“We are not here to do (only a little better) what the others do. We are here to do what the others cannot do because they do not have the idea that it can be done.
We are here to open the way of the Future to children who belong to the Future.
Anything else is not worth the trouble and not worthy of Sri Aurobindo's help.”
— The Mother
Integral Education Policy 2025
From the Aspiration to Concrete Manifestation - Exploring Strategic Educational Directions
This year, the primary focus of SAIIER has been the writing and development of the Integral Education Policy 2025 (IEP25). The document is structured into three parts:
- The Aspiration and Purpose of Integral Education
The first 12 chapters explore the philosophical foundation of integral education, drawing from the works of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. It addresses the relevance of their worldview in today’s rapidly changing world—especially in light of emerging technologies like AI—and posits education as a means to support the evolution of consciousness and the emergence of the next species. - The Attitude and Approach in the Context of Integral Education
Integral education is not a replicable module of a system; it must be contextual, evolving from near to far. This requires educators and administrators to engage in inner work. The second part of IEP25 focuses on cultivating the inner attitude and approach necessary for true integral education to take root in different environments. - Auroville’s Living Laboratory for the Future
The final 12 chapters outline a 15- to 20-year vision for Auroville’s educational landscape. Six chapters are currently in development. This section includes tangible proposals for evolving the structure, pedagogy, and purpose of education in Auroville.
The first draft of the document is available on request at SAIIER office. The second draft is to be worked upon over the next 3 months. Those interested in diving into the document and the process are welcome to contact SAIIER about the same.
Clarifying Auroville’s Educational Pathways
A three pronged approach
Free Progress
Hybrid Model
Life Long Learning
Auroville is an experiment that “wants to be a new creation expressing a new consciousness in a new way and according to new methods”. One of its essential concerns has been the development of educational processes befitting a learning society aspiring to “an unending education”. As the collectivity has grown in complexity of material expression, this area, crucial to the evolution of a new consciousness, has become the key to its next steps.
IEP25 acknowledges the current confusion in Auroville’s educational landscape—as noted too in the 57th Governing Board—between the ideal of integral education and the pressures of more traditional, exam-oriented schooling. The proposition thus is an inclusive, two-pronged educational model—one that nurtures a free-progress approach to Integral Education within the physical city area of Auroville; whilst on the periphery creating a state-of-the-art integrated hybrid campus as an experiment to bridge Auroville’s educational philosophy with the structured world outside.
This dual approach allows Auroville to clarify its educational aspirations, in link with what The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have insisted upon, continuing its research in the necessary conditions of freedom; whilst simultaneously responding to the insistence from Aurovilian families to have quality exam-oriented schooling pathways and engaging with the larger educational landscape of India and the world, so as to pave the way for a step-by-step transition from the industrial-age model of education towards an integral development.
The research emerging from both these experiments, may propose concrete steps out of the habits and conventions of Sri Aurobindo’s Objective Age, into the gradual inwardness of the Subjective and the possibility of constantleaps of the imaginations to the possibilities of a Spiritual Age to come.
With this approach we step away from difference and discrimination based on status (Aurovilian/non-Aurovilian), tackle the context in which Auroville is set. We take up the overdue challenge of organising the educational landscape of Auroville instead according to the varied nature of the educational experiments, their purpose, aims, aspirations & priorities.
Finally, Life Long Learning, is the initiative under which comes much of the experience of Auroville in link with points 2, 3, 4 of The Charter. It is an aspect of life and work in Auroville which has been informally and organically, beautifully evolving in Auroville and which SAIIER would like to make an conscious effort to document, research & explore a unified presentation, access to information and perhaps programmation of the richness of experience.
At the city centre
Free Progress
A Living Laboratory for Integral Education
A Free Progress Education — certification-free, soul-centered learning.
The research in this domain seeks to find new forms, and bring forth concrete propositions and case studies for future policies in Education.
Integral Education must keep the discovery of the psychic or the maintained contact with the Soul as the very priority of its system and approach.
It is for this very purpose that the continued space for experimentation in the Free Progress approach is absolutely crucial. It gazes straight into an Unknown, upcoming future and asks: What Now? Right Now, it manifests as an immediate centre of research into the adaptation to a rapidly changing world. Stepping gradually out of schooling frameworks, as AI marches on, towards Life Itself becoming both the Education and the Yoga.
On the Periphery
Hybrid Model
An Integrated International Hybrid Campus
A Hybrid Education — structured yet flexible, embodies the NEP20 and seeks to integrate the inwardness and spiritual aspirations of the IEP25.
The Integrated Hybrid campus would consist of Hybrid schools with board affiliation CBSE, state, IGCSE, IB, etc.
The research in this domain will act as Auroville’s bridge between the radical experimentation of the future and the current needs for stepping stones and the laying of paths towards said future.
Hybrid Model on the outskirts, along the city periphery — The Hybrid Model proposes to attempt to include in the ethos, attitude and activities of its schools, the deeper aspiration of Integral Education, whilst responding to the still existing requirement of formal qualifications.
Throughout Auroville
Lifelong Learning
Towards
Unending Education
Lifelong learning is the heart of a society which aspires to “unending education & constant progress.” Innformally this is already intensely happening.
