The Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government is making headlines for its education model. An article, titled: Clean Toilets, Inspired Teachers: How India’s Capital Is Fixing Its Schools, published in The New York Times, dated August 16, 2022, appreciates the Delhi model of education, and how it is helping children and their families to break the cycle of poverty. The report was also republished in The Khaleej Times on August 19, 2022.
Against this backdrop, viral pictures claiming that the image (of the school) used in the news articles is from a private school — Mother Mary’s School, not a Delhi government-run school — is doing the rounds on social media.
A Facebook user posted the viral images with a caption: “न्यू यॉर्क टाइम्स और ख़लीज़ टाइम्स में पैसे देकर ख़बर तो छपवा ली , पर झूठ और चोरी की आदत नहीं गयी ये फ़ोटो दिल्ली के सरकारी स्कूल की नहीं बल्कि मयूर विहार के मदर मैरी स्कूल के बच्चों की हैं केजरीवाल और सिसोदिया देश में भी झूठ बेच रहे हैं और विदेश में भी” (English translation: Got the news published in The New York Times and The Khaleej Times by paying money, but the habit of lying and theft did not go away. These photos are not of Delhi’s government school but of the children of Mother Mary’s School from Mayur Vihar. Kejriwal and Sisodia are selling lies in the country as well as abroad.)
You can find the viral post here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral post and found it to be false.
Running a Reverse Image Search for the picture being used for Mother Mary’s School, we traced the official website of the school. Here, the picture can be seen in the gallery under the investiture ceremony 2019 album. Scanning further, we found the about-us section of the website informing that Mother Mary’s is a girls’ school in Mayur Vihar, Phase-1, East Delhi. But the image shown in the report shows a co-ed classroom. This contradicts the claim that the image is from Mother Mary’s School.
Although the uniforms of both schools look quite similar, we could identify a few differences between the two. The collars of the dresses have different colours, and the sleeve lengths are also different in both images. The differences can be identified below:
The caption under the image of the article, published in The New York Times, states that the image was taken in a classroom at a Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in New Delhi, and gives credit to the photojournalist, Saumya Khandelwal.
According to The Indian Express, of the 1,067 schools run by the Delhi government, 442 are classified as ‘Sarvodaya’ schools, which start from either class 1 or nursery. And out of these 442, around 70 schools are co-ed.
Closely looking at the picture published in the news, the logos on the uniforms are also different in both the pictures.
Also, a tweet by AAP leader Atishi Marlena, dated August 19, 2022, refutes all the claims about the picture and informs that the image is from a Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Kakrola, south-west Delhi.
Therefore, we can conclusively say that the viral post — claiming the picture used in the news report in NYT is of a private school in Delhi and not a government school — is false.
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