PRATHAMS

READ INDIA
PROGRAM
TAKING SMALL STEPS
TOWARD LEARNING
AT SCALE

Shushmita Chatterji Dutt, Christina Kwauk,

and Jenny Perlman Robinson

Sincere gratitude and appreciation to Priyanka Varma, research assistant, who has been instrumental
in the production of the Read India case study.
We are also thankful to a wide-range of colleagues who generously shared their knowledge and
feedback on the Read India case study, including: Rukmini Banerji, Nikhat Banu, Sharanya Chandrana,
Madhav Chavan, Pingla Devi, Balmurugan Devraj, John Floretta, Shivani Ghosh, Jarika Kumari, Sunita
Kumari, Nuzhat Malik, Shama Parvee, Ramnaresh Patel, Devyani Pershad, Dana Schmidt, Babita
Shankar, Shailendra Sharma, Vikram Singh, Ajit Solanki, Bala Venkatachalam, the Cluster Resource
Centre Coordinators in Bihar, the parents of Akhetwara School students in Bihar, and the parents of
Begumpur Girls Middle School students in Patna.

PRATHAMS
READ INDIA
PROGRAM
TAKING SMALL STEPS
TOWARD LEARNING
AT SCALE

Lastly, we would like to extend a special thank you to the following: our copy-editor, Alfred Imhoff, our
designer, blossoming.it, and our colleagues, Kathryn Norris and Jennifer Tyre.
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Support for this publication and research effort was generously provided by the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation. The authors also wish to acknowledge the
broader programmatic support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the LEGO Foundation,
and the Government of Norway.
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Shushmita Chatterji Dutt, Christina Kwauk,

and Jenny Perlman Robinson

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

Read India
at a glance

INTERVENTION OVERVIEW:
Read India IIILearning Camps (20132016), implemented by the Pratham Education
Foundation, provide intensive bursts of remedial education in reading and mathematics
through learning camps to primary school children (grades 35) who are behind in basic
skills. These camps are conducted in bursts of 8 to 10 days and spread over the course of
three to five sessions (up to 50 days per year), depending on the childs level. To enhance
learning, children are grouped by ability rather than by age and grade, and the camps
use Prathams rigorously evaluated methodology, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL),
and pedagogy, Combined Activities for Maximized Learning (CAMaL). Teaching and
learning activities and materials are tailored to each group, are interactive and groupbased, and are designed to help children move to the next level. Camps are led by full-time,
trained staff members, who are assisted by locally recruited and trained volunteers. Other
implementation models for Read India, which began in 2007, have been delivered through
trained community volunteers, Pratham staff, or government teachers during the regular
school day or in an out-of-school context.

EDUCATION LEVEL:
Primary (grades 35)

TYPE OF LEARNING MEASURED:

Reading and basic arithmetic

COST:
Approximately $2.5 million for 2013 to 2014, or $10 to $15 per child. Financing is provided
by Indian and international foundations, corporations, and individuals.

SIZE:
India (across 23 states)

Direct reach424,190 students, from 2014 to 2015 (with about an equal distribution
of girls and boys). Indirect reachOver 6 million students indirectly via state or district
government partnerships.

IMPACT:

LOCATION:

ReadingA 51 percent increase in reading among children (grades 35) of at least

grade-2 texts; a 37 percent decrease in the proportion of children who could not identify
any letters. MathematicsA 43 percent increase in the number of children who could
recognize numbers; a 25 percent increase in the number of children who can add at the
end line; a 33 percent increase in those who can subtract; a 33 percent increase in those
who can multiply; and a 28 percent increase in those who can divide. Partnerships
Developed with nine Indian state governments. Estimates indicate approximately 6.2
million children have been reached by these partnerships.

India (across 23 states)

FOCUS OF INTERVENTION:
Remedial education for children who are lagging behind in basic reading and arithmetic

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

Background
India has made great strides in
universalizing access to primary education,
starting with the District Primary Education
Programme (DPEP) in 1994 and the Sarva
Shiksha Abhiyaninitiative (SSA) in 2000.
Today, primary school enrollment rates
are at about 96 percent. For the majority
of these children, however, the challenge
that persists in their education is no longer
gaining access to school but learning once
they get there (Banerji and Walton 2011).
Large proportions of children who are
enrolled cannot read, write, or do simple
arithmetic calculation. National education
surveys consistently show that the majority
of Indian students fail to attain grade-level
competencies at the end of five years of
primary school. For example, in 2012, 53
percent of grade 5 students could not read
grade-2-level texts proficiently, and 75
percent of grade 5 students were unable
to solve questions involving division, a
grade 4 level competency (ASER Centre
2013; Duflo et al. 2014, 1). Alarmingly, by
grade 8, 24 percent of students cannot
read at the grade 2 level or above, and
52 percent of students cannot perform
mathematical operations at a grade 4

level (ASER Centre 2013). This suggests

that learning gaps not only persist but also
accumulate over time, causing students
who are lagging behind in early grades to
fall even further behind as they progress
to higher grade levels (Duflo et al. 2014).
Indias
current
education
policy
environment, under the Right to Education
Act of 2009, promises that every child, up
to the age of 14, is guaranteed free and
compulsory education; thus no child can
be held back, expelled, or required to
pass a board examination until grade 10
(J-PAL n.d.). Another consequence of this
legislation is an automatic promotion policy
for primary education that allows children
to move to the next grade until grade 8,
even if they do not achieve grade-level
competencies (Banerji and Walton 2011).
The law makes it mandatory for teachers
to complete the grade curriculum within
the academic year. With this emphasis on
completing the curriculum, teachers are
incentivized to teach to the top of the
class, which ultimately prohibits the vast
majority of children in early grades from
acquiring the basic skills necessary to
build a foundation for continued learning.