How can we grasp and document the essence of it? How can we organise it a little more clearly without losing the very spirit of independence and freedom of experimentation which allows it to exist?
Can we propose to create of a culture of pursuit of knowledge within Auroville – which is deeply lacking? Which would support self-driven youth to choose to remain in Auroville continue growing as aspirants and young people especially from the Global South to explore Auroville, it’s raison d’etre, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother’s world, through dedicated work and study?
More details coming soon…
'Living Souls'
“The aim of education is not to prepare a man to succeed in life and society, but to increase his perfectibility to the utmost.”
An education oriented towards ‘increasing perfectibility’ must build upon the foundation of an awakened body and a life spirit capable of the discipline that can lead to self-mastery. Youth should have a firm grasp of the material field while being capable of lofty flight. A conscious awareness and plasticity in the body, a wide openness in the life spirit and as few artificial mental constructions in the mind will create the type that is available to the future.
The core of this experiment and experience is as large as life itself. The aim is to bring forth a rich, complex and integrated personality rather than one with a set of specialized competences; a personality for whom progress implies always a widening and deepening of activities and of the faculties involved. The human being needs this enlargement and sense of uplifting to meet the demands of the future. It is also the movement required by life in an aspiring collective. This élan of discovery, asking for a progressive mastery of many fields, has a natural tendency, once enkindled, to spread out from the school environment into other aspects of the city-in-making. Yet, if true, there would be nothing artificially constructed, it would be the movement of a life growing and perfecting itself, a thing so natural as to be unnoticeable.
Finally, if this progression can be achieved, one may arrive at ‘an unending education, a constant progress and a youth that never ages’, which is the call of Auroville’s Charter.
Towards Flexible Learning Spaces
Imagining the Cultural Zone
It’s been a 50-plus-year journey for Auroville education, often dancing between extremes of structure and freedom.
As AI arrives, as numbers grow, as we question the education systems we have so carefully erected, can we zoom out of the context of schooling and imagine in the centre of Auroville – in the Cultural Zone – spaces for the development of each plane of the being.
What might unfold if we begin to dream of three dedicated environments that nurture the planes of the being—we have the example of Dehashakti (physical) which started out as a campus in Dana, used for school children and has expanded to include adults, there are dreams and plans linked to that physical space as well as the awareness of the need for an evolving programme, coaches, captains, aspirants in continuous growth to hold, develop, refine the programme and campus.
Now what about a Pranashakti (vital) – for the refinement of the aesthetic and ethical being, it would include spaces for all sorts of the
performing and fine arts. How does it take shape? What sort of programmes could emerge? What forms would these take?
A Jnanashakti (mental) – a space of accelerated learning through the worldview and approach of Sri Aurobindo. E.g. in the science fields to awaken the wonder through the observation of our physical universe. A temple for the sciences, experiments, interactive museums, botanical gardens what else?
These propositions have been around since the mid 90’s at least, as research through archival documents of both SAIIER and L’Avenir have shown us. So, how can we take the next steps towards their manifestation?
More details coming soon…
Recognition for Auroville Education
Generic
Equivalence
For 12+ and higher course
Documents prepared and handed over for official recognition of its Free Progress and Integral Education system, seeking equivalence certification at the higher secondary level.
The document is modelled on the legacy of Sri Aurobindo International Centre for Education (SAICE), which was recognized by the Government of India in the 1960s.
Supporting this request has been attached a detailed record of student admissions from 2016–2024 into a wide range of Indian and international universities, across disciplines such as art, science, liberal studies, and sustainable living.
These admissions—granted despite the absence of conventional certification—demonstrate the credibility and effectiveness of Auroville’s educational model, while highlighting the pressing need for formal equivalence to remove institutional entry barriers in India.
The Triple Challenge Framework
Reimagining Assessment
SAIIER’s concrete proposal for radical change in the form of assessment, aims not only at providing a possible recognition for Auroville Education but also to build a bridge between the lived educational experience of Auroville and the NEP’s intent and its field-level implementation.
Developed within Auroville’s long-standing practice of Integral Education—the Triple Challenge Framework offers a concrete, measurable alternative to exam-centric certification. Rather than ranking learners based on a seated test reliant in measure on rote learning, it invites each student to design and complete challenges across three domains: physical, vital and mental.
The proposal may be downloaded here.
A retrospective case-study of the approach to Challenges in Auroville Education over the past 10 years is soon to be published and a case-study on the experiment is being undertaken this academic year.
Research and Documentation
Research in the Auroville Context
One of the characteristics of Auroville project is that it does not consist on applying an ideal formed by the mind to a recalcitrant life but on allowing its ideals emerge within life itself, “It is life itself which has to evolve” as Mother put it. But if Auroville grows in the middle of life itself and Aurovilians have been groping around for several decades in search of new ways, there must be some visible signs of this growth in our midst, like buds in the midst of weeds. What method could we use to assess our progress in different domains, that would make sense to us as well as to outside partners?
Initiatives of the SAIIER Research Desk
6 Month Hands-On Research Course
Literature Review on Free Progress
