Pratham Partnership with Karnataka Yields Promising Results

A recent article in the Times of India highlights the success of our partnership with the government of Karnataka. Pratham has been working with the state since 2016 to provide supplementary learning assistance to fourth and fifth graders. The program, called Read Karnataka, employs our Teaching at the Right Level methodology in approximately 800 government schools throughout the state, primarily in rural areas.

Rigorous data collection over the course of the 60-day intervention show that children’s abilities in grades four and five have vastly improved: reading levels increased from 29% to 65%; math, from 31% to 69%. In the case of Urdu medium schools, the ability to read a story increased from 17% to 57%.

Elated with the success, state officials plan to extend this partnership with Pratham from 7 to 21 districts by the end of 2019.

According to Ashvini Ranjan of Pratham Mysore, “The uniqueness in our training lies in segregating the children based on their learning levels. In a typical classroom, there are children who have stopped learning at different levels. While 10% of a classroom is made up of frontbenchers who have little or no difficulty, the remaining 90% have difficulties in learning at various levels.”

Pratham’s Teaching at the Right Level approach involves evaluating children with a simple assessment tool and providing instruction according to their learning level rather than their age or grade. “By segregating them,” Ranjan explains, “the teachers who are trained by our master trainers will provide individual attention to every child to help them catch up by clearing their doubts and the children rapidly catch up,”

Read the full story at the Times of India. Learn more about how you get involved.