practices for the development of supportive value-related competencies. Students report an increase in confidence, improved relations with teachers and peers, as well as increased participation in classroom activities.