ISR Project - Education to underprivileged

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ISR – INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
PALLAVI SRIVASTAVA
HPGD/AP15/0060
Social Cause : Poor Education in India
NGO : Teach For India
PRIN. L. N. WELINGKAR INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT &
RESEARCH
August 2016

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Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Issues .......................................................................................................................................... 4
India disappoints in educational outcome test............................................................................ 6
THE EDUCATION CRISIS................................................................................................... 13
NGO-Teach for India..................................................................................................................... 14
Areas in which Teach For India Works..................................................................................... 16
The Teach for India model ........................................................................................................ 22
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM ......................................................................................................... 22
ALUMNI MOVEMENT................................................................................................................ 24
Challenges faced by TFI model................................................................................................ 25
Initiatives By Teach For India.................................................................................................... 27
Maya...................................................................................................................................... 27
inspirED ................................................................................................................................ 29
Firki........................................................................................................................................ 30
Circles of Impact........................................................................................................................ 32
Student impact....................................................................................................................... 33
Fellow Impact......................................................................................................................... 38
Reported Results....................................................................................................................... 40
Other Indian NGOs Working Toward Education Equality ............................................................ 42

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Introduction
India is a country with more than one billion people, and just one-third of them can read. Rapidly
growing size of population, shortages of teachers, books, and basic facilities, and insufficient
public funds to cover education costs are some of the nation’s toughest challenges. This is
where Children in India are facing the basic challenges. According to a study, more than 30% of
educational funds are allocated towards higher education, leaving the primary education in
India in sway.
India is fourth among the top 10 nations with the highest numbers of out-of children in primary
level. Furthermore, the rate of school drop-outs amongst students is very high. One of the main
reasons behind this is poverty. When earning a livelihood and taking care of the members of the
family becomes a primary matter of concern in one’s life, education stands a little or, very often,
no chance of pursuance. For the underprivileged people in India, education is perceived as a
high-priced luxury, and this negative outlook continues on with every new generation.
A disproportionate number of total out-of-school children in India are girls. What denies equal
opportunities of children are serious social issues that have arose out of caste, class and
gender differences. The practice of child labour in India and resistance to sending girls to
school in several parts of the country remain as genuine concerns. If the current trend
continues, millions of underprivileged children will probably never set foot in a classroom.
India’s growth relies on a well-educated and skilled workforce. Improving education is a critical
area of investment. A shabby foundation in primary education can overturn the lives, careers
and productivity of millions of its citizens. Already, a considerable proportion of the adult
workforce in India is acutely under-equipped to be eligible for skilled and semi-skilled jobs. In

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order to build India as a consumer market of global standards, it is very important that every
child reaps the benefits of quality education.
About 96 percent of India’s children are enrolled in schools, but educational standards have
been declining since 2010 — when the RTE was implemented — noted the 2012 ASER report,
which surveyed almost 600,000 children in 28 states in India. The ASER survey revealed that
only a quarter of Indian students in third grade can do a simple two-digit subtraction problem,
down from more than one-third in 2010.
A recent report tabled in parliament that over 100,000 schools in India have just one teacher is
an alarming wake-up call for the government and all stakeholders.
Issues
 While many schools were built, they had poor infrastructure and inadequate facilities.
Schools in the rural areas were especially affected. According to District Information
System for Education (DISE) in India in 2009, only about 51.5% of all schools in India
have boundary walls, 16.65% have computers and 39% have electricity. Of which, only
6.47% of primary schools and 33.4% of upper primary schools have computers, and only
27.7% of primary schools have electricity. Learning in poorly furnished schools was not
conducive, resulting in poor quality education.
 Furthermore, the absence rates of teachers and students were high, while their
retainment rates low. The incentives for going to school were not apparent, while
punishment for absence was not enforced. Despite the government’s decree on
compulsory education and the child labour ban, many children were still missing classes
to go to work. The government did not interfere even when children missed school.

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 Also, online country studies publications by the Federal Research Division of the Library
of Congress stated that “it was not unusual for the teacher to be absent or even to
subcontract the teaching work to unqualified substitutes”. This exacerbates the problems
of the lack of qualified teachers. Currently, the student-teacher ratio remains high at
around 32, which is not much of an improvement since 2006 when the ratio was 34.
 Economic and social disparities also plague the fundamentals of the education system.
Rural children are less able to receive education because of greater opportunity costs,
since rural children have to work to contribute to the family’s income. According to the
Annual Status of Education in 2009, the average attendance rate of students in the rural
states is about 75%. Though this rate varies significantly, states like Uttar Pradesh and
Bihar had more than 40% absentees during a random visit to their schools. In the urban
states, more than 90% of the students were present in their schools during a visit.
 Banners blocking the road signals, Celebrity worships, poor public toilet systems, Litters
in roads, slums and huts all over even in metro cities are the worst ever issue in India.

