Pratham, a long-time partner of J-PAL, is a grass roots movement which seeks to ensure “every child in school…and learning well.” Started originally in 1994-1995 in Mumbai, Pratham now works in twenty states, reaching an estimated 500,000 children daily through its urban programs and over five million children in its rural programs in partnership with state governments.

Pratham has developed a quick way for nonexperts to test whether a child has acquired basic numeracy and literacy skills (the dipstick). Through the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), thousands of children are tested in hundreds of districts throughout India by volunteers from a wide coalition of local groups. The shockingly low levels of learning revealed in the process have led to demands for action at all levels of society.

One response to the poor learning levels revealed by ASER is to use the pedagogical techniques developed by Pratham for teaching children to read. These techniques were developed so that they could be used by teachers with little education themselves. Rigorous evaluations of these techniques by J-PAL and Pratham researchers have shown that that they are highly effective even when utilized by local volunteers or local “Balsakhi” with only an 8th grade education. Pratham also trains para teachers (Shikshamitras) in different states in its pedagogical techniques.

For more on J-PAL’s evaluations of Pratham programs please see the following links:

Remedial education—a program to provide remedial assistance to children falling behind their peers in standards (grades) 3 and 4;

Computer assisted learning—which proved particularly effective in raising math scores;

Information and community mobilization—which tested the volunteer model of Read India and provided information about learning outcomes to communities.

For more about Pratham and its campaigns, please see www.pratham.org