NEW DELHI: On the day the Aam Aadmi Party government embarked on its third year in power, Delhi high court ruled against its guidelines about the neighbourhood being the governing criterion for nursery admissions. This was perhaps the biggest setback for the government in a sector that has seen some successes and left a lot to be accomplished.In its two years, the government earmarked a big budgetary allocation for education , was receptive to innovative ideas and made an earnest effort to shake up the government-school system. Its “Chunauti Mission”, launched on Teachers’ Day in 2016, was an acknowledgement that 3.5 lakh youngsters in Classes VI-VIII were unable to read their textbooks. After the mission reduced the number of such students from 26% to a claimed 10%, primary school teacher Sarita Singh talked of one step the schools had taken: “The children have learnt their alphabets faster because we now use phonetics. Most others still use old teaching techniques, but kids learn and retain faster when they identify an alphabet with its sound.”There was incredulity around Chunauti Mission’s gain, with the Government School Teachers’ Association itself claiming that the original number of ‘non-readers’ had been inflated to ensure a tangible result later. Amid criticism of the sort, the government saw success with model schools. Both students, parents and teachers are pleased with the way their “model” schools are transforming because of the infrastructural and curricular changes. “The children are excited to come to school now. I can see the happiness in teachers too when they see new rooms and furniture around,” said Meena Sharma, principal of the Sarvodaya Co-Ed Senior Secondary Vidyalaya in Rohini.Backed by the Rs 102 crore grant for teachers’ training from the total of Rs 10,000 crore allocated to education in 2016, the government sent some principals and teachers to Cambridge University and the Indian Institutes of Management. This clearly is a long-term investment to improve quality of teaching in the government schools.However, there were many misses also, including the government’s failure to find land for the 500 schools it had promised to open. It compensated by adding classrooms to existing schools. The government argues that by creating 8,000 more classrooms, it has created 100 schools. Teacher recruitment too remained a grey area, with no permanent appointments among the claimed 9,500 new teaching positions in the year.The promise of 20 new colleges and extended campuses too remained unfulfilled with much of the focus being on schools rather than on higher education. However, three new campuses of Ambedkar University at Rohini, Dheerpur and Lodhi Road are likely by 2019, while 2018 promises a new east Delhi campus for Delhi Technological University.