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India disappoints in educational
outcome test
India would appear to have partially arrested the downward spiral in the quality of learning of
school children in rural areas but there is little to cheer about the country’s performance,
according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published on Tuesday, Jan 15
2015.
The enrolment level is near universal with 96.7% of children registered in schools during 2014,
the same as 2013, according to ASER 2014, published by education non-profit organization
Pratham Education Foundation.
The proportion of all children in Class 5 who can read a Class 2 text has improved by 1
percentage point from 2013—48.1% children of Class 5 could read a class 2 text in 2014
against 47% in the previous year. This means every second Class 5 student in rural India can’t
read the text of a class three levels below.
In 2005, when the first ASER report was published, three out of five children in Class 5 were
able to read a Class 2 text. This is the 10th ASER report. This year, the foundation surveyed
577 rural districts across India for the report.
“Stagnation has happened but at a low level. That’s the reality,” said Madhav Chavan, chief
executive and president of Pratham. He said things have not changed much despite
government levying a tax to fund education and enacting a law to ensure access to education
for all children in the 6-14 age group.

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And arithmetic, the last of the three Rs, still remains a challenge. For example, only 44.1% of
Class 8 students in rural India managed to do a division in 2014, as against 46% in 2013.
“The all India (rural) figures for basic arithmetic have remained virtually unchanged over the last
few years. In 2012, 26.3% of Class 3 children could do a two-digit subtraction. This number is at
25.3% in 2014. For Class 5 children, the ability to do division has increased slightly from 24.8%
in 2012 to 26.1% in 2014,” said the report.
The situation in the ability of school children to comprehend English too seems to be stagnating.
“Children’s ability to read English is relatively unchanged in primary school. In 2014, about 25%
of children enrolled in Class 5 could read simple English sentences. This number is virtually
unchanged since 2009,” the report said.
The situation is worse in middle school. In 2009, 60.2% of children in Class 8 could read simple
sentences in English but in 2014, this figure was 46.8%, the survey said.
Experts said the numbers indicate that India’s school education is in deep crisis and needs
urgent attention. If India wants to reap the so-called demographic dividend, then the school is
where it must focus, experts said.
“How will you reap the demographic dividend when your school children are not learning the
basics?” asked Yamini Aiyar, director of Accountability Initiative, part of think-tank Centre for
Policy Research.
Administrators have talked about IITs, IIMs and skill development but less about what’s
happening inside classrooms in schools, she added. “In the pursuit of excellence, we cannot
leave the basics behind.”
She said the ASER report should influence the centre and states to set specific goals and work
towards it.

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Chavan said the report is, in a way, a summary of what “we have observed over the tenures of
UPA I and II. It is also a baseline for the new government and what it has to deal with.”

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Rukmini Banerjee, director of ASER centre, said that she would like to see the report as a
“glass half full than half-empty”. “Stagnation has happened and we hope the upward mobility will
start soon,” she added.
Banerjee pointed out that some states had done better. In 2014, a higher proportion of Class 5
students in Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu Haryana, Bihar, Odisha and Karnataka could read a
Class 2 level text than in 2013.
The survey also said that the Right to Education Act and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan have
resulted in an improvement in infrastructure in government schools, if not the learning outcome.
It also said that more students are now enrolled in private schools than even before. In 2014,
30.8% of all children between the ages of 6 and 14 were enrolled in private schools. This
number was 29% in 2013 and 16.3% in 2005 when the first ASER report was published.
A human resource development ministry official, who asked not to be named, said that the
government is serious about the learning outcome. In August, the ministry unveiled a new
scheme that emphasizes primary reading, writing and understanding, the official added.
Abhijit Banerjee, a professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author
of Poor Economics, said he is not convinced that the central government gives education its due
priority. It seems to be focusing more on reviving economy first, said Banerjee, who attended
the event that saw the release of the ASER report. More than the centre, the state governments
have a bigger role to play in improving the school education system in India, Banerjee added.

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THE EDUCATION CRISIS
Education is fundamental to an equitable society. An excellent education equips children
and youth with the knowledge, skills, values, and mindsets needed to be empowered
individuals and responsible citizens. The fact that a high-quality education has wide-
ranging benefits for individuals and societies has been demonstrated, time and again, by
countries across the world. With nearly 1 in 4 people below the age of 14 years, India
today stands at an inflection point; where we go from here depends in large part on our
ability to provide equal opportunities for all children to attain an excellent education.
The truth is that today, more than 50% of students in Grade 5 cannot read a Grade 2
text or solve a simple subtraction problem . The truth is that today, the socio-
economic circumstances that a child is born into determines the type of school she
attends, the kinds of co-curricular opportunities that are available to her, the quality of
life outcomes she attains as an adult, and the kinds of opportunities she passes on to
her own children.
The truth is that today, we are failing the majority of our children.
The causes underlying this collective failure are numerous, varied and complex.
Nevertheless, at Teach For India, they believe that at the root of this crisis in education
lies a crisis of leadership. There is a severe deficit of people at all levels of th e education
system who are committed to working together to improve the capacity and quality of our
nation’s schools. The fact is that teachers alone cannot solve this crisis; they also need