The genesis of Read India

In 1994, the commissioner of the
Municipal Corporation of Greater
Mumbai, representatives of UNICEF,
and several prominent Mumbai citizens
came together to establish Pratham as a
public charitable trust to work toward the
improvement of child learning in Mumbais
slums. By 2000, Pratham had begun to

consolidate its initial years experiences. In

doing so, Pratham recognized that it was
working with two kinds of childrenthose
who were left out and those who were left
behind. Whether children were in school or
out of school, the common thread seemed
to be that if children began to learn, they
were able to gain the confidence and

capability to move ahead. The Pratham

team also realized that while they were
helping children make progress, a much
faster pace was needed if children were
to have a real opportunity to complete
primary schooling.
Under the leadership of Madhav Chavan
(cofounder and first CEO of Pratham),
Farida Lambay (the other cofounder),
Usha Rane (who has played a major
role in content and pedagogy), and
Rukmini Banerji (who headed the Annual
Status of Education Report Centre, or
ASER Centre, before becoming CEO of
Pratham in 2015), Pratham took stock of
its work to introspect, reflect, look around,
and innovate according to its renewed
awareness of the needs of the field and
where need was strong.
After a serendipitous remark made
by a Pratham visitor, reading became
Prathams focus area. Chavan asked a
group of Pratham staff and volunteers
in Patna to try something new to help
children learn to read quickly. They were
asked to do simple things, such as read
stories and play with the alphabet and a
traditional phonemic chart. The idea was
to engage children in different readingrelated activities and expose them to
texts, words, and the alphabet. Two or
three weeks later, almost like magic,
the Pratham staff found children reading,
their accuracy improving with practice
and help over time (Madhav Chavan,
interview by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and
Jenny Perlman Robinson, July 16, 2015).
This method was tried again in different
parts of the country, where different scripts
are used. The core principle of exposing
children to different activities with texts,
words, and the alphabet remained the

same, although the execution varied

somewhat locally. Amid the chaos of the
method, Pratham eventually identified a
clear learning pattern demonstrated by
the children: listening, speaking, reading,
and writing. Learning to read the language
spoken by the child could be achieved
quicklyin as few as 25 days. Thus,
Pratham found, if children could be placed
in a literate environment, and engaged in
activities that gave multiple stimuli, they
could unwind the mystery and bring
together the fundamental building blocks
of literacy on their own (Madhav Chavan,
interview by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and
Jenny Perlman Robinson, July 16, 2015).
Over
time
and
through
much
experimentation, it became clear to
Prathams leaders that reading was
transformative; it was not only about
gaining fluency but also about increasing
the childs sense of empowerment and selfworth. With the intention to help children
not only to learn to read but also read
to learn, Prathams leaders began to use
evidence generated from evaluations of
their methods and models to formulate
a solution that was about breaking down
the process of learning to read into
small, doable steps. Guided by a reading
pedagogy developed by A. K. Jalaluddin
that combined the whole language with
phonics approaches, and using Prathams
rigorously evaluated method of teachinglearning, described below, a child could
even be taught to read by volunteers with
fairly low levels of education themselves
(Banerjee et al. 2006, 2010).1 In the end,
the Read India campaigns fundamentals
were formulated, and by 2003 to 2004,
Pratham teams in nearly 120 districts and
five cities were implementing this reading
methodology.

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

Impact and evidence of success

The evidence from a series of rigorous,
randomized
evaluations
conducted
externally by J-PAL of earlier phases of
Read India activities indicates that the
philosophy of TaRL supports gains in
learning, sometimes double the normal
yearly gain in learning, especially for lowperforming students (Banerjee, Banerji,
and Kannan 2015). TaRL involves children
being grouped by ability rather than by
grade, and then taught using methods
and materials appropriate to their level of
ability until they have reached the correct
level of their grade. This methodology has
proven to be effective in multiple contexts
(for an example in Kenya, see Duflo, Dupas,
and Kremer 2011), whether implemented
by locally recruited and trained volunteers
outside school hours, or used by trained
government school teachers during the
school day or at camps during the summer
holidays (Banerjee et al. 2006, 2010;
Duflo et al. 2014).
In Prathams latest Read India model that
uses TaRL methods, children are taught
basic Hindi and mathematics in intensive
bursts of teaching-learning activity called
Learning Campsthe focal intervention of
this case study. Depending on the baseline
levels of children, a total camp cycle could
be between three to five camps conducted
in bursts of eight to 10 days for up to
50 days of activities. Evidence from the
evaluations of Prathams learning camp
model indicate that large improvements in
learning can be gained in short, intensive
periods of teaching-learning. For example,
a preliminary analysis of baseline and endline data from a randomized, controlled
trial (RCT) of Prathams Learning Camps
in Uttar Pradesh, funded by the U.S.
Agency for International Development,

shows children gaining between 0.9 and

1.3 levels in reading and mathematics and
an additional operational competency
during a Learning Camp cycle.
Other evaluations of Read India Learning
Camps
have
also
demonstrated
impressive gains in reading and basic
arithmetic. For instance, at the beginning
of the 201314 Learning Camp cycle
in Uttar Pradesh, approximately 85
percent of children were either not able
to recognize letters or just able to read
letters, with less than 10 percent able
to read. By the end of the fifth Learning
Camp (50 days of intervention), well
above 80 percent of children could read
paragraphs and stories, changing the
distribution of reading ability completely.
In mathematics, camps have led to a 43
percent increase in the number of children
who could recognize numbers, a 25
percent increase in the number of children
who could add at end line, a 33 percent
increase in those who could subtract, a
33 percent increase in those who could
multiply, and a 28 percent increase in
those who could divide (ASER Centre
2014; Banerjee, Banerji, and Kannan
2015).

pace of the student, rather than having

rigid expectations of a curriculum, TaRL
produced large gains in learning outcomes
(learn to read) by ensuring that those
students who had been left behind gained
basic skills and were equipped with the
tools to continue learning (read to learn).
In earlier Read India phases (20058),
Prathams activities reached well over
30 million children (Banerji and Walton
2011). Village-level community volunteers
participated in massive numbers in over
300,000 villages, either by helping in
statewide government partnerships or
by teaching children in their own villages.
Now in its third phase (201316), as of 2015
Read India Learning Camps had reached
nearly 300,000 children (grades 3 to 5)
in 7,065 schools across 15 states (ASER

Centre 2015). In the two years after 2013,

the intervention reached 10,562 schools,
of which 67 percent had more than 75
percent or more children who could read
a grade-1-level or grade-2-level text, and
65 percent of whom had 75 percent or
more children who could complete a basic
subtraction problem (ASER Centre 2015).
Larger outcomes of the Uttar Pradesh
Learning Camps have been the use of
success evidence in advocacy with officials
at the state and district levels. Between
2014 to 2015, Pratham developed
partnerships with governments in 127
Indian districts, varying in scale from state
to state and district to district. Estimates
indicate that an additional 6.2 million
children have been reached through
these partnerships (Pratham 2015).

