I will be sharing some of the works that has been/ are happening in the field of education in India. My knowledge about them is only to the extent of web. Hence, I request you to share your real experience if you have been/are associated with any of such works.  Thank you!


95% children in India are enrolled in school, 68%-70% are regularly found in schools and 50% learn what they are expected to learn. “The problem in India is quality of education and not quantity, although that also exists” says Madhav Chavan.

Madhav Chavan, an Indian social activist, took over the operations of Bombay Education Initiative from UNICEF to latter call it Pratham. He wanted this non-governmental social mission to work on large scale and hence started Pratham first program “Balwadis”, the pre-school centres.

Pratham’s mission is to ensure that deficit of quality in education and lack of leadership is eradicated primarily from pre-school and primary school education. It wants “Every child in school and learning well”.

How is it different from Teach India, Teach for India, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan? Well, the uniqueness of Pratham is demonstrated in the way it operates. Lau Tsu’ teachings, , which states go to the people, love them, learn from them, start with what they know, built on what they have, play a pivotal role in its philosophy. The Pratham team go to a community and stay with them, learn the ethos of the community from its people, select women who have reputation for been good at handling children and train her to teach children of her own community. Place for teachings is decided by the community. It can be anything from a temple, a mosque to a party office.  Hence infrastructure is not a problem. Pratham primarily focuses on teaching the homemaker. “This integration of mother’s education and child’s education is very important. It is necessary to develop that kind of literacy; especially among mothers of children who are in anganwadis, mothers whose children are in school. By making mother and child sit together, you can give the mother literacy and make sure the child gets home support.” They have already trained more than 30000-40000 women for teaching their community.

Facilitated by Pratham, ASER is the largest household survey undertaken in India by people outside the government. It annually measures the enrolment as well as the reading and arithmetic levels of children in the age group of 6-14 years. The findings of the survey have been referred to in the approach paper to the 11th Planning Commission and several state governments use the findings to define their educational programs each year.  Since the last 4 years the report has been released by the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Pratham has also started Read India campaign, which aims to teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic to underprivileged children across India. This has been one of their landmark campaigns.

P.S. The working eithics of Pratham follows the “Chinese Restaurant Model” [explained in my earlier post] and that is why it spreads. It also answers any questions raised by Urvashi in her “Value Creation over Money…” post.

Pratham http://bit.ly/8lR83P

Madhav Chavan’s interview http://bit.ly/bQFvyF