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excellent school principals to support those teachers, informed parents to stay engaged
with the teaching-learning process in schools, visionary bureaucrats and politicians to
create an environment that enables for principals and teachers to thrive, active civil
society leaders to hold stakeholders accountable, and comm itted corporate leaders to
mobilize the necessary resources to support school systems.
NGO-Teach for India
Teach For India (TFI) is a non-profit organisation that is a part of the Teach For
All network.Teach For India (TFI), a program of Teach To Lead, aims to address educational
inequity by building a movement of leaders that are committed to expanding educational
opportunity. Launched in 2009 with an inaugural class of 78 Fellows in the cities of Puneand
Mumbai, in its first year TFI worked with approximately 2,800 children. The model currently
operates in 5 cities, and during the 2012-2013 academic year served 16,216 children in 506

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classrooms. By 2016, TFI aspires to reach 6,000 students by placing 2,000 Fellows in 10 cities
across India.
TFI recruits outstanding college graduates and young professionals to serve as fulltime ‘high
performing and impact driven’ class-teachers in under-resourced schools for 2 years. The model
is rooted in a rigorous selection process that evaluates applicants based on qualities including
academic excellence, demonstrated leadership, a commitment to the community, critical
thinking, and perseverance. The program has an acceptance rate of just 7.5 percent. Both
before placement and throughout the two year fellowship each TFI Fellow undergoes a training
program designed to improve their effectiveness and leadership abilities. Through the Teaching
as Leadership framework, Teach For India staff provide training and support to Fellows so that
they can employ innovative teaching strategies to maximize their effectiveness in the
classroom. TFI fellows are placed in 164 partner schools, which include both government
schools and low-income private schools.
To ensure that fellows have clear leadership opportunities beyond their two year commitment to
teaching, TFI has established partnerships with institutions in a broad range of sectors.
Additionally, TIF has built a strong alumni network, which serves as a valuable resource for
current fellows. Informed by their experiences, alumni work from inside and outside the
educational system as advocates for education reform. Out of 200 Alumni, 54 percent are
currently working in socially relevant fields while 43 percent are involved in the Education
sector.
TFI is a member of the global Teach For All network, which consists of more than 30
independent social enterprises around the world working to expand educational opportunities in
their respective countries.

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Areas in which Teach For India Works
ACCESS TO EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION
The early years of a child’s life are critical to her holistic development. With a significant
percentage (9.7%) of India’s population below 5 years of age, there is a massive need
for a policy framework that supports Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE).
However, the reality is far from the vision of integrated ECCE that is needed to give all
children a sound foundation for lifelong learning & development.
While both the National Policy on Education (1986 & 1992) and the RTE (2009) (Sec 11)
recognize the importance of ECCE, the RTE guarantees free and compulsory education
to children only in the age-group of 6-14 years. In fact, although India has one of the
largest welfare schemes for ECCE in the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
programme, it faces multiple challenges ranging from access to quality. Lack of
monitoring of services delivered by the Anganwadi centres, along with limited training of
workers on nutrition and pre-school education, has resulted in a situation that is
extremely alarming, with a large number of children under 6 missing out on early child
care.
Consequently, a critical need of ECCE is a multi-pronged approach wherein all children
receive high quality care across health, nutrition and education, right from the pre -natal
stage, with greater coherence in service delivery. Important factors in this are the need
for institutions that support & monitor the delivery of ECCE across the spectrum of its
services, along with a teacher force that is adequately trained in Early Childhood

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Education (ECE). Teach For India Alumni in organizations like Hippocampus,
Thermax Foundation, Wunderbar and Pratham are working on different aspects of
this issue.
DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS AND SCHOOL PRINCIPALS
As India nears universal enrolment, there is a growing realization that bringing children
into schools doesn’t equate to quality learning. In fact, as the conversation has moved
away from enrolment, there is an active shift towards seeking factors that deliver and
influence quality. At the centre of this conversation is the realization that the qual ity of an
education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals.
Building capability in teachers has been a major challenge with pre-service and in-
service teacher training falling short of equipping our teachers with the skills and
mindsets required to succeed in a diverse range of classroom and school contexts. In
addition, the country faces a shortage of over 9 lakh teachers and qualified head
teachers who can lead a school. These conditions are exacerbated by a poor culture,
influenced by social perceptions around teaching, which further lessens the motivation of
high quality aspirants from entering the profession. Add to that a low quality education
for teacher aspirants, and we end up with the depressing statistic of 83% failure rat e in
the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) in 2015.
In addressing the multi-faceted challenge facing teaching, Teach For India Alumni are
engaged in helping teachers improve their effectiveness every single day by motivating
and training teachers in the early stages of their career to working with experienced
practitioners and helping them learn from each other, and even working with