Combined with findings from previous

RCTs of a variety of earlier models of
Read India reading camps and TaRL
methods, the results suggest a consistent
demonstration of the effectivenessand
cost-effectivenessof remedial education
over the course of several intensive periods
in making possible large improvements
in childrens reading and mathematics
learning levels (see, for example, Banerjee
et al. 2010). Moreover, by restructuring
classroom instruction to the level and

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

Timeline of key events

1994
India launches the DPEP.
Pratham is established by Chavan and Lambay.

1997
Pratham gains its first important donor, the former chairman of the
Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI).

2000
India launches the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) initiative.

2001
2002-3
Pratham develops its learning to read technique and an assessment
tool, later to become the ASER tool.

First randomized experimentation of remedial education conducted by J-PAL

in Maharashtra and Gujarat (Balsakhi remedial education program, 20014).
Study finds that instruction tailored to a childs learning level and delivered
through community instructors during school is an effective and low-cost way to
improve learning outcomes.
Prathams reach: 120 districts and five cities.

2004
The United Democratic Front is brought into power after
parliamentary elections. The government introduces a 2 percent
education cess, or surcharge on all central taxes paid by individual
taxpayers and corporations to support financing for providing Indian
children with access to basic education.

2006
The Gates Foundation and Hewlett Foundation join Pratham as
major multiyear donors.

2005
ASER survey launched.
The government supports National Curriculum Framework (NCF) reform.
Second randomized experimentation of Read India and TaRL conducted
by J-PAL in Uttar Pradesh (Village Education Committees, 20056).
Study finds that Prathams reading pedagogy is effective when used by
unpaid community volunteers.

2008
2009
India passes the Right to Education Act.

2010
Pratham decides to scale back its reach and withdraws to
10,000 villages.

Third and fourth randomized experimentations of Read India and TaRL

conducted by J-PAL in Bihar (Read India I, 200810; Read India
Summer Camp, 2008). Studies find that the in-school Read India model
was not effective, possibly because volunteers became substitutes
rather than supplements to teachers. It also finds that short learning
camps can work when government teachers are on vacation.
Prathams reach: 30 million children and at least one village volunteer in
about 375,000 villages between 2007 and 2008, with a peak during
summer 2008.

2012
2013
Sixth Read India randomized experimentation conducted by J-PAL
in Uttar Pradesh (Learning Camps, 201314). Preliminary results
demonstrate that both 10- and 20-day camps can have a strong
positive impact on basic learning outcomes.
Prathams reach: 300,000 children through Learning Camps
and 6.2 million children through government partnerships between
2014 and 2015.

10

Fifth randomized experimentation of Read India and TaRL conducted

by J-PAL in Haryana (Learning Enhancement Programme, 201213).
Study finds that positive learning outcomes can be achieved through
government school teachers within the school day through an
integrated classroom model.

Key drivers behind scaling impact

How did Pratham improve literacy and
numeracy across India? The remainder
of this case study illustrates how the
story of Read Indias genesis and success
lies partially in programmatic design
components, such as Learning Camps
and TaRL, but primarily in the programs
delivery, enabling environment, and
financing. That is, Prathams educational

experimentation and commitment to

an evidence-based approach; its focus
on small, incremental change and on
scaling ideas rather than expanding
the organization; its engagement with
Read Indias local champions; and its
relationship with long-term donors
enabled the organization to scale up
learning across the nation.

Learning by doing
A unique feature of Prathams experience
that has been a key factor in enabling
the organization to scale up not only its
Read India campaign but also learning
among millions of children in India has
been the organizations appetite for
experimentation with new teachinglearning models. Purposefully partnering
with external research organizations
to conduct RCTs of its programs and
methods; developing simple, easy-todo and easy-to-understand internal
measurements; and trusting field workers
with the responsibility and freedom to
experiment and innovate with the model
have meant that Read India is constantly
being tweaked, redesigned, and improved
based on evidence, feedback, and
learning. This experimentation has also
given government partners the flexibility
to be able to choose which model and
delivery method makes the most sense in
their contexts (i.e., teacher-led, volunteerled, school-based, camp-based, 10-day,
20-day), as well as the assurance that
the intervention they were about to pick
up has been tried, evaluated, and proven
successful in other states.

Underlying Prathams openness to

experiment is the programs philosophy of
learning by doing, whether it is a teacher
learning to use TaRL methods, a student
learning to read, a government official
learning to provide on-site support to
schools, or a volunteer learning to conduct
Read India activities. As Banerji explains,
the mantra has always been Know how
to do it yourself and then teach others
(Rukmini Banerji, interview by Shushmita
Chatterji Dutt and Jenny Perlman
Robinson, July 20, 2015). This philosophy
has also helped to motivate and maintain
Prathams focus on keeping Read Indias
learning methodologies and assessment
tools simple so that people with very little
education can use them.
Learning by doing also means learning
from data. While data and the evidence it
generates about a program are important
to give prospective partners and donors
confidence in their investment, data are
also an integral component of Prathams
organizational processes. According to
Banerji, the role of data has been to prove
to ourselves. [The] biggest need for data

