We are utterly elated to announce that KHSG has won the ARISE Excellence Award for Excellence in Continuous Professional Development for Teachers for the year 2026 (Pvt. School category).
A little background on this award:
ARISE (The Association for Reinventing School Education) is an autonomous body of progressive thinkers working to drive change in India’s school education system.
Established in 1927, FICCI is India’s largest and oldest apex business organisation, a not-for-profit body that serves as the voice of Indian industry.
The ARISE Excellence Awards, organized with FICCI, recognize schools that exemplify excellence in education and holistic development through innovative pedagogies and future-ready skills.
The categories of awards this year were:
- Excellence in Future Ready Skills
- Excellence in Experiential Learning
- Excellence in Continuous Professional Development for Teachers
- Excellence in Digital Transformation and Compliance
- Excellence in Sports
- Excellence in Visual and Performing Arts
- Excellence in Global Impact Leadership
- Excellence in Reviving India’s Knowledge Systems
- Excellence in executing Sustainable Development Goals viz.
- Excellence in Promoting Health and Well-being – SDG 3: Good Health & Well Being
- Excellence in Sustainable Water Management and Sanitation – SDG 6: Clean Water & Sanitation
- Excellence in Climate Action – SDG 13: Climate Action
Mrs. Pallavi Naik (Head Academics, Formerly Principal of KHSG) had initiated the process a little over a year ago. The process to apply for the award starts with a detailed documentation under a specific category with evidence of practice and implementation. Shortlisted applicants are then invited to present their case study in front of an eminent jury at the FICCI headquarters in Delhi.
This year under the category of Excellence in Continuous Professional Development for Teachers, Pallavi Iyer and Manisha Girolkar presented the case study of the sustained implementation of the S2S pedagogy in front of the jury followed by a Q&A round.
S2S was introduced with the purpose to improve the students’ ability to apply concepts, reason independently, and engage deeply with unfamiliar problems and scientific phenomena.
To address this, the school partnered with Seed2Sapling (S2S), an experiential STEM learning organization that promotes an inquiry-based pedagogical framework, as a structured CPD initiative aimed at shifting teachers and classes from an over-reliance on teacher-led instruction/ content delivery to facilitation of student-led discovery.
The program was designed around three interlocking components: regular mentor meetings with the S2S experts for ongoing pedagogical coaching; live co-teaching sessions where mentors and teachers collaboratively deliver inquiry-driven lessons in real classrooms; and structured post-session debriefs where teacher reflections are treated as primary professional data, not afterthoughts. This initiative, running since 2022, stands out from routine training due to its embeddedness in live practice echoing a simple idea: that teachers grow best inside real classrooms — not simulated training rooms.
The results were declared and presented at a glittering ceremony in Delhi on 26th of September ’26. Mrs. Anjali Kulkarni (principal, KHSG) and Mrs. Mithila Joshi (Sr. Supervisor) were present to collect the award along with Mrs. Naik for whom the process had come full circle with this well-deserved win.
The credit also goes to the Science – Maths department of the school, who have adopted this methodology and continue to practice it and mentor newer teachers in the fold.
