Methodology

Pratham was founded in 1994 and has become India’s largest educational non-profit by maintaining a clear focus on education, not “inputs” such as libraries, books, meals or numbers of classrooms as many other non-profits do.

We are mostly concerned with whether the child is learning, not just attending school. We look at outputs. In other words: is the child actually in school and learning at the right level?

Pratham builds communities. Pratham leverages 62,000 volunteers from villages and cities to teach children and bring them up to speed. We collaborate with government institutions and use existing structures. It’s an efficient strategy and it encourages local “ownership” of programs

We use existing resources and involve parents, local community members, teachers, and governments – we will work with anyone who will work with us.

Pratham is currently in 21 out of 28 states in India.

Every year through our ASER program, we survey 700,000 households with the help of 25,000 volunteers across India to create the largest community-based educational survey in the world, and the only survey in India that measures if a child is actually learning.

We don’t try and reinvent the wheel. We support governments and communities whenever and wherever possible. For example, from 2008 to 2010, Pratham trained 89% of all government teachers in Punjab. And as a result, the math learning level jumped from 39.7% to 70.8%.