In recent years, India has dramatically increased school enrollments across all socioeconomic strata. But quality remains inconsistent and often poor. Many impoverished students still struggle to master grade-level proficiency in critical basics like linguistics and math. And in classrooms nationwide, teachers struggle to instruct these children, many of whom are first-generation students with widely disparate learning levels.
To help address these complexities at the classroom level as well as across multiple schools and municipalities, we fund innovative, scalable and sustainable academic support programs that help teachers better meet student needs.
Our goal is to provide teachers with tools and techniques that help them create engaging classrooms where applied learning replaces rote memorization. In addition to tools and training, we fund both in-school and out-of-school academic support programs that help impoverished students improve academic performance, achieve grade-level proficiencies and master the skills that can help them gain employment in India’s new economy.
To evaluate the success of these efforts, we engage third party experts. Objective evaluation of student data enables our grantees to better understand which efforts are working and which aren’t, so they can then improve their programs and drive better practices throughout schools, and better results for every child.
ACADEMIC SUPPORT STRATEGY
We seek to improve learning outcomes for children from early childhood through school graduation. Our strategy is to fund scalable, sustainable and innovative programs that help teachers ensure their students perform at grade-levels. We also seek to establish comparable and consistent metrics that measure which programs work and which don’t.