At a time when the concept of assessment and accreditation was associated mostly with the higher educational institutes, SMF was one of the very few organizations in the country to have conceptualized the same for the schools as the means to strengthen the school ecosystem through quality measures of process improvement. 

The school assessment and accreditation programme evolved through three distinct phases:

Accreditation in Vidya Bharti has been going on steadily and as of date,1345 Vidya Bharti schools have been assessed with the SMF SESQ system, and currently Vidya Bharti has 1000 school assessors all over India who have been trained in using the SESQ tool of accreditation.

As a new development, you can mention that SMF has revamped its accreditation model based on the recommendations of NEP 2020 and NCF 2023. This model was showcased to the Vidya Bharti national committee, and they have agreed to implement it in their schools all over India. Post that decision, SMF is currently collaborating with Vidya Bharti on the customization of the tool for use in Vidya Bharti schools.

Launched in 2002, this was a framework for self-evaluation and third party assessment to assess school quality through the standards put forth by the various State Boards and CBSE. SMF implemented the SASP in 4,374 schools across the country mainly to understand the government system and the stakeholders.

Based on extensive stakeholder interactions following the SASP implementation, research and consultations with domain experts, academicians and educationists were conducted and the need to redesign SASP to be a developmental tool for schools emerged. An important recommendation was to have a two-tiered approach to the gradation of schools such that the school profile comprising the infrastructure and physical resources would be treated distinctly from the process assessment i.e. school profile would not be a deemed a limiting factor in the school improvement journey. This was to be done to ensure that the less endowed schools showing promise of quality would be duly acknowledged. This led to the design of the School Assessment and Accreditation System (SAA) with key features such as:

1. It was designed to be not just an assessment tool but a developmental tool for every school with prioritized action points for all stakeholders from school to the state-level.
2. Framework was governed by Quality management principles, Deming Cycle (PDCA/PDSA), Total Quality Management, ISO, and Process Maturity Models and vetted by a panel of experts from apex bodies like NUEPA.
3. The assessment standards were derived from nationally and globally recognized educational norms, guidelines, and RTE.
4. It was a combination of self and external assessment with robust software for furnishing system-generated reports and action roadmaps.

From 2012-15, SMF successfully implemented SAA in 102 schools (government, private, aided and from different Boards) with authorization from multiple state governments.

State governments accepted the state-level reports of SAA thereby endorsing the programme and acknowledging the value it held for the school systems.

• Experts from top ranked national academic institutions such as Tata Institute of Social Sciences and NAAC have endorsed the worth of SAA, its philosophy, methodology and a role it can play in the improvement of quality of education.
• The capability of SAA has been acknowledged by CBSE, the leading national board of education, and SMF was invited to be one of the few agencies in India empaneled by CBSE to co-create the CBSE model of accreditation in affiliated schools in 2012.
• In 2012 SMF was evaluated as the top ranking organization from among several national and international accreditation agencies in the technical evaluation conducted by KPMG at the behest of the Gujarat government in its efforts to design a school accreditation system for the state.

This is the current form of the school assessment and accreditation programme. It borrows heavily from BJS SAA with feature upgrades to make the system more assessor-friendly. It is purely a third part assessment mechanism providing enhanced assessor support and training for greater objectivity in assessment. The standards have also been updated to include the expectations of the latest educational policies and goals at national and international levels. It has been successfully implemented in 174 schools across India directly by SMF. It can be seamlessly adapted for a peer/external assessment by large school bodies seeking to institutionalize SESQ within their network. A striking feature of SESQ is that it is customizable as per contextual requirements of any state. The assessment model is available in multiple languages.

The scalability of SMF SESQ is visibly seen by the manner in which Vidya Bharati- the pan India network of 13000 schools institutionalized school assessment with the help of SESQ as a means of external assessment. From 147 schools assessed in 2016 with the help of SMF trained assessors to 11,000 schools assessed by 2020 through their assessor pool created by the Vidya Bharati master trainers trained by SMF, signifies the adaptability of the SESQ model. SMF has extended support in the training of their assessors as well as in the handing over of the SESQ software for automation of reports and actionable roadmaps.