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headmasters towards holistic development of the school. Through organizations like
iTeach, Leadership Institute for Teachers, TalentSprint, STIR, Firki and India School
Leadership Institute, our Alumni are showing what is possible when we look at teachers
as key partners on the journey of education reform.
DESIGN OF CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENTS
Central to debates on the purpose of education is the issue of what is to be taught and
what is to be assessed. Always a matter of contention, these exhibit what a society
values and wants to hand over to its future generations. However, the challenge with
curriculum and assessments only begins there. Over & above determining what is taught
in schools, standards and content majorly influence the level of engagement of the
student and the teacher in the teaching-learning process.
India created the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) in 2005, as a result of forces
which were set in motion much earlier in the national curriculum-reform movement. While
widely acclaimed as a milestone document, the spirit of it has often been lost in the
translation to textbooks in different states. This res ults in curricular policies and
practices that, as noted by an SCERT- led review, are “not suitable for children of all
sections of society”, “not local specific”, and “not related to day-to-day life” of the
students and teachers. Indian curriculum has als o been shown to be “overambitious” -
content not suited to the pace of children’s learning.
Similar has been the case with the reform movement in the space of assessments with
the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system. While initially designed to
incentivize ongoing learning of students, with a shift towards application-based learning

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from a focus on rote, lack of training of teachers on the CCE has resulted in a system
that has only increased the burden on students & teachers. Combine this w ith the lack of
a uniform national large-scale student assessment programme and one encounters a
challenging scenario where there is very little objective information on student learning
outcomes for decision-making at the school or policy level.
With the journey of curriculum and assessments beginning as soon as one enters the
classroom, we see many Fellows continuing to work as Alumni in creating contextualized
curriculum, assessments and frameworks, including for different modes of delivery, and
in training teachers and schools in performing assessment-related tasks, in
organisations such as Educational Initiatives, iDiscoveri, Gray Matters, Leadership
Boulevard, and Bridge International Academies.
COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT
One of the major pain-points in the implementation of programmes to improve school or
teacher quality has been the inability of the system to fix accountability at the last mile.
Specifically, in a system that is as massive as Indian education, the mode of fixing
accountability from the top creates extreme challenges. In such a scenario, empowering
communities at a school-level for governance is critical to the success of the movement
towards quality. Through this, the school becomes the reflection of its community, with
its local set of priorities, values and needs. In addition, the entire community, with its set
of influencers, supports the headmaster, teachers and non-teaching staff in performing
their duties towards improved teaching-learning.

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To this effect, Section 21 of the RTE Act (2009) mandates the formation of School
Management Committees (SMCs) in all government-run or aided schools. SMCs are
responsible for monitoring school functioning and finances, and for creating School
Development Plans (SDPs). With an eye on equitable decis ion-making, parents or
guardians are supposed to make up 75% of the committee, with proportional
representation for disadvantaged groups and 50% representation by women. However,
high incidence of illiteracy, lack of awareness of rights, roles and responsi bilities, and
prevailing power structures often interfere with the proper functioning of SMCs. In fact,
while DISE Data suggests that 91% of schools in India have instituted SMCs, only two -
thirds have received any form of training, and 40% are not even involved in the
preparation of the SDP, much less implement it.
Teach For India Fellows as well as Alumni in organizations like Saajha, AfterTaste,
Akanksha and Indus Action are solving various adaptive challenges related to community
empowerment and harmonizing the power of the collective by rallying and organizing
parents and other community members around school transformation.
INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
With the spread of the digital revolution and increasing globalization, education systems
across the world are being subject to a variety of forces that are pushing and pulling at
it. While there is an increasing demand to produce knowledge workers who are not only
acquainted with but are adept at technology, the education system is also being p ushed
to integrate technology into the classroom in a meaningful way. By Increasing the
effectiveness of the teaching learning process in the classroom, and improving efficiency

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through the proper use of knowledge within the school and broader system, tech nology
has the potential to bring in radical shifts in the way we educate our children.
With content being tailored to individual needs and with the ability to provide instant
feedback to both students and teachers, technology has the potential to let each child
learn at his or her own pace. Experimenting with different models of blended -learning
can potentially revolutionize the way our children and teachers learn. However, our
system has been slow in leveraging technology in a meaningful way to improve ei ther
efficiency or effectiveness. For instance, In a survey of private schools in Andhra
Pradesh, only 69% were found to have computer labs, out of which 34% of the
computers in labs were found to be ineffective.
Teach For India Alumni are working tireless ly to integrate technology into India’s
classrooms through roles in education-technology organizations like EkStep, Meghshala,
Central Square Foundation, Nalanda, and Zaya, to name just a few.