2015
Banerji becomes CEO of Pratham.

11

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

in our system is for us to learn where we

are now and where we need to go (Rukmini
Banerji, interview by Shushmita Chatterji
Dutt and Jenny Perlman Robinson, July 20,
2015). For more than 15 years, Pratham has
built into its program operations regular
assessments of learning to chart evidence
on whether or not its activities are working:
from 2000, when Pratham staff first took
a month to stop their work and reflect on
what small goals could be achieved in
one months time, to Prathams longtime
partnership with J-PAL to integrate RCTs
as a learning tool in their work, to today,
when Pratham staff are beginning to
integrate process evaluations into their
programs to evaluate TaRL in practice.
Prathams honesty about what is not
working has enabled the organization to
consolidate both positive and negative
lessons from research evaluations and field
experience to inform its critical decisions,
help it formulate and inform new strategies,
and empower it to correct its course
of action when needed. This has even
included reducing scale at one point in
the history of Read India (discussed further
below). Altogether, Prathams willingness
to experiment, its learning-by-doing
philosophy, and its honesty about what
is or is not working has not only enabled
Pratham to come up with a menu of triedand-tested intervention optionseach with

their financial and resource requirements

worked outbut also to multiply its impact
in the face of competing needs and scarce
resources.

which Pratham was operating far from

enabling. In fact, at many points it often
appeared that the environment did not
want to make room for Read India.

As technological advances have been

made in the collection and analysis
of
monitoring-and-evaluation
data,
Pratham has maintained its stance on the
importance of human involvement in the
process of integrating technology within
its operations. As a critical component of
learning by doing, having people actually
interact with, analyze, and interpret the
data is important for learning from the
data and for the process of learning
by doing. Banerji described the human
interface as the glue between back office
technology and front office visualization.
Too much data is not useful[you]
drown in that (Rukmini Banerji, interview
by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and Jenny
Perlman Robinson, July 18, 2015). In the
quest to measure outcomes, Prathams
leaders believe that it is easy to lose
sight of the importance of learning from
the process. As a result, evaluation
resources are wasted. Instead, having
people interact with the data not only
makes the data come alive, but also have
given Pratham staff members in the field
confidence about what they are doing
right, making it possible for them to learn
from and adapt what they are doing.

According to Prathams leaders, the

organization often found itself in a policy
environment that ebbed and flowed,
depending on who was in power at
the time and what partnerships could
be developed in a specific time frame.
Understanding how to endure and
sustain progress beyond the life of a
bureaucrat thus meant recognizing how
change happens in the system, despite
who is in charge, and then leveraging
those processes. For Prathams leaders,
the task of institutionalizing and scaling
up or spreading their intervention
translated into identifying how to
integrate small innovations into a very
large, and sometimes dysfunctional,
multistate education system. In this
way, change was less threatening and
radical, ideas and terminology could be
accepted or absorbed, and capturing
government support was less a matter of
personalities than a product of national
or district-level awakening.

Recognizing how change happens

An important component of scaling up is
the existence of an enabling environment
that allows for the replication of
interventions. One of the greatest
challenges for Pratham, however, was
identifying how to tackle the bigger
problems in learning that no one at

12

the top was discussing. Or, if people at

the top were discussing learning, the
challenge was getting those voices to
talk about evidence-based solutions such
as Read India, rather than the trendiest
learning approaches in the international
community. This made the environment in

A specific example of how Pratham

strategically used its knowledge of
the local and national environments
is the story of how it stepped into and
influenced the national discussion on
learning, ultimately creating a more
enabling environment for accepting
that there was a massive learning crisis
for Indias children and that something
urgent and critical needed to be done.
This led to discussions in India moving
beyond schooling to learning. The
changing environment then meant that
the ground became increasingly more
ready for scaling up the impact of Read

Indias efforts, and also those of others

working on learning.
In 2004, a new 2 percent education
tax was introduced to support and
enhance government finances for
providing children with access to basic
education. This was followed by public
pressure for accountability to be woven
into the entire education system. Many
government leaders, parents, and
community members believed that it
was time to find out what children were
learning in school. Despite the broad
interest in quality, the governments
focus remained on access and provision,
as well as on inputs and expenditures. At
the time, the central government was also
preoccupied with reforming the National
Curriculum Framework (NCF), which
absorbed the education establishments
attention. And regardless of the rhetoric
about learning, state governments were
mainly in charge of primary education in
their own jurisdiction and most did not or
could not measure learning.
However, in 2005 the parliamentary
elections brought the United Progressive
Alliance into power, and Prathams
founder, Chavan, was appointed to
the National Advisory Council. As
part of the councils deliberations, he
suggested to the government that
an annual report was needed to help
quantify the problem of quality and
learning in Indian education. With no
reports on quality forthcoming from
the government, Pratham took on the
opportunity to devise a way to measure
learning. In doing so, Pratham borrowed
Gandhis idea of going to the masses:
Lead with a simple, doable idea, with
the hope that millions will follow. While
most key education players talked

13

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

about instituting major curriculum

changes, Pratham focused its energies
on changing ideas and integrating
small innovations into the larger
system. Describing this process, Chavan
explained, We are water slowly seeping
in and breaking down walls by putting
water in the cracks. No system reforms
itselflet us not kid ourselvesunless it
is in a crisis (Madhav Chavan, interview
by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and Jenny
Perlman Robinson, July 16, 2015).
Prathams leaders began to shape the
effort that would become ASER. They
knew that the basic assessment tool
needed to be something very simple so
that ordinary citizens could use it and
also understand the data that were
generated. In 2005, the first ASER survey
was carried out across the country in
rural districts. For the first time in India,
current data on childrens basic learning
levels (reading and arithmetic) were
publicly available. Ultimately, the first
report showed a shockingly low level of
foundational skills, demonstrating that a
vast majority of kids were far below their
grade level in reading and mathematics.
ASERs inception at this policy moment
not only brought national attention to
childrens learning achievement and
education quality but also proved to be
a useful way to mobilize communities.
At the grassroots level, youth in rural
areas began to respond to Prathams
idea that one could pick up a book and
change the history of India (Madhav
Chavan, interview by Shushmita Chatterji
Dutt and Jenny Perlman Robinson , July
16, 2015). This simple idea brought large
numbers of youth volunteers to Pratham,
both to participate in ASER and also
to be part of Read India. It is estimated

