Turning the page: how India’s state schools are being revitalised

For years, efforts to improve India’s failing state system focused on teachers, classrooms and curricula. Now a training scheme for headteachers is reaping dividends.

Until recently, Maniram Mandiwal felt like just another cog in the wheel. The headteacher of Rajasthan’s Shaheed Col Jayprakash Janu secondary school left work as soon as he could. He didn’t know any of his pupils by name, and took no interest in his staff. Mandiwal had spent a quarter of a century in teaching…