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The Teach for India model
The TFI Fellows work across 209 schools in seven cities of India - Mumbai, Pune, New
Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad , Bengaluru and Hyderabad reaching approximately 38,000
students. The organisation's plan is to expand by 2016 to 2000 fellows working across 10 cities
teaching at least 60,000 students. TFI was started in 2008 by a group of activists led
by Shaheen Mistri who wanted to bring about a systemic change in the Indian education sector
by infusing committed teachers into the system. The group met Wendy Kopp, CEO and Founder
of Teach For America (TFA), and following a McKinsey study[
, started adapting Teach For
America’sTheory of change in India.
In order to build a growing community of leaders, Teach For India has developed a two -
part theory of change.
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Teach For India Fellows commit two years, full-time, to providing their students with the
opportunities that can put them on a different life path. The Fellowship journey is one of
teaching and learning, of working for children while developing your leadership. Our
Fellows are on a mission to end educational inequity for their children, and through this,
they develop a long-term commitment to multiplying that impact as Alumni.
Each Fellow is assigned a classroom in one of Teach For India’s placement cities, and
charged to teach academics, values and mindsets and to give their students the access
and exposure they need to reach their personal, long-term visions. Our framework for
leadership at Teach For India is called the Leadership Development Journey, and is
centered around three commitments:

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 The Commitment to Personal Transformation: Exploring who you are, your
purpose, and striving to be a better person.
 The Commitment to Collective Action: Building relationships and organizing
partners to multiply and deepen our impact.
 The Commitment to Educational Equity: Deepening our understanding of
educational equity and committing to attaining it.
Fellows work on these commitments in and beyond the full-time lab of their classroom,
where they relentlessly focus on moving their students towards “path-changing” learning,
the highest level of our Student Vision Scale.
By growing in the 3 commitments, and embedded with real life leadership experiences in
the classrooms and communities, Fellows are ready to be lifelong learners and leaders
for greater impact on children.

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ALUMNI MOVEMENT
At Teach For India, we envision fostering a networked community of Alumni who are
committed to their role as leaders and movement-builders for the cause of educational
equity in India.
Our hope is to see our Alumni play a key dual role - not just as leaders in their
respective fields and workplaces (be it early-childhood education, vocational education
and teacher-training or research in a school, non-profit, university or corporate) but also
as builders of a movement for educational equity in our country. Our hope is to see them
mobilize resources and organize people towards the cause, to see them inspire men and
women at all levels of the education ecosystem and enable their leadership
development, to see them inform policy debates and influence conversations on
educational equity and to see them innovate and amplify the impact they are having on
children through their work and spread it beyond the walls of their own organizations and
communities.
2011 Alumnus Anoop Parikh decided to return to his low-cost private school in Govandi
to continue teaching post the Fellowship, because he believed that the process of
immersing himself in the community and working with key stakeholders would help him
understand the problems first-hand, enabling him to design solutions for his children.
2009 Alumnus Ashish Shrivastava works as a teacher in a remote tribal area in
Chhattisgarh, a region hit hard by the Naxalite insurgency, where he is trying to develop
a contextualized curriculum that works for children in that region.

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2013 Pune Fellow Jai Mishra worked with his School Management Committee to
mobilize the entire parent community to advocate for free secondary E nglish medium
education for their kids, playing the role of an initiator and a catalyst.
2013 Delhi Fellow Anurag Kundu helped his kids conduct the ASER survey to measure
the learning levels of children across 400 families in their community, Seelampur. Th e
students presented the state of education in their community to the Head of ASER,
Rukmini Banerji and other government officials.
Our Alumni continue living by the 3 commitments of personal transformation, collective
action and educational equity as they graduate from the Fellowship and our hope is that
they will continue leading our people’s movement for an educated, shining India.
Challenges faced by TFI model
The TFI model is new to India. But in the case of older partner programs of TFI such as Teach
for America, some people have questioned whether all Fellows come with the same level of

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commitment to the cause. Wendy Kopp, CEO of Teach for All and the founder of Teach For
America, dismissed this suggestion saying "this is the toughest way to boost a resume".
 A key challenge for TFI appears to be the education policies in India. India does not
have the equivalent of the "No Child Left Behind" policy enacted in the US under the
Bush administration. The Government of India has now started paying attention to this
issue. On the occasion of India's Teacher's Day on September 5, 2012, the President of
IndiaPranab Mukherjee said that “Qualified and competent teachers, continuously
renewing their capabilities and excellence through research, experimentation and
innovation would be the nation's strength." The government is now planning to launch a
National Mission on Teachers and Training.
 Unlike in some other countries where the Teach For All movement works, the Fellows at
Teach for India are not paid by the government or the school they work in. Instead, TFI
itself raises the funds to pay the Fellows. This could have been a challenge to the
scalability of the concept but the organisation has received strong support from
charitable foundations like Reliance Foundation and corporates like JP Morgan,
Thermax and Godrej.

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Initiatives By Teach For India
Maya
In November of 2014, Teach For India staged the Broadway-inspired musical Maya to
over 10,000 people. Maya, however, was created to be much larger than a spectacular
show. It was envisioned to be a symbol of student leadership, and what an excellent
education could look like for all children.
The Maya Musical started as a journey of exploring student leadership. 30 children were
taken on a life-changing quest of self-discovery where they, like Princess Maya in the
story, embarked on a journey of discovering their values and their brightest light. Over
18 months, the Maya children traveled across the country, performed at conferences and
public spaces, practiced their values through acts of kindness and worked on a student -
led project to spread happiness in 100 ways through the arts.