14

that in the summer of 2008, Prathams

massive mobilization across rural India
for its summer camps program led to at
least one village volunteer in more than
375,000 villages.
The annual ASER effort made people
at the highest levels of government,
especially
within
the
education
system, very uncomfortable because it
repeatedly demonstrated that children
were unable to read, write, or do simple
arithmetic calculations. Due to the fact
that results were analyzed state by
state, a sense of competition seeped
in among the various state players.
After an initial period of criticism about
ASERs minimalist methodology, tools,
and analysisespecially in the face of
the NCF reforms sweeping and lofty
goalsstates began to take notice of
what the ASER report was saying about
their learning levels. Soon, Pratham
found that education ministers and other
high-level officials were beginning to
incorporate ASER into how they thought
and talked about monitoring learning.
For example, Rajasthans education
minister started urging officials to ensure
that Madhya Pradeshs results improve
in ASER rankings, as if ASER was like
the Program for International Student
Assessment (Madhav Chavan, interview
by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and Jenny
Perlman Robinson, July 16, 2015).
Prathams strategy to change ideas was
working; scaling up learning was about
scaling up ideas. In a short period, major
national education policies, including the
SSA initiative, which started in 2000
with a focus on improving universal
primary enrollment, began to adapt a
concern for student achievement and
quality learning.

Scaling impact in small, doable steps

Closely related to Prathams recognition
that changing Indias education system
required simple innovations is Prathams
focus on scaling up its impact in small,
doable steps. Indeed, what Pratham did
was to take a very simple ideateach
at the right levelprove its efficacy, and
inspire millions to follow. Banerji has
explained that Read India was really
about breaking down the learning
process into simple steps that an ordinary
person could follow. Sharing results with
each other helped to build stakeholder
and organizational confidence not only
in the method but also in the goal of
transforming kids in one month. From
there, not only did the staff become
inspired but whole communities came
to see that change was possible in a
short period. Furthermore, government
officials in one state would see evidence
from another state that Read India was
improving their childrens reading and
arithmetic levels, making government
officials more willing to support the
introduction of Read India in their own
state. In this way, the programs impact
scaled up, even though the intervention
itself was small.
From an implementation perspective,
focusing on the small and doable
made much sense. For example, the
NCF was difficult for teachers to
easily comprehend, and therefore was
challenging to implement. Prathams
learning methodology, however, was
easier to practice and had repeated
evidence of success, having benefited
from 10 years of field refinement.
The biggest challenge, however, was
adapting teachers and administrators
to Read Indias more egalitarian and

democratic system of values and

practiceslike viewing the teacher as
a friend who sits alongside students; or
providing older, more senior teachers
with regular classroom-based teacher
support from Prathams growing cadre
of young, trained resource persons and
local youth volunteers.
Focusing on small, doable steps
also meant that it was critical for
government partners to see that Read
India could use the existing government
infrastructure efficiently, and that no new
recurring government expenditures (i.e.,
salaries) were required. In fact, Pratham
intentionally kept costs low and avoided
creating parallel structures by trying
to rejuvenate and optimize existing but
underutilized positions and structures
within the government. For example,
Read Indias teacher-led summer
camps energized existing cadres of
cluster resource center coordinators
(CRCCs) to oversee teaching-learning
activities. Traditionally, the CRCCs were
considered fit only for administrative,
inspectional, and regulatory tasks.2
However,
Prathams
attempt
to
institutionalize Read India through the
CRCCs revitalized the CRCCs roles.
For example, Pratham trained CRCCs
for four days and then allowed them to
practice in the field for 20 days. After
that, they trained teachers in the new
methodology of grouping and teaching
at the right level. In this way, Read Indias
teacher training activities became less
radical, more cost-efficient, and more
easily replicated.
From the perspective of scaling up,
defining what constituted a small and

15

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

doable approach was a work in progress

for Prathams leaders. Because Prathams
leaders had recognized from the
beginning that the problem of learning
was big in terms of the sheer magnitude
of children not learning, especially in
rural areas, and also in terms of the
implications of not learning, the leaders
were able to see that the scope of their
mission to reach all children who had
been left behind needed to be carefully
balanced with the need to achieve a
large impact in learning rather than
small-scale percentage changes. By
20034, after Prathams rollout of its
initial phases of this work for improving
learning, it was working in 120 districts
and five cities. Still, many questions
remained: Could this be replicated on a
wide and massive scale, as was required
in India? Was the methodology correct?
Reflecting on what could have been done
differently, Chavan suggested that going
to full scale at the start was probably not
the best decision. If given the chance to
start over, he would have started in a few
states, rather than dissipating energies
around the country (Madhav Chavan,
interview by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt
and Jenny Perlman Robinson, July 16,
2015). Prathams purposeful integration
of monitoring and evaluating efforts with
new programs, however, ensured that
their questions got answered, and that
they could change course if necessary.
Indeed, by 2010, a change of course
was necessary, for Prathams focus
on the doable and its commitment to
measuring impact had led its leaders
to decide to scale down in order to
bring the programs focus back to
strengthening the implementation model
rather than scaling up the organization.
Partnering with village communities and

16

government school systems, Prathams

Read India campaign was active in more
than half of Indias villages, reaching
more than 30 million children between
2007 and 2008, with the spread coming
through unpaid village volunteers
efforts (Banerji and Walton 2011). This
size made monitoring activities and
measuring impact extremely difficult,
especially across Indias massive
geography. If Pratham wanted to
continue to demonstrate strong evidence
of its works impact, it had to decrease
its reach and work directly with schools
and communities through better-trained,
full-time team members and with its
government partners.
As a result, in 2010, Pratham reduced the
size of its interventions to close to onetenth of its former reach. Although this
meant smaller coverage, the organization
was able to focus on demonstrating and
generating evidence that Read Indias
activities were having a large impact on
learning. From 2010 to 2012, Pratham
concentrated the Read India model in
a set of villages for a three-year period,
during which village volunteers worked
for approximately three to four months
per year. From 2013 onward, further
refinement was undertaken after pilot
work that had been completed during
the previous year demonstrated the
effectiveness of shorter bursts of intense
teaching-learning activities led by a full
time team memberthat is, the Learning
Camps. As mentioned earlier in this case
study, evaluations of the Learning Camps
taught by Prathams staff and assisted
by village volunteers demonstrated the
same if not better learning gains as did
continuous instructional activity over the
course of three to four months led by a
village volunteer.

