If India’s K-12 education system hasn’t collapsed completely, its due to the efforts of the
country’s private schools and estimated 2 million NGOs engaged in providing direct or
supplementary education and health services to millions of children neglected by government
schools, hospitals and other institutions: Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen
Punjab need some 600 thousand people(3% of 2 million appx same % population of Punjab in
Inida) a meagre contribution of Rs 2000 per month.
And while primary school enrolment in the period 2008-14 averaged a commendable 113 percent, only 69
percent of the secondary education age population was in school and tertiary enrolment is a mere 25
percent. Health indicators are even worse with infant under-5 mortality at 52 per 1,000 live births (cf. 9.6
in Sri Lanka) and the India statistic for children under-5 suffering severe malnutrition averaging a shocking
47.9 percent in the period 2008-13.
Open, continuous and uninterrupted neglect of education — specially early childhood and primary
education — is rampant in the states where quasi-literate rural politicians with little time or respect for
education began to rule the roost immediately after independence, running teacher appointment and
transfers, and textbook commissioning and printing rackets with impunity.
“With government and the market having failed to sufficiently deliver a host of services, particularly in
education and health, NGOs discharge a very important role in delivering direct and supplementary
education and healthcare services to the public.
Voluntary organisations such as Pratham, CRY and the Azim Premji Foundation help in the formulation of
government policies by researching and debating critical issues in education, health and socio-economic
development apart from providing direct, supplementary and remedial education and health services.
Therefore, they need to be given full government and societal encouragement and autonomy”, says
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the highly-respected president of the Delhi-based think tank, Centre for Policy
Research.
Pratham Education Foundation(27 years)
What are the prime objectives of Pratham?
1. To work on scale to
2. improve the basic literacy and numeracy skills of children;
3. create low-cost, replicable programme models that can impact policy and practice at the Central
and state government levels;
4. raise awareness about the importance of children’s learning outcomes among all stakeholders in
education,
5. and provide vocational and skills training leading to job opportunities for youth from socio-
economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Major achievements of Pratham during the past two decades since it was founded ?
Pratham’s main initiatives of the past two decades are its flagship Read India programme to improve the
literacy and numeracy of children between ages 3-14 by devising innovative pedagogies;
publishing the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a citizens-led assessment of learning outcomes
of children in the 5-16 age group in rural India;
the Pratham Institute, vocational training arm of Pratham which provides rural and semi-urban
unemployed and underemployed youth access to certified skills training, and provision of subsequent
employment or entrepreneurship opportunities.
Scale
At the end of the academic year 2015-16, Pratham’s programmes were operational in 23 states and Union
territories countrywide.
Our own teaching-learning programmes have reached 900,000 children and our partnership programmes
with state governments and other NGOs have reached 4.5 million.
Moreover, the Pratham Institute has skilled 22,000 youth and POSE has re-inducted 4,500 girl children into
secondary education.
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Child Rights & You
With an annual disbursement budget of Rs.24.9 crore, five offices countrywide and 182 full-time
employees,
Child Rights and You (hitherto Child Relief and You) is one of the country’s largest child welfare NGOs.
Since its promotion in 1979.
CRY has defined its role as a funding agency for downstream NGOs to enable them to implement on-the-
field education/child-centric projects. It currently funds over 100 voluntary organisations countrywide.
History.
CRY promoters resolved to connect with millions of Indians ready, willing and able to make modest
financial contributions for educating the country’s millions of underprivileged children denied their
fundamental right to survival, participation, protection and development.
Hence the prime objective of CRY is to prompt the public to assume the responsibility of changing the
lives of underprivileged children”, says Suma Ravi, regional director (South) of CRY.
Initiatives. CRY funds the education/child rights/health/welfare projects of over 100 voluntary
organisations, 20 networks/alliances and seven individual fellows, and has improved the lives of 1.1
million children in 820 villages and districts countrywide.
Future plans. We will also step up our advocacy campaigns with the Central and state governments and
policy makers to make larger education and health budgetary provision for children”, says Ravi.
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Teach For India
Teach For India (TFI) is an NGO which recruits top-ranked, idealistic college graduates and professionals to
teach for two years in under-served, low-income schools to reduce inequity in education. Since 2008,
when it placed its first batch of 80 ‘fellows’ (teachers) in 33 low-income schools in Mumbai and Pune, TFI
has recruited and deputed 1,250 college graduates to teach in 357 municipal and private budget schools
in seven cities across the country.
What are the prime objectives of TFI?
India has 7 million teachers. So our idea is not to put a TFI fellow in every classroom but to develop a
stream of leaders aware of the importance of equity in education. Our aspiration is that one day, all
children in India will receive excellent education.
Please detail the impact of the TFI fellowship programme.
The TFI programme is divided into two parts. The first is a teaching fellowship, a training ground for
leadership and commitment, and the second is our alumni movement. The fellowship is a two-year, full-
time, salaried (Rs.17,500 per month) teaching programme in municipal or low-income private schools.
The selection process is rigorous, with typically less than 7 percent of applicants being selected. The
second component of our model is the alumni movement. We hope our alumni will rise to positions of
power and will use their influence and power to meaningfully better children’s lives.
Over the past five years, TFI fellows have made significant impact on the learning outcomes of their
students — a longitudinal study conducted in association with Columbia University’s School of
International and Public Affairs reveals that students taught by TFI fellows achieve four times the growth
in English language learning, and twice the growth in maths learning compared with children schooled by
other teachers.
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Agastya International Foundation
The Bangalore-based Agastya International Foundation (AIF, estb.1999) has provided experiential science
and technology education to 8 million children and 200,000 school teachers in 18 states across India over
the past 16 years.