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The Musical was a partnership between Teach For India students and artists on
Broadway. The Musical is an original script, with Broadway composed music. Its
message of potential to all is clear: Find your light, and spread it to the world.
After the Musical, we launched Maya 2.0, taking learnings from the Maya Musical and
spreading it to more children. Today, six of our cities have groups of Maya children
experimenting with the Maya practices, each adapting and building on the original Maya
journey. Maya 2.0 includes a group of children in Hyderabad who are performing street
theatre and a group of Maya Chennai children who are staging their own Maya
Production. The original Maya Musical children continue on the next leg of their journey,
learning what it means to lead change and spread their light.
Beyond Teach For India, Maya offers free tools for any child to use - an online Maya
book, a simplified Maya script, the Find Your Light journey, the Maya documentary and a
Maya Cineplay that will release shortly.

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inspirED
inspirED is an educational conference that aims to bring together people with varied
backgrounds with a common goal to end educational inequity. Our participants range
from students, school teachers, school leaders, headmasters, teacher trainers,
entrepreneurs and government officials to corporate CSR heads and others. We believe
that it is possible for all children in our country to attain an excellent education if citizens
from across sectors come together to create solutions, and hence seek diversity in our
participants for different perspectives, ideas and solutions.
The conferences aim to bring awareness and deeper understanding of the educational
landscape in India and the urgency of the crisis of educational inequity. They provide a
platform to connect people, spark ideas and start dialogues around common problems.
Sessions on best practices in the classroom, school and system push conversations on
what an excellent education for all children looks like and how we can get there together.
The conference hosts a student-led education exhibition that showcases student
leadership and provides inspiration and a sense of possibility to our participants.
Every year, the two-day conference takes place in different cities including Delhi, Pune,
Mumbai, and Hyderabad. The ideas and solutions sparked through the conferences
address challenges faced both by the city and the country. Our most recent conference,
in January 2016, took the form of an Innovation Jam in Pune, where participants solved
for the question: How do we ensure high-school students in Pune attain the knowledge,
skills and mindsets necessary for the 21st century?.

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Speakers at the conference range from politicians and policy makers to school leaders
and teachers and experts in various fields of education. The sessions run along three
pathways: the classroom (techniques and tips for best practices in classroom teaching),
the school (tools and strategies to transforms schools) and the system (discussions
around government policy, social entrepreneurship and systemic change at a macro
level).
Our hope is that the conference is a launching pad for several collaborative partnerships
and solutions in education, following which participants continue working wit h each other
in the future.
Firki
Firki is a world-class, open-source blended learning programme for teachers across
India to access, use and transform their teaching practice.
Firki focuses on the principles and strategies that have proved to be successful in
improving teacher competencies in low-resource communities. Firki helps a teacher
identify his or her strengths and leverage them to build effective practice leading to
improved student outcomes. The bi-lingual content (English and Hindi) is presented
through engaging videos, modeling strategies, teacher interviews and student videos to
capture all aspects relevant to transforming teaching practice. As of now, Firki has over
3000 users who are teachers, teacher-trainers, non-profit facilitators and school leaders.
The online portion of Firki, which anchors the whole model, includes coursework and
online training, and is 10% of an educator’s learning time. The portal currently has 8
online courses: Investment, Classroom Practice, Goal Setting, Planning and Preparation,
Personal Development, Basic English, Basic Math and a Vision of Excellence. Once an
educator has taken a course, they have the ability to directly apply it within their

31
classrooms - where 70% of their learning happens - through full-time teaching practice.
Educators sign up with others from their school, enabling the remaining 20% of their
learning to happen through coaching, mentoring and communities of practice.
Firki, in partnership with master teachers, pedagogy experts and teacher education
programmes, aspires to be the most effective and accessible route to a high -quality
alternative certification for teaching in India.
Together, Firki and its partners will build advocacy around the importance of investing in
the professional development of teachers and the need for collective social impact in the
area of teacher education and support.

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Circles of Impact
Teach For India currently has 2000 Fellows teaching in 329 schools across Mumbai and Pune.
They impact a total of 37,920 children across 884 classrooms. Their impact is not confined to
the classroom alone. All 2nd
year Fellows have to implement a community project whose aim is
to identify barriers to student achievement and conceiving solutions to remove these barriers.
As a part of their community project, Fellows have teacher-training programs in their school,
launched adult-literacy drives near their community and started ventures involving women
entrepreneurs in the community.

33
IMMEDIATE IMPACT
Student impact
Teach for India’s goal for the students is to put every child that we work with on a
different life path. They measure their impact as progress to this goal on three levels -
academic growth, values and mindset, and exposure and access.