Engaging local champions

In India, any education initiative that
wants to have a large-scale impact needs
to partner with state governments, who
run the largest education programs in
the country. Similar to how Pratham used
its knowledge of how change happens
locally, its recognition of the importance
of working with multiple levels of
government also played a major role in
its ability to develop successful education
models and to achieve outcomes at full
scale. Using evidence that proves its
methodology works to ignite excitement,
Pratham purposefully sought to identify
and partner with local Read India
champions within the government who
could provide the support and political
will necessary at the top to sustain
ground-level action and impact below.
Cases in point are Prathams partnerships
with the Madhya Pradesh government in
2005 and later with the governments of
Chhattisgarh and Bihar. When an official
from Madhya Pradesh approached
Prathams leaders and asked to see what
they could do, Pratham demonstrated its
teaching-learning approach in locations
close to the state capital. When senior
officials saw change happening under
their nose, they enthusiastically decided
to take the campaign to the entire state.
With senior administrative officials
supporting Read India and overseeing
the active involvement of lower cadres,
all hurdles with lower-level bureaucrats
were quickly ironed out, and program
messages were efficiently and effectively
transmitted universally down the line
to the classroom. In a short time frame,
with all districts in the state adapting
Prathams
teaching
methodology,
Madhya Pradesh witnessed a remarkable

30 percent increase in the proportion

of children able to read the alphabet
between ASER 2005 and ASER 2006
(Banerjee et al. 2007). Read Indias
experiences in Madhya Pradeshand
similar experiences in Chhattisgarh,
where Maoist disturbances posed an
additional but surmountable challenge,
and in Bihartaught Pratham that if the
bureaucratic head was convinced that
a certain intervention was beneficial,
the intervention would subsequently be
implemented. In fact, a committed leader
could make even a dysfunctional system
deliver.
Given Read Indias strong pedagogic
underpinnings and the supporting
evidence of success, Prathams leaders
believed that there should have been
greater uptake of Read India across
the nation. However, they were aware
that Pratham was not affecting the
government system as preferred. There
are several reasons for this, one of
which was Prathams dependency on
a local champion within government
to push a new program forward.
Relying on government partnerships,
though proven to help a program
quickly achieve full scale, also had its
downsides. Over the course of 20 years,
Pratham found that partnerships could
be tenuous and unsustainabletime
and resources spent educating officials
and cultivating relationships could be
wasted with each government transition
or bureaucratic reshuffle. Although
successful partnerships should last well
beyond the life of individual personalities
in office, they seldom did. For example,
in Maharashtra, a very-well-knit and
successful Read India program was

17

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

dismantled because the new incumbent

was not convinced of the validity of the
methods being used.
Historically, Pratham found a way of
working with local policymakers, the
street fighters, but not with the pundits
(Rukmini Banerji, interview by Shushmita
Chatterji Dutt and Jenny Perlman
Robinson, July 18, 2015). That is, based
on Prathams experience, the people
closest to the ground were easier to work
with than the people at the state and
federal government levels, because they
understood the reality of poor learning
and could see results from Read Indias
activities.
Prathams preference for working
with local street fighters reflects its
democratic philosophy of inclusivity and
its attention to grassroots-level change.
Indeed, much of Prathams early stage
success was made possible by its ability
to channel energy among young people
on the ground. Involving volunteers in
Prathams activities not only benefited
the organization by helping keep costs
low but, more important, helped large
numbers of young people understand
what troubles primary education in India.
This understanding came from personal
participation and was, again, not a money-

intensive exercise. According to Prathams

leaders, no number of sophisticated
advocacy campaigns could have brought
so many young people onto the battlefield
against poor learning, as the Pratham
strategy of involving volunteers as
grassroots champions in action (Rukmini
Banerji, interview by Shushmita Chatterji
Dutt and Jenny Perlman Robinson, July
18, 2015). As is noted earlier in this case
study, working on a village-to-village
basis, Pratham mobilized volunteers in
more than 300,000 villages across
India (coverng approximately 60 percent
of India) from 2007 to 2008, and it has
formed partnerships in the past 10 years
with more than 15 state governments to
improve the quality of teaching in schools.
This strategys challenge has been
ensuring effective training and obtaining
uniformly good-quality work by such a
large number of volunteers. As mentioned
above, the difficulties in monitoring and
evaluating and therefore accurately
measuring the impact of Read Indias
activities across so many volunteer-led
initiatives played a role in Prathams
decision to scale back its campaign in
2010. This was part of Prathams lesson
that scaling up learning is more about
scaling up ideas and impact, rather than
scaling up the organization itself.

Aligning with the right donors

The story of financing Prathams Read India
campaign demonstrates that it is not just
financing that is critical to sustainability
and scaling but also who finances, what
is being financed, how the donor finances,
and when the donor enters the picture.
Prathams independence has been made
possible in large part by its strategic

18

alignment and identification with donors.

Specifically, the organization has benefited
throughout its history from a diverse set
of supporters. These have included local
and overseas donors that are committed
for the long term and thus have invested
in the organization and its core mission
rather than in a specific project, and that

have been flexible and open minded,

giving Pratham the space for growth and
experimentation through multiyear core
support.

base in the U.S., in the form of Pratham

USA. To this day, like the former chairman
of the ICICI, Goradia, and his family remain
strong champions of Prathams mission.