History. AIF was founded by a group of educationists and scientists led by Ramji Raghavan, a former
investment banker (Citibank and Cedel), to arouse the interest of rural school children in science. In 2000,
the foundations first initiative — a unique, state-of-the-art science experiential learning centre for rural
children established on a 172-acre campus in Kuppam, on the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border to which
students from surrounding villages are bussed in daily to experience hands-on science education —
became operational.
Major objectives. To provide experiential science teaching-learning to 20 million children and 1 million
educators by 2020; create a cadre of 1 million Young Instructor Leaders (student teachers) and become a
leader in teacher training for the sciences.
Programmes & initiatives. AIF’s state-of-the-art science labs in Kuppam provide 750 rural children and
teachers bussed in daily from neighbouring village schools high-quality, hands-on learning programmes in
science, art and ecology. Moreover, Agastya has established 74 subsidiary science centres in 13 states,
which provide lab and experiential learning facilities for government schools, as also 175 mobile science
labs which tour remote villages and under-resourced urban schools. Similarly, 57 lab-on-bikes visit far
flung, less accessible rural schools and 300 night village school Operation Vasantha Centres provide
supplementary education to 1,000 children everyday.
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Bachpan Bachao Andolan
BBA’s direct action teams in 12 states have rescued and rehabilitated 85,049 children from illegal forced
labour and modern-day slavery.
This is like requirement to save children from Drugs in Punjab.
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Central Square Foundation
We hope to attain this objective by dispensing grants to support early-stage organisations through capital
and capacity building; developing a research ecosystem focused on devising collaborative platforms for
knowledge-building and sharing, and engaging with the Central and state governments to strengthen
policy formulation and implementation.
For instance, the India School Leadership Institute, an organisation which we incubated in 2012, has
mentored 400 school principals countrywide. For teacher training and development, we support
organisations using technology for building scalable and effective professional development programmes.
We also have a collaboration agreement with the Khan Academy, USA to translate their math videos and
exercises into Hindi, and to launch the Khan Academy India.
Moreover, we have participated in the deliberations of the Union HRD ministry and the Subramanian
Committee to draft the New Education Policy 2016. More recently, together with the HRD ministry we
launched Prashikshak, an online portal for strengthening teacher education institutions. We also have
active engagements with several state governments.
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Deepalaya
Therefore, we resolved to serve and uplift society by providing education to poor and deserving children.
We identified children in a neighbouring slum and began dispensing elementary education.
Major initiatives.
Deepalaya’s eight learning centres/schools including a mobile bus (‘Education on Wheels) provide
education to 100,000 socio-economically disadvantaged children in Delhi.
Moreover, its three vocational training centres in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Haryana have an enrolment of
508 students. And in partnership with the Mewar Dev Agency,
Deepalaya has promoted 1,173 self-help groups for 13,523 women in 84 villages of Haryana.
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Asha for Education
Asha for Education (AfE) has since increased its footprint to 50 chapters around the world, and supports
200 projects providing education to socio-economically disadvantaged children in India.
Prime objectives. The mission of the US-registered AfE is to “catalyse socio-economic change in India
through the education of underprivileged children”. The Asha Trust, registered in India in 2003, is
committed to the empowerment of marginalised sections of society, with education being it main focus.
Major programmes. AfE funds and supports 200 projects promoted by NGOs in India. “Most Asha
chapters play a supporting role rather than undertaking projects themselves. What the 400 NGOs have
achieved with AfE’s funds is credited as their achievement.
Right now, we directly support the education of about 150 children in Lucknow, 50 in Varanasi, run a
hostel for 30 children of brick kiln workers in Kanpur and a school in Ballia with 50-100 children”, says
Pandey.
Unsurprisingly, despite working closely with NGOs countrywide, AfE advocates radical improvement of the
country’s government school system.
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Parikrma Humanity Foundation
From a single school with 165 children in 2003, the foundation has grown to four free-of-charge English-
medium K-12 schools and a junior college schooling 1,700 children attracted from four orphanages and 70
slums of Bangalore.
Parikrma has promoted four schools, one junior college and an Education Transformation Centre where we
train teachers of over 200 government schools. Under this 360 degree education model, our teachers not
only teach in interesting ways but ensure our children are provided adequate nutrition — three meals in
school — and healthcare from immunization to hospitalization to enable them to learn to their full
potential. After Parikrma students complete Plus Two, we also fund their higher studies and help them find
employment.
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Eklavya
Since then, Eklavya has developed its own upgraded Social Science Teaching and Primary Education
programmes for government schools in Madhya Pradesh, and actively collaborated with the Delhi-based
National Council of Educational Research and Training to develop the landmark National Curriculum
Framework 2005. Other activities include textbooks/magazines publishing, teacher training, inventing low-
cost teaching-learning tool kits, and organising science popularisation programmes.
Objectives. “For most children in India, school education is a daily drudgery. In Eklavya, we are
committed to making the education process a meaningful and cherished experience through researching
and developing innovative curriculums, learning materials, new pedagogies and teacher training,” says
Arvind Sardana, the Bhopal-based director of Eklavya.
Major programmes. Eklavya’s research and materials development division has developed maths and
language (primary school), science and social science (high school) curriculums and textbooks. It has also
set up 100 community-based learning centres which provide after-school remedial support to government
primary students in five districts of Madhya Pradesh. Moreover, this pioneer education NGO has
established 130 libraries in government primaries in Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, and publishes 30-35
new book titles per year.
Future plans. “We want to deepen our involvement with teacher training and education and make our
curriculum and learning materials available online to reach the entire student and teacher communities,”
says Sardana.