34
Central to all their impact is leadership. They aim to develop student leaders who show
transformational change both in themselves and in their classroom, school, and
community.
ACADEMIC IMPACT
 STUDENT VISION SCALE
The Student Vision Scale is the measure of how classrooms are doing on academic
achievement, exposure and access, and values and mindsets. Their Program
Managers have rated our classrooms a 3 out of 5 on our Student Vision Scale. This
implies that students are beginning to explore themselves, the world around them,
the values they operate with and basic learning is happening in the classroom.
Students are also able to demonstrate class values, and start to think about how they
want to contribute to their community. Students who have already reached a 5 are
passionate and joyful, and can evaluate and create challenging content. They are
able to independently demonstrate class values, both in and out of class, and are
able to leverage opportunities in the community and world around them.
 LONGITUDINAL STUDY
The Longitudinal Study is a comparative study of Teach For India and non-Teach For
India classrooms over time, done in collaboration with Columbia University. Each
year, Teach For India classrooms have made more than double the growth of non-
Teach For India classrooms in the control group.

35
 MATH
Our students are learning to recall and apply knowledge and skills appropriate to
their level. This has led to a 48% grade level mastery on math at the end of the year
versus 20% in the beginning of the year in 2015.
 READING COMPREHENSION
On average, Teach For India students show a 1.1 year of growth in reading level in
2015, which means they have achieved over a full year of reading ability. This is
especially important as many students are below grade level at the time of Teach For
India intervention, and our Fellows need to accelerate their learning in order for them
to be at par with peers of the same grade.
VALUE AND MINDSETS
They believe that an excellent education is a balance of academics and character
development through strengthening values and mindsets. Their Program Managers have
rated 88% of their Fellows as teaching students to demonstrate values on the student
vision scale.

36
They have seen strong examples of value-driven learning in classrooms through Design
For Change (www.dfcworld.org), Maya, Carpe Diem and others.
Design For Change is a global challenge that encourages children to use design thinking
to solve a problem they care about. Teach For India students have consistently reached
the top ten list of global Design For Change projects.
The Maya Find Your Light Track enables children to ask and answer big life questions as
part of a journey of understanding themselves better. Maya has also identified and
documented the practices (the sharing circle, living the values of compassion, courage
and wisdom and others) that we believe have led to impact. Maya students were found to
perform twice as well academically as other Teach For India students. Three of Teach
For India Maya students got full scholarships to the United World Colleges in Italy,
Armenia and India and another two study at Avsara’s Leadership Academy now.

37
EXPOSURE AND ACCESS
Exposure and access for Teach For India students is providing them with a wide range of
opportunities that will help them to both understand themselves better, as well as their
purpose and the contribution they wish to make to the world.
On the student vision scale, Teach For India ‘s Program Managers have rated 60% of
Teach For India classrooms as having evidence in building students’ awareness of
strengths and goals, and exposing them to opportunities through projects and
experiences outside the classroom.
Each year, Teach For India students participate in the Model United Nations, and have
continued this year on year. Teach For India students have also participated and been
awarded at various Olympiads and other competitions. They participate in extra-
curricular fests, do slam poetry, and go on residential leadership camps. They take part
in Just For Kicks, an Alumni-run football project, and have facilitated Teach For All
educational conferences. This year one of our students, Priyanka, was invited to lead a
session on Student Leadership at Teach For America’s 25 year Anniversary.

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FELLOW IMPACT
In addition to direct impact on our children, Teach For India’s long-term theory is to
develop leaders who will continue fighting towards educational equity. The impact of the
Fellowship on developing Fellows is measured through their growth on the three
commitments of Personal Transformation, Collective Action, and the Commitment to
Educational Equity.
COMMITMENT TO PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION
Personal transformation is the journey of getting closer to being the person you want to
be. Watch THIS video to get a glimpse of leadership and transformation in our
classrooms.

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COMMITMENT TO COLLECTIVE ACTION
Through their “Be The Change Projects” in the second year of teaching, Fellows show us
the power of collective action as they engage with the community and larger eco-system
around them to affect change. Projects include building school management, parent
employment empowerment, and active community engagement. Watch THIS video to
see how one of our Fellows encouraged all parents in his school to become actively
involved in their children’s education.
THE COMMITMENT TO EDUCATIONAL EQUITY
The commitment to educational equity involves deepening our understanding of the
ground realities of inequity and committing to solve it. The classroom becomes a
platform for learning about the educational landscape in our country and the challenges
that come with it.

