KOHIMA — Dr. Kekhrielhoulie Yhome, MLA and Advisor for School Education, launched Nagaland’s first school quality assessment pilot at the Capital Convention Centre, Kohima, on Thursday, at an induction training for school heads and monitoring officers from 114 government schools across Kohima district.
The framework is the School Transformation through Excellence in Learning and Leadership Assessment, or STELLA, under Mission SOAR, which is a flagship school education reform program of the Department of School Education, Government of Nagaland, in partnership with Elevate Foundation. Shikha Academy, a Mumbai-based education institute, ran the day’s training, taking school heads through what the framework measures, how the assessment works in practice, and how schools will use the resulting data to decide what to fix first. .
Kohima district is the test case. If the framework holds up here, it goes to the rest of Nagaland.
“This is not a penalty to anybody. This is now the standardisation of our school systems. School standards will be measured not just through examination results, but across a much wider range of parameters that help us understand and improve the quality of our schools.”
— Dr. Kekhrieholiie Yhome, Hon’ble MLA & Advisor, School Education
STELLA assesses a school against various elements aligned with national school quality standards. Schools submit information through a structured digital data-collection process. The system processes that data and applies algorithm-based scoring, and the resulting scores appear on a central digital portal that schools and state education officials can see.
The framework also maps to PARAKH SQAAF, the national school quality assessment standard, so that Nagaland measures can be reported nationally without a second exercise.
“We were delighted with the enthusiasm of the 114 school principals to try a new technology and after today, sincerely believe that Nagaland has the potential to leapfrog to become one of the best performing states in education.”
-Smti. Karishma Shanghvi, Director, Shikha Academy, Mumbai.
A score on its own tells a school where it stands, not what to do. STELLA is built to do the second thing as well: alongside each assessment, the system generates recommendations specific to that school, naming the areas it should strengthen first.
That design decision matters most for schools furthest from the standard, which are usually the schools least able to work out on their own which of a dozen problems to solve first.
“The Mission Soar School Quality Pilot is purpose-built for Nagaland, and today we move from design into delivery. The Kohima pilot will show us where our schools stand, what they need to strengthen, and how we can build a stronger system of school quality across the state. For our principals and our monitoring officers here, you are the first entry point for every other school in Nagaland that comes after you. “
— Shri. Kevisato Sanyü, Director, Elevate Foundation, Kohima
The Kohima pilot covers 114 government schools and involves school leaders, teachers, monitoring officers and district education officials. It does two jobs at once.
The first is to establish baseline school quality scores — a record of where these schools actually stand today, against which future progress can be measured.
The second is to test the framework itself. The pilot will show whether schools and education functionaries are ready to use the system, what capacity building they need, and which parts of the process need to be reworked before the framework goes to the rest of the state.
Nagaland has assessed school quality before. What is different here is that the assessment is designed to be repeated, compared and acted on — and that the state has chosen to test it in one district before asking every district to use it.
The 114 schools in Kohima are not only being measured. They are deciding what the measurement will look like for everyone else.
About Mission SOAR
Mission SOAR is a state-wide initiative to transform public education in Nagaland into an agile, inclusive, and high-performing system. Rooted in Naga culture while aligned with national priorities and global aspirations, it aims to empower every child to achieve grade-level competency, 21st-century skills, and a strong sense of identity. By combining innovative teaching practices, capacity-building, and systemic reform, Mission SOAR seeks to create an education model that becomes a benchmark for the rest of India.