For instance, Prathams first important

champion was the former chairman of
the Industrial Credit and Investment
Corporation of India (ICICI) beginning
in 1997, a few years after Pratham was
established. The chairman of ICICI at the
time had no background in education
but understood the large scope of Indias
education quality issue. Indias large
population meant that the number of
children not learning was large. Not
wanting to fool around with small numbers,
both the chairman of ICICI and the chief
executive officer of Pratham agreed that
there was a need to hit a big number with
big numbers and to demonstrate along the
way sound evidence of doing this honestly
and well (Madhav Chavan, interview
by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and Jenny
Perlman Robinson, July 16, 2015). After
discussions, the chairman was convinced
that Pratham could take on this task. This
kind of core support from someone at the
head of Indias financial industry gave
Pratham the confidence to take risks and
innovate. This support was also a key factor
in building Prathams brand early on as a
trustworthy partner, expert, and leader in
the field of education in India. To this day,
the nowformer chairman of the ICICI is a
strong champion of Pratham.

According to Prathams leaders, the most

helpful donors were those who were open
minded in terms of what Pratham did on
the ground but were systematic in holding
its leaders accountable to what they said
they were going to do. These donors had
spent time with Pratham in the field and
were along for the journey, keen to see
results influence governments. Donors
like Oxfam Novib in the early years and
the Hewlett Foundation during the last
decade have played catalytic roles by
pushing Pratham just enough and at just
the right time to help Read India follow its
charted path, but they have not suffocated
Pratham by questioning its every move. This
relationship was particularly significant in
Prathams experience with scaling up Read
India starting in its early days.

Similar strong support committed for the

long term also came from individual donors
of Indian origin who lived in the United
States. Among the earliest champions was
Vijay Goradia, a successful entrepreneur
based in Houston. Goradias steadfast
support for Prathams work in the early
years helped build a strong fund-raising

In 2006, about the same time that Pratham

was beginning to incite the enthusiasm of
thousands of grassroots volunteers around
India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
put out a request for proposals and ideas
and asked the hypothetical question: If
there was money available, what would
you do? Pooling funds from the Gates
Foundation and Hewlett Foundation
into what became the Quality Education
for Developing Countries initiative and
was eventually handled by the Hewlett
Foundation, the two organizations were
willing to invest a substantial amount of
long-term funding for something ambitious
that would have a wide impact on learning.
Pratham responded with a proposal
that outlined the first generation of Read
India. It was appropriate for a number of
reasons, including its ambition to go for

19

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

all of India (Madhav Chavan, interview

by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and Jenny
Perlman Robinson, July 16, 2015).
Several key organizational features made
Pratham particularly attractive to these
two donors. During field visits to India
and to Prathams work sites, foundation
staff members were impressed that the
entire organization seemed to have a
shared vision of purpose about what they
were doing and where they intended
to go. Banerji, then head of the ASER
Centre, credited this cohesion to the
fundamental principles driving Pratham
and Read India: Keep the process simple;
know how to do it yourself; share learning;
and develop a common terminology with
each other (Rukmini Banerji, interview
by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt and Jenny
Perlman Robinson, July 18, 2015). Pratham
was also able to demonstrate that it had
sufficient experience on the ground and
that Read India was based on a wellarticulated pedagogy and an evidencebased model for teaching basic reading
and arithmetic. In addition, Prathams
leaders did not make any attempt to hide,
camouflage, or avoid the idea of learning
from evaluations, taking in feedback, and
integrating changes into its programming.
In fact, Pratham was open to bringing in
a third-party evaluation team. Together,
these factors not only left a strong
impression on the two foundations but
also convinced them to fund Pratham
for several years, long enough to bring
observable changes to the ground.
The Hewlett Foundations continued
support for Pratham lies in its observation
that Prathams work was of an entirely
different color compared to many
government led programs (Dana Schmidt,
interview by Jenny Perlman Robinson,

20

August 6, 2015). For example, in 2008,

the Read India Summer Camps in Bihar
introduced a large number of volunteers
into the field, which created a strong
community aspect and inclusive nature
in Prathams work. Hewlett recognized
that this democratic functioning within
Pratham was unique and that its trust in
its members had made it possible for the
organization to draw so much attention
and such a strong following to its social
campaign, which no other campaign in
India had been able to accomplish in
recent years. Moreover, the Read India
model allowed students to engage with
learning out of the restricted environs
of a classroom and has freed [learning]
to some extent from the tyranny of the
curriculum (Dana Schmidt, interview by
Jenny Perlman Robinson, August 6, 2015).
Witnessing such huge accomplishments
and Prathams rapid growth across
more than half of India, the Hewlett
Foundation also recognized the growing
difficulty of demonstrating a large
impact over such a vast coverage area.
Strong evidence of the effectiveness of
Prathams approach in making large
gains in learning had been an important
factor in the Hewlett Foundations
initial decision to fund Read Indias
expansion. However, it too, like Prathams
leadership, felt that the next round of
activities needed to be geographically
concentrated and deepened, with a
focus on achieving a large impact rather
than small percentage changes. This
view, along with internal organizational
discussions, led Pratham to scale back
its activities after 2010, downsizing Read
India to one-tenth of its previous size, but
becoming ready to focus on small steps,
intensify its activities, and move beyond
the basics.

Now, at another critical juncture of

introspection, largely influenced by
Indias shifting philanthropic climate,
Prathams leaders are asking themselves:
Where to, and what next? Should Read
India be expanded to more schools, or
should efforts be focused on deepening
and improving cohorts learning during
Prathams programming life cycle? Both
directions entail further innovation and
experimentation vis--vis programming,
including the integration of digital
learning components and an attention
to soft skills and self-organized learning.
Or should Pratham focus primarily on
another round of efforts to massively
scale up Read Indias core thrust on
basic reading and arithmetic? If so, what
mobilization strategies should be used,
which of the models should be scaled up,
and how should impact be measured?
Read Indias prior experience with
scaling was made possible in large part
due to its alignment with the large-scale
missions of and the influence of key
long-term donors, such as the former
chairman of the ICICI, the Hewlett
Foundation, Oxfam Novib, and Pratham
USA. These donors, however, contrast
starkly with Indias newest financiers:
corporations.
Since the introduction of a new law
in 2013, the Companies Act, which
made it compulsory for Indian industry
and corporate houses to commit 2
percent of their profits to corporate
social responsibility, new donors have
begun to change the scope and scale
of their projects. Corporations have
tended to look for programs in the