40
Reported Results
Assessment Performance:
(February 2014)
Standardized Assessment Performance - Literacy | Classroom Impact: upon entering
schools most students in partner schools are 2-4 years behind their current grade level; TFI
aims is to bridge that gap. In 2011-2012 academic year students in TFI classrooms achieved an
average of:
 38% classrooms achieved 1-1.5 year growth in English.
 37% classrooms achieved >1.5 year growth in English.
Standardized Assessment Performance - Numeracy | In 2011-2012 academic year students
in TFI classrooms achieved an average of:
 55% classrooms achieved 1-1.5 year growth in Math.
 17% classrooms achieved >1.5 year growth in Math.
In 2012-13, Teach For India initiated a longitudinal study in collaboration with Columbia
University and Educational Initiatives. In conducting a 'longitudinal' study, TFI is ommitting to
track and measure how its students are growing over an extended period of time (July 2012 to
March 2016).
TFI analyzed impact using a quasi-experimental ‘Difference in Differences’ study design, which
compares gain in test scores of students in Teach For India classrooms (Treatment Group) with
that of students in comparable non-Teach For India classrooms (Control Group). [Gain =
Difference in scores between 2 tests (July 2013 vs. February 2014)]. The results from the

41
second year of the study are positive and establish that the percentage gain of Treatment Group
is almost twice as high as the percentage gain Control Group of students.
Ability to reach the poor: Teach For India works in 6 Indian cities, in government or low-
income private schools. TFI believes that in these under-served communities, where there is a
high rate of teacher absenteeism, and a lack of exposure to varied jobs and career pathways,
Fellows can make the most impact. Many of the parents of TFI students are manual laborers,
school drop-outs, or unemployed. The Teach For India Fellowship enables children from under-
privileged communities to be exposed to different methods of learning, values, and mindsets.
The medium of instruction for Teach For India Fellows is English, which helps students to
become better prepared for employment in the future.
User satisfaction: (December 2012). From the surveys TFI conducts with school Head Masters
and Principals:
 97% of principals agree that "Teach for India Fellows are respectful to students and parents and
interact with them in a positive way."
 91% of principals would “Recommend allotting Fellows to their school next year to the
authorities."
 98% of principals think that Fellows use “Innovative ways of teaching that makes lessons more
interesting for students.”
 92% of principals would “Recommend Fellow’s teaching methods to other teachers.”
 92% of principals are “Satisfied with Teach For India Fellows working in their school.”
Cost effectiveness/value for money: The Fellowship is cost effective because despite the
extensive and quality training of the Fellows at the Institute, the Fellows receive a relatively
small stipend compared to teachers in high income private schools and prestigious government

42
schools across India. The caliber of the Fellows is extremely high, as Teach For India recruits
only the best college graduates and young professionals.
Other Indian NGOs Working Toward
Education Equality
Many NGOs in India are doing a great job in helping out the underprivileged kids with education and
to bring about a social change. Indian NGOs other than Teach for India which are doing their best in
providing education equality:
1. Make ADifference (MAD): Along with education partner, Cambridge University Press, Make A
Difference or MAD has initiated a unique project ‘The English Project’ to educatechildrenfrom poor
homes, orphanages and street shelters withEnglish.Currently, some 1200 volunteers are working
hard to teach 4000 children in some of the major cities of India including Mangalore, Chennai,
Bangalore, Mysore, Delhi, Dehradun, Kolkata, Vellore, etc. Awinner of the prestigious Ashoka
Staples Youth Social EntrepreneurCompetition in the year 2008 and also a Noble Laureate of the
Karamveer Purashkar awarded by ICongo, global fellow of YouthActionNet and Cordes Fellow
2010, MAD also runs a Placements projectrunning that aims to place underprivileged children on
the same platform with the children from regular homes.
http://www.makeadiff.in/
3. Pratham:Established in the year 1994, Pratham is dedicated to provide education to children
belonging to the slums of Mumbai. Team Pratham comprises of civil servants, PhDs,social workers,
educationists and many other educated personnel who are working for a common dream of

43
developing the future of children of the country. With an aim to offer every child their fundamental
right to education, Pratham has slowly grown into a larger organisation covering 19 states of India.
http://www.pratham.org/
4. Barefoot College-India:An entire campus that runs on solar power. Yes, that’s Barefoot College
that was originally started by two friends Meghraj and Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy and who wanted to
establish college for the rural population of India and was established in 1972. Today, the
organisation trains local community people into teachers, specialized professionals in other fields
and has initiated many educational efforts for children. The organisationhas also been ranked as
the second best educational NGO in the year 2013 by The Global Journal.
http://www.barefootcollege.org
5. Cry: ‘Child rights and you’ or CRYis an NGO in India working for children and their rights. CRY
has undertaken a lot of initiatives to improve the condition of underprivileged children and one of
them is the ‘Chotte Kadam-Pragati ki Aur’, a literacy drive that has reached out to more than 35000
children in 10 states of India. ‘Mission Education’ is another very popular campaign from CRYto
make sure that ‘education is every child’s right’ and that proper education reaches to more children
in every new academic year.
http://www.cry.org

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Bibliography
 http://www.giveindia.org/
 http://www.educationinnovations.org/program/teach-india
 http://www.teachforindia.org/
 https://en.wikipedia.org
 http://www.teacherplus.org/cover-story/thinking-about-teach-for-india
 http://www.livemint.com/Politics/ZNRkJBrnB4NG9bJzLx5IaO/India-disappoints-in-
educational-outcome-test.html

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