The top six schools of Bhutan at class X and class XII levels shared their success stories at a seminar in Paro on Friday. With the theme The Way of the Toppers: What Makes Them Different, the conference saw the top schools share their best practices and initiatives.
The top three schools at class X level are Dr Tobgyel School, Rangjung Central School and Dungtse Central School and the top three schools at Class XII level are Ugyen Academy, Jigme Sherubling Central School and Drukgyel Central School.
They were identified based on the Annual School Performance Reports of the last six years.
The Education Monitoring Division conducts assessment of the schools based on Academic Learning Scoreboard, Enabling Practices Scoreboard and Implementation of Gross National Happiness, which served as a base for Royal Education Council (REC) to select the top six schools at class X and class XII levels.
“The Ministry of Education has been publishing the school ranking report every year since 2012. It’s published for several levels but we’ve focused on just class X and XII,” Pedup Dukpa, a Senior Research Officer with REC, said.
“What has been done is we looked at the data published by Ministry of Education and gave them scores. We basically identified the schools that were consistently performing well.”
During the presentations, the top schools said dynamic leadership, professional and efficient teachers and the strong will of the students towards learning played big roles.
“The best practices have to be living in a school’s climate and culture and it has taken years to nurture that,” Norbu Gyaltshen, the Principal of Ugyen Academy, said.
“Today, the beauty of Ugyen Academy is I have 30 per cent of my students as teachers and they know what that climate and culture is.”
For Karma Tshering, the Principal of Drukgyel Central School, it’s all about team work. “I take pride in the team we have. We work as a team and I feel that matters a lot,” he said.
“We in particular insist on children getting opportunities to take part in games and sports, culture and, of course, we insist on children’s wellbeing through life skill and counseling. We have in campus a full time counselor and now we have Dratshang Lhentshog representative who will particularly look at psycho- social aspect of children’s wellbeing.”
Ngawang Drukda, the Vice Principal of Jigme Sherubling Central School attributes his school’s success to dynamic leadership the students. “We are one collaborating institute with a dynamic leader,” he said.
“Our principal is dynamic and on daily basis we have to work really hard. We collaborate not just with the teachers, but the students as well. The students are also the main driving force behind our success.”
Reading and peer learning also proved effective to some of the top schools.
However, some teachers at the seminar expressed misgivings over assessing and ranking schools.
The Royal Education Council plans to compile the best practices of the top six schools into a publication and distribute it to other schools by next year.