hinterlands of their factories or plants

or to geographies where companies
have a particular stake. Although
Prathams leaders have observed that
some corporations are being persuaded
to take action outside their immediate
areas of interest, expanding their scale
to whole districts, such efforts are still
few and far between (Rukmini Banerji,
interview by Shushmita Chatterji Dutt
and Jenny Perlman Robinson, July 20,
2015). Perhaps strategic alignments can
be made. For example, the support of
10 to 20 corporations over the next two
years could be catalytic for moving Read
India to larger scale.
With the rise of private, fee-charging
schools in India, the needs and
opportunities within the education
environment where Pratham operates
are quickly shifting. For example, 10 years
ago, about 20 percent of children in Uttar
Pradesh attended private schools. Today,
the figure is closer to 50 percent. Many
other states are also seeing similar trends.
As a result, those children who remain in
government schools are largely those
from very vulnerable economic strata,
the lowest social classes, and girls. Indias
shifting education scene makes it even
more urgent to address issues of quality
and learning. Although many education
programs are being implemented in
India today, the lessons from Read India
and Prathams experience point to the
need to learn by doing; recognize how
change happens; scale up a programs
impact in small, doable steps; engage
local champions; and align with the right
donors.

21

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

Lessons learned

Partnering with flexible, long-term focused donors allowed for the building of trust,
which gave Pratham the organizational autonomy, space, and independence
needed to experiment, take risks, and innovate.

Prathams willingness to experiment with and rigorously test new teaching-learning

models provided state- and district-level partners with an evidence-based menu
of program options, which enabled flexible, context-specific decisionmaking by
partners to maximize a programs impact in the presence of competing needs and
scarce resources.
Mirroring its experiential approach to pedagogy, Prathams philosophy of learning
by doing among its staff and volunteers helped maintain the organizations
focus on keeping Read Indias learning methodologies, activities, materials, and
assessment tools simple, so that individuals with a wide range of learning levels
and governments with a wide range of resources could embrace the program.
Prathams commitment to an evidence-based approach ensured purposeful
integration of monitoring and evaluation into its operations and decisionmaking.
This commitment enabled the organization to learn regularly from the process of
implementation and evaluation data, to have an honest awareness of achievements
made and challenges remaining, and to plan for the necessary course corrections
along the way. This included scaling down at one point during the programs history
in order to strengthen the implementation model toward scaling up impact.
Prathams leaders recognized how change happens locally. Using this knowledge,
they strategically institutionalized interventions by leveraging existing government
infrastructure, resources, and policy opportunities when possible. This was
important for capturing government support, because change was less threatening
to the status quo, more cost-efficient, and more easily replicated.
Making small, incremental change visible at a large scale was necessary to show
stakeholders that change is possible.
Identification of and partnerships with the local champions of Read India within
the governmentand using evidence from the Learning Camps to ignite their
excitementwas critical for garnering the political will and support at the top to
create the conditions needed to scale up ground-level action and have an impact
from below. However, relying on government partnerships could be tenuous and
unsustainable, where time and resources spent educating officials and cultivating
relationships could be wasted with each change in government.

22

23

Prathams Read India program: Taking small steps toward learning at scale

References
ASER Centre. 2013. Annual Status of Education Report 2012. New Delhi: Pratham.
. 2014. National Read India Report 201314. Measurement, Monitoring & Evaluation Unit, ASER. New
Delhi: Pratham.
. 2015. National Read India Report 201415. Measurement, Monitoring & Evaluation Unit, ASER. http://
pratham.org/templates/pratham/images/Read_India_National_Report_2014-15.pdf.

Endnotes
1.

In the initial years, Prathams teaching-learning method was referred to as L2R, or learning to read.
Later, it began to be called CAMaL (in English, this means Combined Activities for Maximized Learning,
but in Hindi and in some other languages, it is read as magic). In recent years, the method has also
been named TaRL, or Teaching at the Right Level.

2. A cluster is usually a group of 10 to 15 schools in a small geographic area. The cluster resource center is
used for teacher meetings, teacher training, and administrative work. The coordinator is usually a senior
teacher appointed to guide the activities of the center and to provide academic support to teachers.

Banerjee, Abhijit, Rukmini Banerji, Madhav Chavan, Esther Duflo, and Michael Walton. 2007. Impact
Evaluation of Prathams Learning to Read and Reading to Learn Interventions. J-PAL South Asia at IFMR
and Pratham Resource Center. http://www.michaelwalton.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Read-Indiaimpact-evaluation_proposal_October-2007.pdf.
Banerjee, Abhijit V., Rukmini Banerji, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Stuti Khemani. 2010. Pitfalls of
Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India. American Economic
Journal: Economic Policy 2, no. 1: 130.
Banerjee, Abhijit V., Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, and Leigh Linden. 2006. Remedying Education: Evidence
from Two Randomized Experiments in India. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, no. 3: 123564.
Banerji, R., and Michael Walton. 2011. What Helps Children to Learn? Evaluation of Prathams Read India
Program in Bihar & Uttarakhand. J-PAL. http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/what-helps-childrenlearn-evaluation-prathams-read-india-program.
Duflo, Esther, James Berry, Shobhini Mukerji, and Marc Shotland. 2014. A Wide-Angle View of Learning:
Evaluation of the CCE and LEP Programmes in Haryana3ie Grantee Final Report. New Delhi: International
Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
Duflo, Esther, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer. 2011. Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of
Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya. American Economic Review 101, no. 5: 173974.
J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab). No date. Improving Learning Outcomes through the
Government School System in India. J-PAL. http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/improvinglearning-outcomes-through-government-school-system-india.
Pratham. 2015. Pratham: 20142015: Summary DataReach/Coverage. http://pratham.org/templates/
pratham/images/Pratham_Summary_numbers_2014-15_FINAL_JUNE_2015.pdf.

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